eReader.com Vice President on DRM and its Obstacles

[macr0t0r]

Kindle (which is actually Mobileread) DRM, IS worse than ereader. Let me count the ways:

1: Moving the file to a different device requires logging into a central server. When the server goes away....so do all your ebooks (unless you just keep the original device and hope it never fails). With eReader, once you have the file, you just need your name and card number to unlock it. The server could be dead and gone and you would still have your books.

2: No support for sharing with friends and family. The Sony Reader at least supports 5 devices per purchase. The reason Amazon books are so cheap is because they expect you to buy a book for each family member or pass around the one kindle device. Um....no.

3: "Kindle" format, even though it really is Mobileread, can only be purchased for the Kindle and the iPod. Far too limited. I'd like to have a copy on my phone for those times I need a quick read. eReader format supports Mac, Windows, Palm, WinMobile, Symbian, iPhone, and anything that runs the PalmOS emulator (like the linux Nokia tablets).

Admittedly, I'd prefer no DRM at all, but publishers are slow to learn. Until then, I purchase eReader (mostly from fictionwise.com) as it is the "lesser evil." Of course, as a backup plan, I know that the lit, eReader, and Mobilread formats have been hacked.

Don't get me wrong, technically the Kindle is a pretty impressive piece of hardware, but it's more "walled garden" than the iPod/iTunes lockout. Hopefully they'll open things up a LITTLE bit like Apple (though they still refuse to support other devices for videos).

- Jim

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by macr0t0r

Kindle (which is actually Mobileread) DRM, IS worse than ereader. Let me count the ways:

3: "Kindle" format, even though it really is Mobileread, can only be purchased for the Kindle and the iPod. Far too limited. I'd like to have a copy on my phone for those times I need a quick read. eReader format supports Mac, Windows, Palm, WinMobile, Symbian, iPhone, and anything that runs the PalmOS emulator (like the linux Nokia tablets).

Jim

An ipod touch has replaced my palm, and I can read both ereader and kindle books on the ipod. If the kindle only supported kindle format books, I would never had bought one. Had it not supported pdf, Amazon wouldn't have made a sale in my case.

Ebook pricing and DRM is really ridiculous. I can't read A4 PDFs well on my Sony reader, but I can on my kindle. I can't read library books (pdf or mobi, at least not without "processing" tyhre mobi files first) on my kindle, but I can on my Sony.

IMHO, ereader is going to have some very tough tiumes unless they can improve their pricing. Over the past 2 months, I saw 11 books I liked on ereader- but only bought one. The others were all availablke at the kindle store for a cheaper price, so that's where I purchased. Kindle pricing appears to be better than most ebook retailers, but prices still need to go lower.

Market forces will eventually force all this to be sorted out. And if publishers wonder why their e-books aren't selling for $24.95, well, it's becayusae of their own stupidity. Buyers won't pay that if they can buy the hardbound product for a few dollars cheaper, or the kindle release for $9.99.

[macr0t0r]

Well, here is an interesting update! Now that Barnes and Noble as taken over, I noticed that many of the new releases have had their prices cut in half! In some cases, they even undercut the Kindle price. I have my reservations about B&N taking over fictionwise, but I certainly don't mind the price change! We'll we also see a lot more content as well?

- Jim

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Market forces will eventually force all this to be sorted out. And if publishers wonder why their e-books aren't selling for $24.95, well, it's becayusae of their own stupidity. Buyers won't pay that if they can buy the hardbound product for a few dollars cheaper, or the kindle release for $9.99.

I think there is a lesson to be learned from the music industry's experience. I'm a jazz fan, and to my knowledge eMusic has the best selection and best prices on jazz - 40 songs (the equivalent of six 40-minute albums) for $14.95 last I heard.

I believe that the market has told the industry that it does not value downloads highly. As we know in the book industry, people will pay more for a nice hardback than for a nice paperback, and then again more than for a mass market paperback. I think that in the public's mind, downloads come in last.

I suspect that if the price of eBooks does not approach 25% the price of a nice hardback, we will see pirating like in music.

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by hacker

"After eReader has created and stored the hash, it uses it as a key to decrypt the protected e-books (which are, to my knowledge, encrypted with the DES-X algorithm)."

If its a one-way hash, there is no "decryption" involved. You simply take the password/key/code that is entered, encode it with your known seed + hash, and compare it with the stored value. If it matches, access is granted. If it does not match, access is denied. This is how the standard Unix (and Linux) usernameassword login authentication is handled.

If there is a key of some sort, which is used to encrypt and decrypt the book, and that is stored somewhere in the application or the book itself, then the whole process of encryption is irrelevant, and can be easily bypassed, using any one of dozens of different techniques to bypass the check for the proper code (witness the thousand of Palm applications that have been breached because they use this method of "securing" their application).

Regarding entering the credit-card-as-key every time, I think what was meant was that the value you enter the first time, has to be encoded, encrypted, or stored somewhere within the book metadata, so that it can be checked and verified every time you launch the reader to read the book. The mention that the credit card value is not stored anywhere is completely false, if this is how their application works.

If you have to enter the key every time you open the book, then it would appear that they aren't storing the key anywhere. If you don't have to enter the key every time, then it is stored, somewhere, in some format, which is queried and used to authorize reading of the book.

It _is_ a one way hash, and there _is_ decryption taking place.
The way eReader encryption works is quite simple. It is stored as a Palm DB file, and each section is zipped and then encrypted with a standard DES encryption. The key used is a one way hash of your name and credit card number. The only security they use is obscurity, they're hoping people don't work out exactly what the hashing algorithm is. Unfortunately (for them) it's not that difficult. I wrote a c# tool for decrypting my books with very little hassle (for research purposes, of course). The DMCA disallows me from distributing my code, but you can find other tools if you know where to look.

[macr0t0r]

Yah, well, eBook DRM is an amusing situation. As already discovered by the music industry, there is no level of affordable encryption that can't be defeated by an adept computer user. Ironically, most people who want to read on a digital device instead of a paper are...adept computer users.

This is simply going to take time to shake out. In the old days, the process was simple: start with a high price, if you don't sell enough then lower the price. However, the fame of piracy has muddled things a bit: start with a high price, lose a bunch of potential sales to piracy. Rather than lower the price, they attempt to squash the piracy so that they can go back to their old method of setting prices. The longer it takes for them to realize they can't fight piracy head on, the more people learn how to pirate content.

It's just so tiring to watch. I realize they feel they can't survive if they charge only $3 a book, but MAN, at least they'd have the $3. There has to be some way to cut costs or something. In any case, it seems most of the eReader titles are down to $6 to $9. Not too bad. I'm doing well enough that I can accept that, but I know there are many people who won't (unfortunately).

- Jim

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by macr0t0r

Yah, well, eBook DRM is an amusing situation. As already discovered by the music industry, there is no level of affordable encryption that can't be defeated by an adept computer user. Ironically, most people who want to read on a digital device instead of a paper are...adept computer users.

This is simply going to take time to shake out. In the old days, the process was simple: start with a high price, if you don't sell enough then lower the price. However, the fame of piracy has muddled things a bit: start with a high price, lose a bunch of potential sales to piracy. Rather than lower the price, they attempt to squash the piracy so that they can go back to their old method of setting prices. The longer it takes for them to realize they can't fight piracy head on, the more people learn how to pirate content.

It's just so tiring to watch. I realize they feel they can't survive if they charge only $3 a book, but MAN, at least they'd have the $3. There has to be some way to cut costs or something. In any case, it seems most of the eReader titles are down to $6 to $9. Not too bad. I'm doing well enough that I can accept that, but I know there are many people who won't (unfortunately).

- Jim

Considering I've spent over $800 at fictionwise (the folks who own ereader.com) in the last few years, I don't strip the DRM off my books for piracy reasons. I strip it because it comes in a format that doesn't support my reader. I refuse to be caught in a position where if I decide to change which reader I use, I would have to rebuy all my books. People could argue that ePub could answer that problem, but even then, if Adobe's servers go down I'm stuck with a bunch of useless bits that have cost me hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. No thanks.

[macr0t0r]

Originally Posted by bkilian

Considering I've spent over $800 at fictionwise (the folks who own ereader.com) in the last few years, I don't strip the DRM off my books for piracy reasons. I strip it because it comes in a format that doesn't support my reader. I refuse to be caught in a position where if I decide to change which reader I use, I would have to rebuy all my books. People could argue that ePub could answer that problem, but even then, if Adobe's servers go down I'm stuck with a bunch of useless bits that have cost me hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. No thanks.

Oh, I hear you! I said I was being good in that I was BUYING eBooks. I never claimed I wouldn't...convert... them! I'm buying eReader books for a Sony PRS-500, after all.

- Jim

[wayrad]

The only difficulties I've had with the Ereader system were fairly minor and due to the fact that my credit card number has changed several times over the years. This leads to two difficulties: 1) the Ereader Palm app would only hold one card number in its memory at a time, so at any given time I could only open a subset of my books without entering a new number, at which time a different subset would become available, and 2) When a means of unDRMing them became available, I processed the whole lot (so I could read them with my software of choice). In many cases I had to try my whole list of old numbers before hitting the right one, which was a slight nuisance. I could have redownloaded all the books using my current number, I suppose, but that would've taken even longer over dialup. Now I decontaminate books as soon as I buy them, so the problem doesn't arise.

Edited to add: Well, I had one other problem, due to the undocumented 500-book limit in the Ereader Palm app, but that's unrelated to DRM (except for being a reason to remove it so I could use another app).

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by macr0t0r

Well, here is an interesting update! Now that Barnes and Noble as taken over, I noticed that many of the new releases have had their prices cut in half! In some cases, they even undercut the Kindle price. I have my reservations about B&N taking over fictionwise, but I certainly don't mind the price change! We'll we also see a lot more content as well?

- Jim

Well, looks like they have gone back to their old ways- prices are way up again. New books that are 9.99 on Amazon (Kindle Store) are 18.99 or more on Ereader. I sent them an e-mail about this, and they claimed in response that their "regular customers" didn't seem to care about higher prices. Au contraire, at least for this regular customer- if I see a book priced higher than 9.99 on ereader, I check the Kindle price- and usually it has been 9.99.

Guess where I buy? Ereader's response to my email was absolutely moronic- guess it will take falling sales before they will wise up.

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

they claimed in response that their "regular customers" didn't seem to care about higher prices.

And who cares about all the ex-regular customers...

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Well, looks like they have gone back to their old ways- prices are way up again. New books that are 9.99 on Amazon (Kindle Store) are 18.99 or more on Ereader. I sent them an e-mail about this, and they claimed in response that their "regular customers" didn't seem to care about higher prices.

Well, of course they didn't, for the most part, or they wouldn't be regular customers.

However, potential new customers would care about those prices... and they'll get many less new customers at $19 than at $10 per book.

The argument "our current salesbase doesn't mind [condition X], and therefore we're not changing it" is only valid if you don't want to expand your market. It's a good argument for small crafts-based businesses, where demand is greater than supply; it's a bad idea for a large business with several larger competitors.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Well, looks like they have gone back to their old ways- prices are way up again. New books that are 9.99 on Amazon (Kindle Store) are 18.99 or more on Ereader. I sent them an e-mail about this, and they claimed in response that their "regular customers" didn't seem to care about higher prices. Au contraire, at least for this regular customer- if I see a book priced higher than 9.99 on ereader, I check the Kindle price- and usually it has been 9.99.

Guess where I buy? Ereader's response to my email was absolutely moronic- guess it will take falling sales before they will wise up.

Check B&N. I've seen some 9.99 books there even though FW and eReader were a lot higher.

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Well, of course they didn't, for the most part, or they wouldn't be regular customers.

However, potential new customers would care about those prices... and they'll get many less new customers at $19 than at $10 per book.

Yep this is true. I finally finished some of the books I had on my queue and went to purchase some books on eReader.com when I saw the price hike I balked at buying the books just didn't make sense, I'll send my business to other sites that offer better prices and superior eBook formats.

(I started a thread on this very topic earlier today in the "news & commentary" section)

[macr0t0r]

Their "regular customers" didn't seem to care about higher prices?

That can't seriously be their response. No support rep would be so stupid as to risk being quoted with something like that (I would hope). Wgrimm, are you permitted to post their response?

As AnemicOak pointed out, I've noticed a large discrepancy in the prices of some books between B&N and Fictionwise. I have a feeling there are some growing pains for the first part of this merger.

- Jim