From the inimitable Michael Giest comes the news that the controversial Bill C-11 (aka the copyright reform bill), took effect in Canada this week. The bill introduces a host of new consumer-oriented provisions including fair dealing provisions for education, satire and parody; a fair dealing provision for time shifting, format shifting and making of backup copies; an exemption for public performances in schools; and others, which Geist details in his write-up. There is a big 'but' coming, though: The law also controversially includes a much-opposed digital locks provision which basically trumps all of the new rights it gives to Canadian consumers....

Dear E-Book Retailers: I've read so many wacky news stories this week that my head is spinning. There was the Random House thing—the idea that a publisher actually had to explain to its paying customers whether they owned their bought books or not just boggles my mind. Then there was the Norwegian lady who had all her books deleted, then un-deleted, by Amazon. And the assertion by a Kobo tech support person that accounts belong not to households but the one sole individual whose name is on the credit card ... Please, can we have a return to common sense sometime soon? I am...

From Part 1: I love DRM-free books! I know that for most people, DRM is an issue they might not think about often; if their books work, they’re happy. But for many more experienced e-book users, it’s an issue to care about. Unless, that is, you buy and read books that are DRM-free. The books referenced and linked to below can be kept forever, converted using free software such as Calibre, and read on any device you might own. But where to get them? Here are some of my favorite sources: 3. SMASHWORDS This is the Amazon of self-published books. Some genres are better represented...

I love DRM-free books! I know that for most people, DRM is an issue they might not think about often; if their books work, they're happy. But for many more experienced e-book users, it's an issue to care about. If you acquire 100 Amazon e-books and then you buy a Kobo, how are you going to read those books? If you spend years as a loyal Sony customer and then buy a Kindle, what will you do with the books you've bought and loved? Unless you are blessed with some technical skills—and either a country whose laws permit format-shifting, or a...

You may have noticed I haven’t posted anything at The Digital Reader lately. It was a fun run, but sometimes things just don’t work out. Fortunately, Dan Eldridge was kind enough to extend an offer to me to write here again, and I’m happy to be back where I was for six years before leaving. Here’s to at least another six!                 And it’s almost as if current events were welcoming me back, because what should happen on the day of my return but one of the things I’ve been either calling for or predicting (depending on how much prescience you’re willing...

By Brian Howard Publishers of e-books have a dilemma: You want readers to find (and purchase) your products. And yet you don't want pirates making your products available for free. But is digital rights management (DRM) technology, one method publishers use (with questionable success) to combat piracy, a hindrance or even antithetical to content discovery? At the Publishing Business Virtual Conference and Expo, an expert panel debated this very question. Moderated by the inimitable Christopher Kenneally of the Copyright Clearance Center, Peter McCarthy (Director of McCarthy Digital), Patricia Payton (Senior Director, Publisher Relations & Content Development at Bowker) and Brian O'Leary (Principal at Magellan Media Partners) discussed these very issues. Will DRM survive? Are we moving...

Techdirt writes a lot about the problems with DRM, and how inefficient and inconvenient it is. But for millions of visually-impaired people, those "inconveniences" represent something much deeper, and much worse. Somebody who has started writing eloquently about this issue is Rupert Goodwins. He is one of the UK's most respected technology journalists and also, sadly, is losing his sight. As he points out in a powerful new piece, things ought to be getting better for the visually impaired in the Internet age:... Read Full Article ... Source: Techdirt...

When the O'Reilly and TOR publishing companies announced their now-historic decisions to drop all DRM from their respective e-books, it's probably fair to say that the digital reading community felt nearly as vindicated as it did relieved, and elated. But for the most part, O'Reilly and TOR both serve reading demographics that are especially tech-savvy--the types of readers, in other words, who tend to have the strongest opinions about the uselessness and frustrations of DRM. In a sense, it probably would have been even more surprising if they hadn't eventually changed their DRM policies. At the end of August, though, Harvard Business Review Press opened its own e-book store, and proudly...

Joe Konrath put up a neat little Q&A with two librarians from the Harris County Public Library who are bypassing the usual OverDrive-based library system and setting up their own internal check-out, seeking to buy books directly from publishers and manage them internally. The librarians talk about issues such as accessibility, public experience, collection decisions and library benefits. It's a great read; well worth checking out for those who are interested in learning more about the challenges libraries are facing in managing their digital collections. But what most caught my attention was this bit, near the end: * * * Joe sez:I like...

We've written briefly in the past about the still-relatively-new StoryBundle service; both Paul Biba and Chris Meadows covered the service this past February, prior to its official launch. For those of you not familiar with StoryBundle, the concept is simple: The company offers a "bundle" of seven DRM-free e-books, all written by independent authors, at a "pay what you wish" price point. Deals that honest don't tend to come around every day. What's more, the StoryBundle team clearly understands the specific whims of its audience; one of the many joys of e-book reading, after all, involves the process of discovering lesser-known authors...

By Douglas Cootey A little over a year ago, I wrote about my headache with running out of Adobe DRM account activations. Back in the early days of iPad apps, and before the market had settled on official apps like Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks, it seemed like a new e-reader was being released every month, and they all used Adobe's system to manage e-book DRM (Digital Rights Management). Adobe links activations with your email address. This can be convenient since one account can be used on any Adobe DRM-savvy device. However, after replacing my broken iPad last year, I had to reauthorize...

We reported that it was coming, and now it is here: Tor announces, via Tor.com, that all Tor e-books currently being sold anywhere are now DRM-free. Any Tor e-books bought from now on from any retailer that sells them will have no DRM. (Whether previously-purchased Tor e-books include DRM is up to the individual retailer. I tried downloading a previously-bought version of Kitty Goes to War from Amazon and it showed up as still protected.) Separately, John Scalzi discusses the effects going DRM-free has had on sales of his latest novel Redshirts. While he can’t attribute the improvement entirely...