DRM and retailers

[sony_fox]

Just been reading the thread about BoB demise. Several comments along the lines of whent he retailer goes under the DRM will no longer activate the e-book.

I thought all the epub DRM went rhough Adobe's Digital Editions, and hence was independant of retailer. Providing Adobe stay's in business (ok not a given but quite likely for a while), then the ebooks will continue to work fine?

I'm sure there are other DRM solutions out there, but I've only ever come across ADE. Can someone confirm my understanding is correct?

Otherwise I've got a heck of a lot of stripping to do.

Thanks

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by sony_fox

Just been reading the thread about BoB demise. Several comments along the lines of whent he retailer goes under the DRM will no longer activate the e-book.

I thought all the epub DRM went rhough Adobe's Digital Editions, and hence was independant of retailer. Providing Adobe stay's in business (ok not a given but quite likely for a while), then the ebooks will continue to work fine?

I'm sure there are other DRM solutions out there, but I've only ever come across ADE. Can someone confirm my understanding is correct?

Otherwise I've got a heck of a lot of stripping to do.

Your understanding is correct. With Adobe Digital Editions, a book is encoded using a key linked to your Adobe ID. So long as Adobe will authorise new devices with your Adobe ID (i.e. give the device the key for your books) you will be able to read the books on new devices, even if the store that sold the book to you goes out of business.

And it'll work fine, until Adobe stops supporting Content Server 4, as they stopped supporting Content Server 3 back in 2009, giving people just a nine month window to migrate all their DRMed content from Content Server 3 to Content Server 4. Those who missed this window lost access to their files on new devices.

So: Don't ignore news from Adobe for any length of time, or you may find your files become unavailable on new devices.

Personally, I strip the DRM ASAP to avoid these potential problems.

[taming]

Originally Posted by sony_fox

Just been reading the thread about BoB demise. Several comments along the lines of whent he retailer goes under the DRM will no longer activate the e-book.

I thought all the epub DRM went rhough Adobe's Digital Editions, and hence was independant of retailer. Providing Adobe stay's in business (ok not a given but quite likely for a while), then the ebooks will continue to work fine?

I'm sure there are other DRM solutions out there, but I've only ever come across ADE. Can someone confirm my understanding is correct?

Otherwise I've got a heck of a lot of stripping to do.

Thanks

Many (most) of the other reading devices use a slightly different ADE encryption. B&N's is tied to your credit card number. The ADE used by Sony and Kobo, for example, is not. To read on ADE encrypted book bought from B&N on my Kobo eink device, I have to strip the drm.

This is not true of books bought from Sony, Google Play, Diesel, etc.

[MickiTee]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

And it'll work fine, until Adobe stops supporting Content Server 4, as they stopped supporting Content Server 3 back in 2009, giving people just a nine month window to migrate all their DRMed content from Content Server 3 to Content Server 4. Those who missed this window lost access to their files on new devices.

So: Don't ignore news from Adobe for any length of time, or you may find your files become unavailable on new devices.

Thanks for the warning. I'd turned off all communications from Adobe as I can't stand all the irrelevant emails, but in light of this I've just gone and turned it back on again.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by taming

Many (most) of the other reading devices use a slightly different ADE encryption. B&N's is tied to your credit card number. The ADE used by Sony and Kobo, for example, is not. To read on ADE encrypted book bought from B&N on my Kobo eink device, I have to strip the drm.

This is not true of books bought from Sony, Google Play, Diesel, etc.

Most ADE encryption is the same. B&N's encryption is not part of ADE.
The ability to read encrypted ebooks is a function of the reading software;
The Adobe Reader Mobile versions that include the ability to read ebooks
encrypted in both ADE and B&N DRM scams are distributed in the ADE
package licensed to device makers.

The ADE encryption scam is totally dependent upon interaction with the
Adobe servers, and requires an authorization of each device. The B&N
DRM scam is functional without needing a device authorization or access
to a server, it uses a hash of data you used to make the purchase.

That Kobo chose to not implement a reading software that can handle
B&N encrypted, is not surprising. If you had a device that can work
with the B&N DRM the lack of the internet or any server site, would not
prevent your decrypting and reading your B&N purchased ebook.

I personally remove any DRM upon purchase, for my Kobo as well as for
my jetBook Lite which can read encrypted ebooks it either of those DRM
scams.

Luck;
Ken

[6charlong]

There are other forms of DRM including Apple's FairPlay. iBooks are formatted using the same HTML as the others but their DRM is unique to Apple eBooks making them unreadable on any other brand. Older forms of DRM were once used by Microsoft before they stopped selling eBooks. The Microsoft LIT formated books are no longer readable.

There was once an earlier form of Amazon's Mobipocket. When Amazon stopped selling eBooks they gave people three months to download all their books before the Amazon servers no longer supported Amazon's DRM. When they introduced the Kindles and resumed selling eBooks they continued using the Mobi formatting but began using a new version of DRM that is incompatible with the old version, thus our older Mobi eBooks could no longer be read without removing the DRM.

DRM is the cause of many problems such as when a new reader buys a book from Amazon and they have an eReader that renders ePub. It's a simple matter to change the formatting except the DRM prevents you from doing it.

Kobo eReaders come with an advanced rendering engine that supports many advanced features of ePub3 and they also include the older Adobe rendering engine for ePub2 books on every Kobo eReader. You can read ePub2 books with Kobo's advanced engine as long as it does not have DRM. In other words, the DRM is the only thing preventing an improvement.

I apologize for the rant. I didn't mean to let it all out like this. You might notice that most people are not fans of DRM even though we've paid for dozens, hundreds or thousands of copies of it on nearly every book we buy.

[ForsCream]

And don't forget, eBook retailer (yes I mean Amazon) can wipe out all your purchased books overnight.

If you didn't strip the DRM and make some backups, you are going to risk losing all the paid contents.