ePub gets (yet) another DRM system

[Sydney's Mom]

I recently had some problems when I had to re-download windows. When I downloaded Calibre, I had put my books in just the right place-it was so easy. DRM, not so much. I tried different things for 3-days, then decided I would not be buying anymore epubs. DeDRM worked for kindle. Finally, right before I re-downloaded windows again and started from scratch, I found a way to get it working.

Long story short. I will not buy books if I cannot crack the DRM. I have never shared a book nor posted it for others to download. So rather than preventing piracy, it prevents a sale.

Long story shro

[MyDK]

Readium LCP is a reality:
https://www.edrlab.org/2017/09/20/de...cp-mobile-app/
And it will become a DRM standard for ebooks within next 3 years:
https://www.edrlab.org/2018/09/11/an...-iso-standard/
They are also considering including PDF. So, in Europe I am sure, it will be accepted and used

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by MyDK

Readium LCP is a reality:
https://www.edrlab.org/2017/09/20/de...cp-mobile-app/
And it will become a DRM standard for ebooks within next 3 years:
https://www.edrlab.org/2018/09/11/an...-iso-standard/
They are also considering including PDF. So, in Europe I am sure, it will be accepted and used

Are you sure?
The French aren't part of the process:

USA, UK, China, Republic of Korea, Japan, Lebanon, Russia have all voted yes (France is not part of this SC34 Committee). The draft submitted to the ISO members is clearly based on Readium LCP; the USA representative, George Kerscher, has formally insisted that the future standard must be “a standardization of the existing LCP”.

Last I heard there is a separate french DRM that Sony adopted.

https://the-digital-reader.com/2015/...new-ebook-drm/

Dunno if anybody is actually selling ebooks with it, though.

A caution: what they voted on was casting the specification in concrete as an official international standard (a good thing that epub alone never thought to do) but there are hundreds of ISO standards that are ignored or barely used.

There is a difference between "paper standards", defacto standards, and supported standards.

It is a step forward but just that.
Until others *stop* using existing DRM schemes, all this does is increase epub forking by one more.

https://xkcd.com/927/

[GlenBarrington]

You know, I was just saying the other day, "We simply don't have enough DRM in the world!"

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

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.

Ah, but think of the marketing bonanza for Amazon as they don't do epub.

If I can't remove DRM, I stop buying. Within the next 2 years, I should have all my series complete and it won't matter. So long as I can get batteries for my current ereaders, I will be fine (I'm almost an old fogey). It will be more of a problem for younger people who have many decades of reading ahead of them. I'll be lucky if I finish out 2 decades from now.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Ah, but think of the marketing bonanza for Amazon as they don't do epub.

If I can't remove DRM, I stop buying. Within the next 2 years, I should have all my series complete and it won't matter. So long as I can get batteries for my current ereaders, I will be fine (I'm almost an old fogey). It will be more of a problem for younger people who have many decades of reading ahead of them. I'll be lucky if I finish out 2 decades from now.

The trick for you then is to have a 2 decade backlog of books to read.

I totally agree with you. Fortunately, so far, the only DRM's that I've seen that haven't been broken are mostly tied to a small enough ebook store that there just wasn't enough interest in cracking it. The trend seems to be less ebooks with DRM. I'm seeing more and more ebooks from different publishing houses that start with a "this book has been provided without DRM by request of the publisher..." Just picked up Charlaine Harris's latest from Simon and Schuster that had that notice.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I'm seeing more and more ebooks from different publishing houses that start with a "this book has been provided without DRM by request of the publisher..." Just picked up Charlaine Harris's latest from Simon and Schuster that had that notice.

Despite that, don't Amazon add DRM anyway when they deliver your book in KFX format?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Despite that, don't Amazon add DRM anyway when they deliver your book in KFX format?

I don't know, I've never gotten a book in KFX format. It would seem odd that they would do so. Perhaps the issue isn't DRM but handling the KFX format.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by MyDK

Readium LCP is a reality:
https://www.edrlab.org/2017/09/20/de...cp-mobile-app/
And it will become a DRM standard for ebooks within next 3 years:
https://www.edrlab.org/2018/09/11/an...-iso-standard/
They are also considering including PDF. So, in Europe I am sure, it will be accepted and used

From your second link:

The goal of this Digital Rights Management solution is to standardize an open and secure technology, low cost, user friendly and compatible with archival needs. This standardized solution will be especially useful worldwide for e-lending in public libraries.

User friendly? How is it user friendly to have a book with DRM you can't read with your current ereader or apps?

[Klecks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Are you sure?
The French aren't part of the process:
...
It is a step forward but just that.
Until others *stop* using existing DRM schemes, all this does is increase epub forking by one more.

The french have TEA and CARE, see here:
https://www.tea-ebook.com/solution/#care
And the german library system (Onleihe) is switching from adobe drm to CARE in 2019.
Most german publishers and ebook vendors already abandoned adobe drm in favor of social drm (watermark) or no drm ... and I hope, they stick to it.
I don't know about TEA/CARE. Time will show how it works.
Tolino alliance promised implementation. Apparently pocketbook is working on it.
I hope kobo will follow, because they are part of the tolino alliance.

Klecks.

[Sarmat89]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

"We simply don't have enough DRM in the world!"

We don't have enough DRM, as many schemes were compromised so they don't count.

[sealbeater]

See signature.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Ah, but think of the marketing bonanza for Amazon as they don't do epub.

The more epub is forked by DRM specs, the better Kindle and iBook look.
Especially when the forks are region-dependent.

To whatever extent that national-champion DRM schemes proliferate, Amazon and Apple's "it just works" global solutions look increasingly better to publishers interested in cross-border sales (global english and spanish, for example).

Back before Amazon took Kindle into Japan, they saw a lot of sales of imported readers to people who used them to access english language content. Quite a few authors have reflected that they get a lot of serendipitous sales in markets they don't directly target.

The digital world doesn't believe in geo-limits.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The digital world doesn't believe in geo-limits.

"Authors make more money when they divvy up e-book publishing rights."

is starting to sound more and more like:

"American automobile manufacturers make higher profits on large cars."

(Yes, I know that oil tanker sized SUVs are the current fad, but the point still stands.)

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

"Authors make more money when they divvy up e-book publishing rights."

is starting to sound more and more like:

"American automobile manufacturers make higher profits on large cars."

(Yes, I know that oil tanker sized SUVs are the current fad, but the point still stands.)

Well, divvying rights by region made sense before POD and before ebooks.
Now... a bit less. There's always special cases, though. Legacy authors have fanbases that might be wedded to print.

The funny thing is the publishers that most stand to gain by going global are the ones resisting it most. Addressing the second- and third-language speakers and expatriates the world over can bring in plenty of money at minimal added cost through ebook sales.