JK Rowling Announcement

[6charlong]

I know we're all speculating but I think the watermark will be a tasteful "Ex Libris" patch on the title page.

As to the WSJ thing, I really doubt the FBI and MI5 will go on "potter patrol" to hunt granny down for having an illegal copy of Goblet of Fire. My grandchildren's granny would do all she could to correct them if they showed up with any sort of stolen property. Frankly, I haven't trusted the WSJ as much since they became part of the Merdock empire. Their speculation may prove no more accurate than the USA Today article yesterday claiming Pottermore was a kind of Scavenger Hunt.

We'll all have to wait to know for sure but I think this will truly mark a turning point with the most valuable book series published essentially DRM free.

Too good to be true? Maybe. We'll see.

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You do realise that Diap knows more about DRM than you could ever hope to in your wildest dreams? I think you can be confident that he's very well aware of how Kindle DRM works .

I haven't seen any news on the change.

[ApK]

<quote revised>

[elemenoP]

Where's that smiley of a smiley eating popcorn? I need it now.

eP

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

I know we're all speculating but I think the watermark will be a tasteful "Ex Libris" patch on the title page.

As to the WSJ thing, I really doubt the FBI and MI5 will go on "potter patrol" to hunt granny down for having an illegal copy of Goblet of Fire. My grandchildren's granny would do all she could to correct them if they showed up with any sort of stolen property. Frankly, I haven't trusted the WSJ as much since they became part of the Merdock empire. Their speculation may prove no more accurate than the USA Today article yesterday claiming Pottermore was a kind of Scavenger Hunt.

We'll all have to wait to know for sure but I think this will truly mark a turning point with the most valuable book series published essentially DRM free.

Too good to be true? Maybe. We'll see.

I'm less worried about the government and more about (unethical*) hackers.

* Disclaimer: Not all hackers are unethical. To be clear, I'm only worried about the unethical ones.

The announcement seems to claim that individual books will be tied to individual people. And that the tie will be done in such a way that IF they wanted to, they could find you.

What can that mean, practically? There are about 3 pieces of information you give out in a purchase: Credit Card Number, Name on the Card, and Address.

Addresses and names are not really worthwhile as persistent location data. Names change; people move. Furthermore, names/addresses are hard to verify at time of purchase. Usually CC#s are the only piece of information that can be actually verified during the purchase, and even then it's a pass/fail: did the purchase go through? Card number must be good.

So I have to assume that IF they really are serious about ANY HP book being immediately traceback-able to the initial purchaser, then to me that means that identification data will be embedded into the book file.

Either the identification data will be directly associate with you -- in which case, the FBI and hackers and anyone else who accesses that file can crack the file open and get that data. OR the information in the book file will be meaningless to us but will map back to a database on the Rowling end where a GUID in the book file corresponds to your purchase request -- in which case, the Rowling end is planning to maintain all our CC# data in a database for perpetuity that will likely not be some stand alone mainframe somewhere.

A HP database containing the CC# of every HP fan ever will be Fort Knox for identity thieves. And I'm not confident that Rowling Inc is going to be able to keep it secure, especially with their attitude that they have to reinvent the wheel every time they do something.

I'm not going to trust the homebrew firewall of a group of people who make statements like "every eReader device can read ePubs". Rowling and her people aren't experts in every single field on earth just because she's richer than Croesus.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Where's that smiley of a smiley eating popcorn? I need it now.

eP

Can we just call on the Who Knows More About Amazon DRM wars?

[CleverClothe]

I'm not trying to start a fight, I just saw something that seemed very wrong. I have heard of the changes made to Kinde for PC and the mobile apps.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by CleverClothe

I'm not trying to start a fight

You didn't. We were just trying to point out who it was you were correcting.
And if you WERE trying to start a fight with DiapDealer, then unless you happen be, say, Dark Reverser under another name, it would not have been much of a fight.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You do realise that Diap knows more about DRM than you could ever hope to in your wildest dreams? I think you can be confident that he's very well aware of how Kindle DRM works .

Originally Posted by ApK

You didn't. We were just trying to point out who it was you were arguing with.
And if you WERE trying to start a fight, then unless you happen to also be known as "Dark Reverser", it would not have been much of a fight.

Yeah, but saying stuff like "X knows more about Y than you ever could/would/do/will/can dream of/etc." is kind of flame-baity and seemed to indicate that a fight had somehow been started. It was actually pretty cool of CC to back down so politely like that.

Is there anything wrong with a simple, "No, he's right, Google it, back on topic please"?

EDIT: Because obviously I know more about conflict resolution than the rest of ya'll could ever DREAM of knowing.

(That was intended as an ironic jab at myself ^^.)

[elemenoP]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Can we just call on the Who Knows More About Amazon DRM wars?

Not until Diap comes back. Because it's fun.

eP

[DiapDealer]

To be fair to CleverClothe, he's not technically wrong on a semantic level (or so my identical online cousin told me when I asked him).

A device PID is still generated... it's just not used (or used by itself) to encrypt Amazon books anymore. You used to have one master device PID that worked for every single book that you purchased for that particular Kindle. One PID to rule them all, so to speak. That changed when the 2.5 software was released (hello?? collections?). From that point on, there were unique PID's for each book that were generated from a combination of hardware details and metadata tokens in the ebooks themselves (which was how K4PC worked from the start). All I was trying to say was that the old device PID that you had to generate from the "kindlepid" script doesn't have f**k-all to do with removing the DRM from Amazon purchases anymore.

I'd like to thank everyone for coming to the defense of the guy that apparently uses the same username/avatar as me in other corners of the internet.

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

The announcement seems to claim that individual books will be tied to individual people. And that the tie will be done in such a way that IF they wanted to, they could find you.

Wired magazine published an excellent article. They seem to feel sure this is an important new direction for eBooks in general. They also see this as the publication of important books without the DRM.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/...rmore-details/

[ApK]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

It was actually pretty cool of CC to back down so politely like that.

Yes, and I did redact my Thomas Edison line when he did.

Is there anything wrong with a simple, "No, he's right, Google it, back on topic please"?

On topic? Holy Mackerel, this is the JK Rowling thread...I forgot where I was.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

the guy that apparently uses the same username/avatar as me in other corners of the internet.

I'd sue.

ApK

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

To be fair to CleverClothe, he's not technically wrong on a semantic level (or so my identical online cousin told me when I asked him).

A device PID is still generated... it's just not used (or used by itself) to encrypt Amazon books anymore. You used to have one master device PID that worked for every single book that you purchased for that particular Kindle. One PID to rule them all, so to speak. That changed when the 2.5 software was released (hello?? collections?). From that point on, there were unique PID's for each book that were generated from a combination of hardware details and metadata tokens in the ebooks themselves (which was how K4PC worked from the start). All I was trying to say was that the old device PID that you had to generate from the "kindlepid" script doesn't have f**k-all to do with removing the DRM from Amazon purchases anymore.

I'd like to thank everyone for coming to the defense of the guy that apparently uses the same username/avatar as me in other corners of the internet.

I apologize for insulting you, I don't background check every poster I run across.

[Funny note, I mistyped "insulting" as "insluting", thank you Chrome spell check.]

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

Wired magazine published an excellent article. They seem to feel sure this is an important new direction for eBooks in general. They also see this as the publication of important books without the DRM.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/...rmore-details/

Can someone please explain to me how digital watermarking isn't digital rights management (DRM)?

If the answer is "it doesn't lock you into a device!" then I have a different, broader definition of DRM than that. (Perhaps I'm wrong.)