We considered this a foregone conclusion, but the LATimes reports that Apple’s iBookStore will encrypt book purchases with Apple’s Fairplay DRM. Let’s look at the alternatives:
Some book sellers won’t want to protect their content, but obviously most of the content coming out of the big publishing companies needs to be protected, otherwise, those $15 bestsellers will instantly be iChatted everywhere on earth.
So there will be DRM of some sort, obviously.
Next, what kind of DRM will Apple use? Will Apple license Adobe’s ePub DRM format? Perhaps some other company has some DRM software that will work
DRM = fail. in every and all aspects.
Most publishers don’t have a business model that works with the concept of a world with fewer dead-tree books and round plastic discs. Innovators will succeed; many will wither. And many will go out of business.
Wow, the Gutenberg ePub of Tolstoy’s War and Peace is only 1.19 megs. Yup, ebooks would be shared even more rampantly than music. In a perfect world, DRM wouldn’t be necessary, but I can understand why publishers would want it.
tell me, do they use FairPlay for print copies at public libraries? LOL.
Kill the e-book!
Lame. The physicality of the book is the “DRM”, or hadn’t that ever occurred to you?
The point not mention here is that the DRM will be optional and enforced by the publisher.
“Now, similar restrictions could reportedly be extended to some e-books sold for the iPad, though the article suggested publishers will have a choice.
“No doubt some publishers, including O’Reilly Media — which has vociferously argued that digital locks are harmful to sales — will opt not to deploy FairPlay. (O’Reilly, which puts out technical books, was not on the list of five publishers during Apple’s announcement of the iPad, but is discussing a deal with Apple),” the Times noted.
“But the majority of publishers are expected to embrace FairPlay, along with other copy protection software such as Adobe’s Content Server 4, as a means to squelch incipient book piracy as the e-book market begins to take off.”
This is ridiculous. The same arguments apply here as with music. DRM is *not* a good thing, and it won’t stop people from pirating stuff.
Sure Tolstoy’s War & Peace would be easy to copy, it should be because it’s a totally free text anyway! Penguin, MacMillan and all the other publishers would like to still make money off it, even though they have no right to do so and no authors, or authors relatives will see a single dime of the money generated.
Copyright laws are only effective at protecting the profits of corporations, they do absolutely nothing along the lines of their intended purpose, which is to protect the creative works of the authors from theft. The thieves in this scenario are the publishers, not the consumers.
“[War and Peace] hould be because it’s a totally free text anyway!”
No kidding. Was it the “Gutenberg” part that tipped you off?
That wasn’t the point I was trying to make. If you’d taken a moment to think about it, you’d have realized that it was about the relatively small size of the file for the archetypal “really long novel.” Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is 276 k in ePub format. Well’s War of the Worlds is only 152 k. The point is that these files are so small that they may be shared even more rampantly than music.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of DRM. I want to move my legitimately purchased content among my devices at will. However, there are a$$hats out there that have no concern for the content creators and will happily steal ebooks. These are the same people that take camcorders to theatres and bootleg movies. Funny how they don’t really care about the content that much either. It’s sad, really. If you know a better way, then let’s hear it. I’m sure publishers would love something better than DRM, too.
Here we go again.
DRM makes it hard on honest people. I didn’t buy iTunes until they became DRM-free, all it took was one authorization screw up to scare me away. Gonna be the same way with eBooks. Pirates are still gonna pirate, so why offend your customers?
Rail against publishers and other big business all you want, but consider this:
My wife wrote a wonderful guidebook recently that is published by a small house and from which she will see a bit over $1.50 per book sold. If she sells 10K copies, it will be a huge success for the niche in which it resides. It will not be a Times bestseller, nor will there be a move deal. This is not music, so she can’t make money on a concert tour. So, it is not going to make her rich, but success may offset the costs of its production.
If I buy her book, I have to dole it out one reader at a time to do the analog version of digital piracy. Tedious and time-consuming. However, with eBooks and no DRM, a 100 or a 1000 people could get her book instantly, and pass it freely along to another million more. A million people will love her book, but she may sell 100 copies.
Without some sort of piracy protection, eBooks make no sense for the majority of would be writers. If eBooks cannot make money, the only writers will be hobbyists, or worse, bloggers.
DRM may be hard on honest people (how, I do not know), but piracy is death for creative types.
The good news about O’Reilly is that they can sell their own books and have them work on iTune/iPad/iPod. They can sell through Apple if it is beneficial to them, but if not, they can go their own way with a different storefront – no harm done to iPod users at all.
That’s the beauty of open standards and a lack of DRM.
It was pretty obvious from the get-go that they would use FairPlay.
It is my sincere hope, though, that Apple drags ebooks, kicking and screaming, down the path of freedom from DRM just as it did with music. It was a gutsy play by Steve Jobs, and it worked then. The book sellers seem to be setting themselves up the same way.
So sad to this this kind of nonsense..:
“..publishing companies needs to be protected, otherwise, those $15 bestsellers will instantly be iChatted everywhere on earth”
The Music files history has proved that 1000% wrong. The biggest damage to sales was when prices were gauging consumers. Now they sell millions of legit songs at a FAIR price without protection. The vast majority of people are WAY to lazy to bother making copies.
Same with books. I will be exploring every torrent site on the web while they charge these knucklehead prices and stop me from sharing my book with my son or mother. When they charge a FAIR price I will come back.
re: the story of the wife and her book.
The wife would make far more money without the DRM in an Apple book store that allows for the authors to publish their own works. For starters instead of making some small fraction of the cost of the book for herself, she would be making 70% of the retail price.
Secondly, without DRM, the book would have a much wider audience. The people who steal stuff are a set minority percentage of the general population. Not everyone steals, not even the majority, not even if they know they won’t get caught.
If the books circulation is in the millions, then the sales will be that much higher as well. Piracy would actually help your wife make more money in this situation.
I simply will never buy any content with DRM. If I buy a physical book, I can lend it out sell it, trade it in, etc. DRM makes ebook sales a dead-end. No-sale.
iBook? I think iBooks and I visualize 12” or 14” laptops. I doubt, the will call them iBooks…
re: ibooks
people said the same about the name ‘ipad’
Commercial eBooks without DRM – look at Baen http://baen.com/
a no DRM model that (seems to) work, all your purchased and free books available to read via Stanza on Touch/iPhone, or PDF, or text, or RTF, or HTML.
one more nail in the ipad coffin… i’m an old fanboi but i’m going to buy
either a joo-joo or an adam tablet. i’d agree that apple is the new MS
And what bookstore will you be buying your e-books from for those devices? The one that forbids publishers from using any sort of DRM, and yet is crammed with popular, current, copyrighted books?
Of course, the hilarious part of all this is that it won’t stop piracy. The current version of FairPlay which protects movies is good and cracked. The Kindle encryption is cracked as well.
The *only* people screwed over by DRM are legitimate customers who would like to read their ebooks on more than one device or program.
But businesses will continue to demand the snake oil because it makes them feel better. Sad.
Well it’s really good feature. But personally I don’t prefer e-book that much as I don’t feel the reading comfortable in it. But yeah one thing I like about it is it’s easily available and easy to carry.
DRM = EPIC FAIL
Why? Honest people are punished, while dishonest people will be able to do whatever they want.
Look at DVDs, we are obliged to watch all that anti-piracy crap before we are able to watch the movie we bought. If we just download that same movie we don’t have all that crap, we can watch the movie instantly.
http://www.200Linx.com – The Ultimate iPad Home page
Apple’s new iPad is designed to make navigating the web easier and intuitive.
200Linx was designed to be the ultimate, most convenient iPad home page.
It’s brings you everything that’s good on the Internet in one click, on one place.
iPad is the best way to experience the web.
200Linx is the best way to experience iPad.
Well..Some book sellers won’t want to protect their content, but obviously most of the content coming out of the big publishing companies needs to be protected, otherwise, those $15 bestsellers will instantly be iChatted everywhere on earth.
Thanks
lift top coffee table