ePub gets (yet) another DRM system

[fjtorres]

https://copyrightandtechnology.com/2...set-to-launch/

The 2017 EPUB Summit in Brussels this past week was the venue for the beta launch and first live demos of the Readium LCP DRM technology for EPUB-formatted e-books.

https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/La...cp-epub-summit

Readium LCP is designed to integrate with the Readium open source code library for EPUB reading systems, although Readium can integrate with other DRMs, and in fact there are Readium implementations that support multiple DRMs at the same time.

Readium LCP started, to a large extent, with a conversation that I had in 2012 with Bill McCoy, then Executive Director of IDPF, the standards body that oversaw the EPUB format (now part of W3C). He was concerned with various aspects of Adobe ACS, the de facto standard DRM (outside of the Apple and Amazon ecosystems), including Adobe’s lack of commitment to supporting the new version of EPUB (EPUB 3), and he wanted to motivate alternatives.

Here is an early snapshot of the project. I was involved in various aspects of it, including the licensing, compliance, and robustness frameworks as well as the initial requirements. Five years later, some of the design principles and goals have changed, but the basic idea of providing a simple, low-cost, and vendor-neutral DRM for EPUB has remained.

Readium LCP has blossomed into a vibrant, cooperative, open-source development effort involving several companies. Among others: De Marque of Canada built server software; TEA and Mantano of France developed e-reading clients; and Feedbooks (France) and DRM Inside (South Korea) contributed key design elements. DRM Inside also built its own server and client implementations, and ePagine of Netherlands/Belgium/France contributed on the server side. (Please complain to me if I left you out.)

The code (C++ on the client side; Go on the server side) is available in Github repositories and is almost entirely BSD-licensed open source. Anyone can implement Readium LCP, although it’s necessary to do a few things to participate in the Readium LCP interoperable ecosystem: sign a license agreement, pass a compliance test, and (on the client side) agree to harden your code to make it resistant to reverse engineering and key discovery. Licensees get access to the small library of hardened binary code and the digital certificates that provide security and are necessary to integrate with other components.

The ecosystem is set up so that any licensed e-reader should be able to read e-books from any licensed server. In fact, such interoperability was demonstrated yesterday in Brussels, as DRM Inside’s implementations were shown to be interoperable with those of De Marque, TEA, and Mantano.

The non-profit, Paris-based European Digital Reading Lab (EDRLab), which was established in 2015, administers the licensing and compliance testing. It will charge a modest initial license fee and flat annual fees that depend only on organization size and not on transaction volume or size of catalog. The only dependence on any commercial vendors is that the digital certificates are supplied by a division of Deutsche Telekom.

Initial focus is libraries:

Participants in the Brussels conference said that Readium LCP is the first and only DRM technology whose designers solicited input specifically from the library community. While Readium LCP may have some success with retail e-book services as well, library e-lending looks like a strong initial market for this newly hatched DRM technology. Despite doubts that some publishers and distributors have about DRM for retail e-books, DRM for library e-book lending is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

More at the sources.

So, the solution to epub fragmentation is...more fragmentation?
Adobe and Overdrive must be thrilled.

It has all the right buzzwords, though; "open source", "interoperable", "multi-vendor".

[GERGE]

https://xkcd.com/927/

[JSWolf]

The problem is going to be that this new DRM will not be successful. As of right now, all (other than Apple) programs or apps that handles DRM and ePub uses Adobe's DRM. If this new DRM came out, these ePub will not work without new programs/apps. No eInk Reader will handle the DRM. I can see this new DRM tank.

[fjtorres]

Oh, the new DRM is coming out.
No "if's" about it.
They've spent 5 years carefully crafting it so it will check off all the right items on a buzzword bingo card.
They're not going to let all that effort go to waste.

And it will be used.
It might even succeed in driving Adobe out of the ePub DRM business.
It might take a decade or two but it could happen...

[Sweetpea]

The biggest problem I have with things like this: what if you don't have an internet connection? will it still work? Will I be able to download a dozen books and put them on my non-internet connected device for reading? Will I then be able to put it on another device as well, so I can continue reading it there? And if I get another device and need to change the format, will I still be able to use that book? As long as any of those questions is "NO", I won't even considering buying a book infected with it.

There's only one correct way of DRM and that Social DRM.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is going to be that this new DRM will not be successful. As of right now, all (other than Apple) programs or apps that handles DRM and ePub uses Adobe's DRM. If this new DRM came out, these ePub will not work without new programs/apps. No eInk Reader will handle the DRM. I can see this new DRM tank.

It would let companies integrate their own DRM for their own apps alongside Adept, same as Kobo does.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

It would let companies integrate their own DRM for their own apps alongside Adept, same as Kobo does.

+1

I hate DRM, but this news means e-reader apps could emancipate themselves from Adobe Mobile.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

It would let companies integrate their own DRM for their own apps alongside Adept, same as Kobo does.

But, with Kobo, you do not have to have anything to do with the DRM for kepub as you can download as ePub with Adobe Adept. The user has a choice.

Think of all of those Readers that are no longer supported that use RMDSK (ADE) and will never be upgraded to handle any other form of DRM. all of those users would be screwed as this new DRM will not work with their devices.

People will be pissed if they start buying ePub that they then find out they cannot read because the eBooks are not working with whatever they currently use.

This new DRM is just another way to screw with eBooks in an effort to try to get people to dump eBooks and move back to pBooks.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But, with Kobo, you do not have to have anything to do with the DRM for kepub as you can download as ePub with Adobe Adept. The user has a choice.

(...)

This new DRM is just another way to screw with eBooks in an effort to try to get people to dump eBooks and move back to pBooks.

I think this is not a problem. New DRM is more focalised on EPUB>3, more than ePub2.

[John F]

As far as MR readers* getting pissed...

The buyers won't get pissed. The DRM will be cracked**.

Library users will be pissed.

* Mr readers who have no way to update there ereaders
** prevailing opinion is that the DRM would be*** cracked.
*** cracked relatively quickly since it would be the new popular/widely used DRM

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

As far as MR readers* getting pissed...

The buyers won't get pissed. The DRM will be cracked**.

Library users will be pissed.

* Mr readers who have no way to update there ereaders
** prevailing opinion is that the DRM would be*** cracked.
*** cracked relatively quickly since it would be the new popular/widely used DRM

So this will be cracked just like the new DRM available in ADE versions 3+?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So this will be cracked just like the new DRM available in ADE versions 3+?

I'm confident that if/when stores start forcing people to use version 3+, then it will be cracked. When I first got my Kobo, the kepub DRM couldn't be removed, now it can. (which is nice, because it means that I can buy books from Kobo ) I'm confident that Alf and his colleagues will be able to handle anything that they *choose* to focus on. Right now, it's not a priority, as the workarounds exist.

Shari

[crich70]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is going to be that this new DRM will not be successful. As of right now, all (other than Apple) programs or apps that handles DRM and ePub uses Adobe's DRM. If this new DRM came out, these ePub will not work without new programs/apps. No eInk Reader will handle the DRM. I can see this new DRM tank.

Not to mention the time and expense converting existing epub books to the new DRM. And of course by the time they could do that someone would have worked out how to crack it. The government has had similar problems over the yrs with counterfeiters making their 'funny money.' Every time (in the past) that they come up with something to prevent it someone seems to have come up with a way around it. I can't see ebook protection being any easier.

[John F]

Originally Posted by crich70

Not to mention the time and expense converting existing epub books to the new DRM. And of course by the time they could do that someone would have worked out how to crack it. The government has had similar problems over the yrs with counterfeiters making their 'funny money.' Every time (in the past) that they come up with something to prevent it someone seems to have come up with a way around it. I can't see ebook protection being any easier.

I'm guessing there is no "converting existing books to DRM"; the DRM gets applied when the ebook is downloaded.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by John F

I'm guessing there is no "converting existing books to DRM"; the DRM gets applied when the ebook is downloaded.

Yes.
The books are stored DRM-free. DRM is a function of the store not the book.