PDFs with Adobe DRM

[RSaunders]

As a new owner, I've re-discovered all the usual problems. The CONNECT Reader software only does what it feels like doing, ...

However, I never saw any mention that the reader only reads Sony CONNECT eBooks. Sure, you can read other random text files and PDFs you've authored yourself. What you can't read are real eBooks from other stores, like ebooks.com.

Am I missing some tool that handles this conversion?

Am I missing the reason for this? Adobe supports other reader devices, so it seems that Sony wants reader owners to be limited to only folks who want the read the books on their store. It's not like the iPod/iTunes store linkage, because the iTunes store has more songs than the other stores.

However, Adobe is selling books you can read on any computer. There are lots more computers than Sony will ever make readers. What are they thinking here??

Apologies in advance for being a nube.

/Randy

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RSaunders

However, I never saw any mention that the reader only reads Sony CONNECT eBooks. Sure, you can read other random text files and PDFs you've authored yourself. What you can't read are real eBooks from other stores, like ebooks.com.

Hi Randy,

I find your view that only eBooks purchased from stores are "real eBooks" to be slightly odd, I must say. If you like fantasy and SF, Baen publish very "real" eBooks which are DRM-free. I'm sure that Mr Dickens and friends would be most upset to hear that you don't consider their works, downloaded from sites like http://www.manybooks.net, to be "real eBooks" . There are 10s of thousands of books easily available for the Reader. Personally I couldn't give two hoots whether or not I can purchase "real" eBooks (whatever those may be!) for it.

[RSaunders]

I've got nothing against DRM-free eBooks. I've downloaded a couple of Project Gutenberg books to my reader. However, Mr. Dickens isn't going to be writing any new books.

Authors are writing books to make a living. I support that. In order to make a living, I have to pay for their intellectual property, even if I provide all the storage. I understand this is different that paperback books, where the publisher provides the paper to store the intellectual property.

What I was referring to as "real" eBooks are eBooks written for profit, "real" was an association with "real books" like "paperback books"; not "real books" as distinct from "SF books".

I've never really cared who published my favorite authors, or my favorite musical groups. While Wiley and Baen use different fonts, there is no functional difference between their paperback products that I ever cared about. Now it becomes important who publishes an author's book. If they are a Sony ally, I'll be able to buy them on CONNECT and read them on my reader. If they are not, then Sony thinks it is OK to exclude them from my reader.

This is a big change in the value proposition. I can't really expect that the book I want to buy will be available. If I'm forced to read only the CONNECT books, this reader isn't really a replacement for paperbacks. Frankly, I'm thinking about sending this Christmas present back. Maybe the next version won't have this restriction.

/Randy

[SoCal Bob]

Sony is in the Business to sell not only Readers, but more importantly to sell content. You mentioned in your first post the iPod/iTunes model. You have the analogy correct, that is what Sony hopes to achieve with Reader/Connect.

When iTunes started the collection was small. You could play MP3s on your iPod (like RTF & PDF on the Reader), but for DRM, only iTunes content will play on the iPod. Lots of folks complained. Many still refuse to use an iPod for that reason. Still the market supports the Apple model. Clearly Sony is trying to copy it in books.

One size does not fit all. Good Luck

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by RSaunders

Now it becomes important who publishes an author's book. If they are a Sony ally, I'll be able to buy them on CONNECT and read them on my reader. If they are not, then Sony thinks it is OK to exclude them from my reader.

In all fairness, Sony does seem to be trying to get as many books in their offerings as they can. They launched with about 10k titles (not very many, when compared to the average Barnes & Noble), 10 weeks later, they'd topped 11k, or about 100 titles a week on average, which ain't too shabby.

What you're really running into is an aspect of the Proprietary Format issue. Only for you it doesn't seem to be a problem that Sony uses its own PF, but more that it doesn't support other people's PFs.

I agree with you that it would be very nice if it did, but there may be issues that are complicating it -- just think what licensing all those other PFs might do to the pricing. Though in reality, I expect it's more likely that they never got that far, but rather just decided not to support other PFs in the first place. It should be noted that the fact that they support anything other than their own PF is a huge step for them, though.

Also, since the Reader's OS is Linux, there's not really any reason that other reading software couldn't be made to run on the Reader. And there are a number of quite clever folks around the forum who are working on various ways to make the Reader do the various 'extra' stuff we all think it should've done in the first place, so there is hope.

[RSaunders]

OK, I just got an eMail from Sony today, announcing "new releases". The first is by Barack Obama.

According to Amazon.com, the Senator's written two books:
_Dreams_from_My_Father_, published in 2004 ($8.97 paperback, $17.91 hardcover)
_The_Audacity_of_Hope_, published in 2006 ($13.75 hardcover)

On Sony Connect we now have:
_Dreams_from_My_Father_ for $14.36 - almost $5 more than the PB

On eBooks.com we have:
_Dreams_from_My_Father_ for $10.95 and
_The_Audacity_of_Hope_ for $16.15

The titles they both have are 30% cheaper, and Sony has only half of the books published by the first author I picked at random from their own book newsletter!

This has nothing to do with Senator Obama, this is about buying an eBook product that claims to handle Adobe PDF and then finding out that it ONLY accepts public domain and Sony proprietary eBooks.

[RSaunders]

Originally Posted by SoCal Bob

Sony is in the Business to sell not only Readers, but more importantly to sell content. You mentioned in your first post the iPod/iTunes model. You have the analogy correct, that is what Sony hopes to achieve with Reader/Connect.

When iTunes started the collection was small. You could play MP3s on your iPod (like RTF & PDF on the Reader), but for DRM, only iTunes content will play on the iPod. Lots of folks complained. Many still refuse to use an iPod for that reason. Still the market supports the Apple model. Clearly Sony is trying to copy it in books.

One size does not fit all. Good Luck

Bob, it doesn't work that way. I can buy an iTunes song, write it on a CD, read it into my Creative Zen software, and play it without an iPod. And, I can do the reverse to play an MP3 on my iPod.

Now, we're in the situation here that's analogous to Creative saying "plays songs from iTunes" on their marketing site, and then not playing them. At least in the analogy there is a procedure. I came to this forum in hopes of finding the procedure. Instead I've mostly gotten folks that think this is a good situation.

I'm not interested in pirating PDFs, yet. I don't expect them to add software to the player to do this. I'm expecting someone to give me a procedure that runs on the PC that has CONNECT installed on it to register that computer (and perhaps the reader) with Adobe and then transcodes the Adobe DRM into the Sony DRM for playback on the reader.

/Randy

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by RSaunders

I'm expecting someone to give me a procedure that runs on the PC that has CONNECT installed on it to register that computer (and perhaps the reader) with Adobe and then transcodes the Adobe DRM into the Sony DRM for playback on the reader.

Unfortunately, you're not likely to get that, mostly because it would require Adobe to open up their DRM -- If they were inclined to do that, I don't expect it would be there in the first place. There's also the detail that it would probably run afoul of the DMCA. Another, considerable hurdle is that there isn't any way to reliably get decent text out of a PDF, encrypted or not -- Adobe set out to make PDF the digital equivalent of paper -- preserves layout, resists editing, etc., in short, a dead end -- they did a pretty good job of it. I won't go into the details of that discussion as it's been kicked around a great deal here so there are any number of threads that have already said it better than I can.

It's not that we think the situation is a good one, so much as we've known about it long enough to move to the stage of figuring out how to work within the limitations.

My personal view is that long term we need to keep pushing providers to be less proprietary (or at least decide on a single format amongst them) and the highest goal of all, push to leave DRM in the gutter where it belongs.

[bluecatdog]

Hi people I hope that someone can help me

I am trying to decrypt one pdf ADE I apply the v3. All seems to go fine. But when I try to open the pdf file I got an error message saing

"There was an error opening this document. The file is damage and could not be repaired."

Can you hel me on this please.

I only try V3 is the one that I have. perhaps with the others it work? If so can you tell me were I can get them please.
I really need this is for my PhD.

Best regards