ePub gets (yet) another DRM system

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

A decade or more ago, there used to be at least one usenet feed where people posted ebook versions scanned from paper. I looked at a few, they usually were pretty bad, scanned but poorly proofread. After the publishers finally gave up and started selling ebooks of all of their catalog, I think the feeds morphed into ebooks from cracked DRM. If the publishers were to switch to a DRM system that is much harder to crack, I suspect that most DRM breakers would switch to whatever retailer(s) sell versions that are still breakable and they would not go back to scanning.

It would take a long time to switch. Amazon, B&N and Kobo probably sell a lot of their ebooks to consumers with ereaders that they don't sell anymore, and switching to a DRM still that those ereaders can't read would cause a lot of bad press and unhappy customers who might chose to buy a reader from a different walled garden instead of upgrading.

Macmillan and Baen aren't the only ones to go DRM-free. Simon & Schuster's Saga SF line did too. Macmillan seems to be more concerned about libraries, they added a 6 month window between publication date and ebooks available from libraries.

I think that if B&N gives up on the Nook, they'll do what Sony did, and sell the customer base to Kobo. Even if Kobo only gives them a pittance, it's better than shutting down without anything to show for it.

Yea, I had a bit over 200 books with Sony. Fortunately, I downloaded them all and removed the DRM before the store closed. Most of the books transferred over to Kobo (and appear on my Kobo Aura), but around 25 didn't because the books were no longer available for purchase. Still better than nothing and it did get me to at least try the Kobo store.

Way back, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Baen was the only publisher putting out ebooks, there was a usenet group that did scanned books. It was a kind of Guttenberg style situation where someone would scan and put up the first iteration, and different people would edit and put up corrected copies. Popular books got multiple editing iterations, so after a while they were pretty good. Books that had been scanned and no one edited, not so much. For the most part, the participants didn't really see it as piracy since there were no ebooks to pirate. They just made ebook versions of books they had purchased. There seemed to be a fair amount of pride in workmanship.

The vast majority of ebook buyers don't care about DRM. They buy a book on their kindle and read it on their kindle. Or they buy in the Books store and read in Books. They never leave their walled garden and are quite happy. They are fine leaving the books in the cloud. There are very few people who really care one way or the other. The big reason it's still out there is there are a few authors/publishers who worry about piracy and because it's already out there, so why change.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by EndStop

Not sure how much it effects books but I am quite convinced the failure of DRM has had significant affect on the music industry so could be ebooks too.

What effect do you feel that dropping DRM had on music sales? Do you have any evidence?

Note that the only recent test of dropping DRM on ebooks had no effect on sales. (Tor dropped all DRM some time ago.)

[EndStop]

Originally Posted by sealbeater

That would require always-on connectivity and at the very least inspire privacy concerns (of course, if you were privacy conscious, you wouldn't be using a Kindle anyway), impact battery life and system responsiveness.

People would just load alternative firmware or buy different devices. The majority of my devices are format agnostic.

Do the maths. A 10k text fingerprint should do and although there are millions of Ebooks out there I would guess that a careful selection of 100,000 should be suficient to leave big holes in any pirates library. Thats 1GB and peanuts with todays storage. Less than peanuts for tomorows. So a device could hold fingerprints without always being conected. In fact it would have to. 1GB is not much to store but significant for background downloading. The fingerprints could only be updated slowly.

[EndStop]

Originally Posted by sealbeater

Why would I buy such a device? I would sooner buy a Chinese device with no DRM at all.

Also, should note that the same tricks used to protect software fail the same ways. Once I have the device, I *have* the device. If I can't root it, why bother buying it?

There is the rub. You might not. However....

1) The argument that a contoled device is a safe and easy to use device works with more people than you might believe.

2)There is the cool device factor. With enough advertising it is posible to convince many that it is better to be posh than a pirate. And guess what? If you are taking a cut of the profits for every ebook that loads you can afford a lot of advertising.

[EndStop]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

What effect do you feel that dropping DRM had on music sales? Do you have any evidence?

Note that the only recent test of dropping DRM on ebooks had no effect on sales. (Tor dropped all DRM some time ago.)

Lol. DRM is never going to have much effect on sales if it is ineffective. Which right now is true for both music and ebooks.

As I have argued, it never can be particularly effective. It really is all about fooling people into buying protected devices and shaping our cultural behavour.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by EndStop

Lol. DRM is never going to have much effect on sales if it is ineffective. Which right now is true for both music and ebooks.

As I have argued, it never can be particularly effective. It really is all about fooling people into buying protected devices and shaping our cultural behavour.

I am of the opinion that DRM is ineffective not because it can be broken, but because it has little to no effect on sales, whether or not an easy way around it exists.

IMO, DRM is a scam by DRM producing companies. It takes money from those who produce content, and provides them with no benefits. It causes problems for users of content. Its use is driven entirely by fear mongering.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

IMO, DRM is a scam by DRM producing companies. It takes money from those who produce content, and provides them with no benefits. It causes problems for users of content. Its use is driven entirely by fear mongering.

I strongly suspect that there are few publishers who would be willing to allow libraries to lend ebooks without DRM, and its absence would completely destroy the textbook rental market. Like it or not, DRM has its place.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I strongly suspect that there are few publishers who would be willing to allow libraries to lend ebooks without DRM, and its absence would completely destroy the textbook rental market. Like it or not, DRM has its place.

I hate it when you're right.

But its place isn't the retail market.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But its place isn't the retail market.

There we certainly agree!

[EndStop]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I strongly suspect that there are few publishers who would be willing to allow libraries to lend ebooks without DRM, and its absence would completely destroy the textbook rental market. Like it or not, DRM has its place.

Alas, this is just a specific example of a massive problem.

When you have something that requires serious effort to develop but far less to produce and distribute, there is a real problem.

The laws of supply and demand require supply to be limited if the price paid is going to justify the development. But that limit means some must go without. Without Joy (ebooks & music), Hope (textbooks) or life itself (aids drugs).

Needless to say, piracy tends to fill the gap. I personally am all for it because there are other ways to fund development and piracy forces them to be considered.

On such method would be to replace capitalism with bureaucracy. The intellectual property is free to manufacture & distribute but the government takes in more tax and rewards developers according to estimated life improvement. Not entirely sure its the best.

Another is just to leave things much as they are. If the manufacturer's pricing structure leaves people in real need then piracy will fill the gap. It encourages heavy discounting to the needy.

[HarryT]

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[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I strongly suspect that there are few publishers who would be willing to allow libraries to lend ebooks without DRM, and its absence would completely destroy the textbook rental market. Like it or not, DRM has its place.

Certainly lending is a special case. Text books is another special case simply because students might only need the hideously expensive text book for one class. I've sometimes wondered why schools don't simply make text books part of the tuition and give students the option of paying extra to keep the book rather than turn it back in after the course. Of course, if the text book is part of the tuition, then we are really talking about a handful of students who might want to keep the book.

[John F]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I strongly suspect that there are few publishers who would be willing to allow libraries to lend ebooks without DRM, and its absence would completely destroy the textbook rental market. Like it or not, DRM has its place.

Here are some books at a library that do not have DRM. Click on a book, click on Details, and you can see who the publisher is.

https://brooklyn.overdrive.com/searc...tBy=newlyadded

Searching for Open epub came up with 4573 ebooks.
Searching for epub came up with 118,994.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by John F

Here are some books at a library that do not have DRM. Click on a book, click on Details, and you can see who the publisher is.

https://brooklyn.overdrive.com/searc...tBy=newlyadded

Searching for Open epub came up with 4573 ebooks.
Searching for epub came up with 118,994.

Sure, I know there are some. That's why I said "few publishers" would allow DRM-free books, not "no publishers".

[John F]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sure, I know there are some. That's why I said "few publishers" would allow DRM-free books, not "no publishers".

I was just curious why you would use the word "suspect"; you could just say there are "few".

And than we could nitpick the definition of few.