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eBooks, News February 16, 2010
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The Shattered eBook DRM Landscape

Gear Diary The Shattered eBook DRM Landscape photo

When Steve Jobs announced the iPad, he also mentioned that iBooks would be using ePUB. There was a brief ray of hope among the eBook world…maybe, just maybe, the majority of ebooksellers would rally around a single format. Unfortunately, it looks like that was a false hope. Teleread is reporting via the LA Times that Apple will be using their Fairplay DRM for iBooks. This will be the 3rd variant of ePUB DRM: Adobe, Fairplay, and Barnes and Noble. And of course, Amazon has their own DRM and ebook format.

So what does this mean for eBook fans? We’re seeing a shattered landscape, one where there is no inter-compatibility, and no easy way to transport your library from device to device. Worst of all, ePUB was supposed to be the savior, the universal format, and instead it just adds to the confusion. As Teleread pointed out:

The Sony and Nook can read Epub, of course, but it’s the DRMed Epub books that cause the trouble. The Nook can’t read Sony DRM* and Sony can’t read Nook DRM and, of course, the Kindle can’t read either and “either” can’t read Kindle DRM and now Apple is saying it will have its own DRM that Kindle and Sony and Nook can’t read. I’m sure it’s all very clear to you now, especially since they are, almost, all using the new “industry standard” Epub.

[*Gear Diary note: The bit abut the nook not reading Sony DRM is incorrect-Sony uses plain vanilla Adobe Digital Editions, which the nook can read. The reverse is not true, due to B&N's extra DRM layer.]

What can we do, as eBook fans? The worst part is that publishers and content providers have us against the wall; they know we love books, and they know there’s a huge segment of the population that accepts DRM as the tradeoff for convenience. It’s incredibly frustrating, and as much as I’d love to take a stand I know full well I am caught up in this as much as everyone else. I love books, and read too many too quickly, not to buy from major ebook stores. Is there a lesser of all evils?

Here’s how I see the marketplace, and the options available:

  • Avoid all commercial ebook stores. Buying only from Smashwords, Feedbooks, Baen and any other provider who sells DRM free ebooks is certainly a valid option, and it comes with the added bonus of supporting authors and less mainstream books. On the other hand, it leaves you out in the cold for major bestsellers.
  • Strip the DRM from ebooks. There are ways to do this, and if you choose to do it for your own personal use (NOT PIRACY) then I see it as totally legitimate. It’s your book, for you to keep as you see fit.
  • Select the commercial ebook store that you feel is the least of all evils. This one is, admittedly, something of a contortionist’s logic. It’s hard to deny that DRM is a mess, but what if you want a bestseller? Even if you download the ebook from your local library it still has DRM. So you buy from the best of the worst, but only when there’s no other option.

    • Personally, even with the mess that Amazon stepped in when they yanked 1984, I trust them more than Apple in the book space. Apple doesn’t need iBooks to be a success; the iPad has a great deal going for it even without ebooks. If iBooks disappeared, people would shrug, and continue to download the various existing ebook options in the app store. Meanwhile, if Kindle fails, Amazon has a real problem. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have a lot more “skin in the game”, and while I’m not thrilled with how locked down either ebook store is, both companies desperately need to succeed. Apple doesn’t, and if I had to worry about anyone walking away and abandoning their proprietary format, it’s Apple. Though, honestly, every digital media company has the skeletons of abandoned formats in their closet; history has not been kind to failed DRM formats. Let’s just hope we don’t see another Playsforsure debacle in the ebook space!

    Here’s my wish: I want a store with the selection of mainstream backlist and frontlist that Amazon, B&N and Kobo have, without the DRM. I would happily buy ebooks there exclusively, and I’m willing to bet there are many other avid readers out there who would do the same. Baen publishing sells all their ebooks this way, and so does O’Reilly, and no one is running to pirate their books like crazy. All I want is one store to step up and try it!

    Do you buy DRM’d ebooks? Do you worry the fracturing of intercompatibility is going to choke ebook adoption? Share any thoughts (and tips) below!

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    About Carly Z

    View all posts by Carly Z
    Carly has been a gadget fiend for a long time, going back to her first PDA (a Palm M100). She quickly went from researching what PDA to buy to following tech news closely and keeping up with the latest and greatest stuff. She loves writing about ebooks because they combine her two favorite activities; reading anything and everything, and talking about fun new tech toys. What could be better?
    • robtillotson

      At this point it seems to me that the safest option, if you must have a DRMed book, is to get it from a store that uses Adobe Digital Editions, which includes Kobo and the Sony store. This means they will be readable on the Nook and pretty much any of the lesser-known “generic” e-readers out there. (The quoted bit is wrong about Sony — the ePubs from their current store do work on the Nook, as they’re using regular Adobe DRM.)

      Apparently, B&N’s DRM scheme isn’t really that different than the one in ADE, the main difference being that it uses a password to unlock books instead of requiring device activations online. Reportedly Adobe is going to incorporate the B&N variant in a future version of ADE, so it’s likely that readers using their SDK will gain the ability to open B&N books at some point. One complication here is that not all B&N books are in ePub yet… some of their catalog is still in eReader format since they absorbed eReader and Fictionwise…

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    • http://www.geardiary.com Carly Z

      Fair point Rob. I know B&N and Adobe say there will be updates making the B&N version compatible with other ADE devices, but until it happens I am a little leary. They promised it when the nook first debuted, and there hasn’t been any real chatter about it since.

      I agree that plain ADE is a safe bet, but my fear is that plain ADE is becoming the foundation, rather than the whole system. And if Kobo or Sony want to make sure plain ADE is readily adopted, they need to make it clear how it works, why it’s semi-universal, etc. Otherwise the average consumer isn’t going to understand the differences, and everyone will just remain silo’d in competing formats.

      Part of the problem too (IMO) is that B&N and Apple shouldn’t be allowed to just say “Oh, we use ePUB”…because that makes it sound like there’s tons of intercompatibility. It’s all a mess. :(

    • http://www.geardiary.com Carly Z

      And d’oh! You’re right, the quoted bit is wrong. I found it so amusing that I didn’t proof it close enough…editing the post to note that.

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    • http://www.geardiary.com Douglas Moran

      I buy DRM’d books all the time, alas, and the intercompatibility problem drives me absolutely buggy. What I end up doing is buying from whatever bookstore a) has my book for b) a reasonable price. While there is a huge overlap in catalogs between Amazon and B&N (for example), there definitely are some books that are available in one place but not others. (A lot of science fiction backlog books are not available, for example.)

      With the iPad, you can read all your Kindle, B&N, Wattpad, Kobo, and whatever books, but you have to have multiple eBook readers, which is a pain. Someone who’s smart should create an app that is a front for the various ereaders and lists all the items in all the catalogs in one place, opening the appropriate eReader when you click on a book title.

      As for stripping DRM, I didn’t know that was doable.

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    • http://twitter.com/soolara/status/12475443500 lara long

      Doing some research on DRM on ebooks and the "epub standard" as savior? what do you think? http://bit.ly/dA2vfx

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    • http://twitter.com/sjobak/status/19268810366 Peter Jakobs

      The Shattered eBook DRM Landscape. http://retwt.me/1NYdI

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