Actually, as you state, a universal format would eventually lead to the un-crippling of DRM by reader software and its progressive impotency. Long before that, I suspect, cracking software would solve the problem.

The thing is that logically it has no long term future from the perspective of publishers, or anyone else. It acts as a temporary impediment to the sale and use of e-books, slowing down acceptance and throwing up needless problems of reliability.

Corporate logic all too often runs directly against reason. It defies long term planning and investment and fixes on immediate problems – many of which are exaggerated if not entirely fictional in the first place.

To quote Ned Kelly’s last words before he was hanged (Australia’s most beloved outlaw) “Such is Life”.

The thinking behind my comments were that if we have to deal with DRM, then let’s deal with it on just one eBook format. We should then quickly see readers with annotation abilities as well as ones that would work on various accessibility devices, such as Braille and audio readers, at least in an ‘on the fly’ mode.

I guess this would not be so useful for referencing and adding to a database, but then is it such a terrible thing to have to type them by hand?

For light reading what you say holds, but DRM is essentially crippling by nature. Whether it be converting a book to audio, or more likely studying a text, that needs to be referenced, annotated, and perhaps even fed into a database (none of which needs to compromise copyright); the fact remains that DRM stands in the way.

If we were just talking about small handful of people then it is just bad luck, but I believe we are looking at something much broader. The integrating of literature into a digital environment and this is something that should not be artificially restricted.

However, the real pressure will come from epublishers simply making non-DRM epubs available. In the end they will make the sales, but it will take time and of course a standard format.

A strong augment for the publishers on having one eBook format?