Adobe Digital Editions--Aaaarrrr!

[gentlemanbeggar]

Well, thanks to Adobe's ineptitude, the ebook reader world has potentially lost a very lucrative customer. TWGW (The World's Greatest Wife) has sworn off e-reading entirely because of a glitch in the Adobe DRM. She bought a book last night from the Kobo site. It was an Adobe Digital Editions ePub. Well, she went to download the file and when ADE came up, it asked her to activate her computer (like it has every time she's opened the program)--so she typed in her adobeID and password...

"Too many activations"

So now, we have to submit a trouble ticket to Adobe and ask them to reset her activations. That will allow her to get the book, but after she logs into the program 5 or 6 times, she's just going to get locked out again. I've searched the web and the only discussion I can find of this same issue had its last post over a year ago. The only solution I've seen thus far is advice from a senior adobe tech saying "create a new user account and reinstall ADE under that user name." ಠ_ಠ

I really despise DRM. It's stuff like this that makes honest people into pirates.

[ProfCrash]

Or they buy a Kindle or Nook. I don't think that the Nook needs a special program to read books purchased from BN. You still need ADE to read books from Sony and Kobo.

I know the Kindle does not need a special program. All you need is for the device to be registered to the account and you have access to all of the ebooks in the archive.

I say this because this is the second ADE topic I have seen this week with someone having this problem. Based on responses in there it seems that this is a fairly common problem.

One posted did say that it worked best to use the web form to report your problem. She/he had a much faster turn around then the folks who were calling and emailing.

How do the 950 and Kobo Wireless handle the ADE issues? Since the books can be sent from the cloud, there is no ADE account to log into to download. Is the account loaded directly on the device?

[gentlemanbeggar]

Yeah, my google searches reveal that this is a problem that's been around pretty much since ADE began and there still doesn't seem to be a legitimate fix for it. It's quite frustrating.

I personally hadn't run into the problem before because I'm pretty strictly a free-reads kind of guy (read as "cheap") and get most of my stuff from manybooks and project gutenberg, etc. But the wife likes a bit of contemporary reading. We both avoided buying one of the "Big Three" readers because of varying issues, but problems like this which affect any e-reader seem to be engineered precisely to discourage the growth of the e-book market.

[Killing Floor]

This may help- if you have ADE installed on a windows computer, open up ADE, then hit the keys CTRL+SHIFT+D. This should de-authorize that computer's ADE, and hopefully free up your wife's Reader.

If there was an authorized reader that was lost/stolen/replaced, I wouldn't know what to do. I'm new to e-readers; that's why I joined this forum. I found the fix to deauthorize ADE when I had too many activations on various computers.

Hope this works for you.

[EowynCarter]

Or they buy a Kindle or Nook. I don't think that the Nook needs a special program to read books purchased from BN. You still need ADE to read books from Sony and Kobo.

Mmm;
Kobo : not available in France
Kindle : no books in French.

I'll take ADE crap over kindle crap anytime.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Mmm;
Kobo : not available in France
Kindle : no books in French.

I'll take ADE crap over kindle crap anytime.

Sorry to hear you're not a Kindle target market. Doesn't make it crap.

[HistoryWes]

There's a glitch somewhere. Each computer should only have to be authorized once. Fortunately Adobe DRM is not too difficult to strip.

[gentlemanbeggar]

Originally Posted by HistoryWes

There's a glitch somewhere. Each computer should only have to be authorized once. Fortunately Adobe DRM is not too difficult to strip.

It's not too difficult to strip if you can actually download the file. She can't even download the file because she can't completely load ADE. (Unless I'm missing something?)

I take issue with the fact that my wife's computer isn't the only computer out there having this issue, and so far (after going on 2 years) there still isn't a sensible fix for this.

[Killing Floor]

Originally Posted by gentlemanbeggar

It's not too difficult to strip if you can actually download the file. She can't even download the file because she can't completely load ADE. (Unless I'm missing something?)

I take issue with the fact that my wife's computer isn't the only computer out there having this issue, and so far (after going on 2 years) there still isn't a sensible fix for this.

What kind of error message, if any, is your wife receiving?

On my netbook, I was able to receive the "digital ticket file" an .ascm file through my browser from my public library. Then, when attempting to "open (download the book)" through ADE, I received an "Adapt_10" error of some kind. Through much googling, I found that it was some type of problem possibly on Adobe's end where they couldn't authenticate my netbook. The other possibility was my firewall was blocking the server. I disabled the firewall, but, still no go. I was able to download the book onto my desktop, but that kind of defeated the purpose of having a portable reader. So I ended up buying a Cruz reader that thankfully had no problems being authenticated with the Adobe digital ID I have. One possible work-around suggested by a member in a reader forum with a similar problem was to go to a public hotspot like McDonald's or Starbucks. I never tried that, but maybe your wife could. Just tossing out ideas here.

Edit: Another fix suggested by Adobe was to uninstall, then reinstall ADE. If your wife's e-reader is something else, maybe a reinstallation or upgrade will help?

[gentlemanbeggar]

Originally Posted by Killing Floor

Edit: Another fix suggested by Adobe was to uninstall, then reinstall ADE. If your wife's e-reader is something else, maybe a reinstallation or upgrade will help?

If we uninstall, will she lose access to the books she's already downloaded but hasn't de-DRM'd?

[Dulin's Books]

her computer has never been authorized/activated correctly. You only have to authorize/activate an individual computer 1 time. Not every time you open the ADE program.

Running out of activations is somewhat common because some companies firmware updates look like new devices to ADE and if you go through multiple devices . However running out of activations for the PC itself is not usual.

Put in the web case and they will get that squared away. What you should probably do is de-authorise everything, uninstall the program, download the newest version , re-install and then go through the activation process.

That may sound like allot of work but really its not and it should resolve the issue. Sounds like there was just a glitch during install.


Any books on the device of course will remain readable. Once you reinstall the books with drm on the computer will still be seen by the new ADE. The files themselves will still be available in the Digital Editions folder in t he mean time if you wanted to get at them for other purposes.

[Dulin's Books]

the other thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=117023 i posted a tip in there for web cases

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by gentlemanbeggar

If we uninstall, will she lose access to the books she's already downloaded but hasn't de-DRM'd?

If they're purchased books, she should be able to re-download them from the store where she bought them--they should be listed in her store account.

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by gentlemanbeggar

I really despise DRM. It's stuff like this that makes honest people into pirates.

That and the big media companies massive sleight of hand. How they turned "piracy" from what we used to associate it with into a term that can refer to practically anything and anybody these days is mind-blowing.

Having had nothing actually go wrong with ADE I can't share in your grief. On the other hoof, I CAN say that ADE feels like the definition of fragile in the software world. In addition, the entire concept they are working with feels less than perfectly thought out and ultimately inadequate. (That must suck!)

Sony's software is also fragile. Kobo/Border's software is also fragile (and hopelessly redundant). calibre is ssllooww (on every computer I have tried it on, which is only three so I may just be unlucky). Good software is hard to write, apparently.

[Killing Floor]

Originally Posted by gentlemanbeggar

If we uninstall, will she lose access to the books she's already downloaded but hasn't de-DRM'd?

If you uninstall the reader, you'll lose access to all books, as there wont be an application to do so.

If you're asking if you uninstall, then reinstall, I'm sorry, but I don't know. I kind of understand how it works with a pc, but I'm feeling my way around with a reader myself.

I just found I was locked out of my ADE on my work computer with a "too many activations" error message, but I have the .acsm "ticket" still. I'm guessing if you uninstall, then reinstall the ADE, you should still have the .ascm file residing somewhere on the reader, but I can't say that with 100 % certainty. And there's no guarantee that an uninstall/reinstall will work either, as that didn't work for me on my netbook.

Edit: Sorry, this is all apparently happening on your wife's computer, I take it. I was assuming this was happening on an e-reader (new here, so I have e-readers on the mind).

Here's a link to Adobe that may speed up the process. I just noticed in your original post that you said your wife had to activate her computer "every time"- http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405200.html