Quote:
Originally Posted by EatingPie
Hopefully, this will lead to the bigger development: an single format that all readers can access. We're heading toward ePUB at this point. And all three are using DRM at this point, so if any of these retailers croak, so do your books.
-Pie
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B&N seems to be aware of this particular problem with DRM, which is why it isn't using the normal 'talk to our servers to authorize' form of it. Instead, they are using 'social DRM'. The idea is that by encrypting the content with an unchangeable password that they give you, but that you don't
want to give out (say, your CC number in this case), it discourages casual piracy without going through the hoops of running servers to authorize content, or hiding the keys from the user. Adobe and B&N are working to get this scheme into the next ADE SDK so other sellers can go this route if they choose, and devices can load up this version of the DRM as well.
The advantage here is that even if B&N shuts down their eBook store, you still have the password required to unlock your books. As long as /some/ reader supports the right versions of the ADE SDK, you won't lose your B&N ePub books (the switch to ePub needs to happen before this is really true, they are still in that PDB format for now is my understanding).
It forms an interesting compromise of sorts in that they are actually trusting the user with the key outright, even if it is a key picked out specifically to discourage sharing. It also saves the seller some money by saving a bit on the cost of servers that can handle the authorization. The servers just need to be able to store a copy of the encrypted file, or the password hash (not the real password) that is used to generate the encryption key to encrypt the book on demand when you want to re-download it.
If nothing else comes from the nook, we'll see another option for DRM that is less reliant on the network find it's way into Adobe's SDK and Content Server platform. It's at least a step in the right direction, IMO.