Related: Adobe news release on Content Server 4 and ePub.. – D.R. Adobe is making its DRM more flexible. Instead of simply choosing between the usual DRM and no DRM, publishers will also be able to password-protect books. That’s the plan for a forthcoming Content Server version, not the current 4. Computerworld has a helpful write-up by Eric Lai. Under the system, you’ll link your books to your Adobe ID account and enter a user name and PW; and you’ll then be able to read the books. You won’t have to use the PW whenever you open...

Pirates find easy new pickings in open waters of e-book publishing is the headline of a Times piece in the U.K. As reported there: --American publishers have lost “more than $600 million” to piracy, by one estimate. --Readers downloaded illegal copies of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol “more than 100,000 times” within days. --In excess of 4,000 piracy cases have been reported to The Publishers Association in the U.K. These numbers are still small compare to total p-book sales, but will increase as E catches on in popularity. The best way to fight piracy? Get e-book shoppers accustomed to buying from legitimate sources before...

You apparently can already preorder the $399 Sony Reader Daily Edition, the one with a 7.1-inch E Ink screen and 3G wireless from AT&T in the U.S. Go here, and let us know if there’s a problem preordering the PRS-900. Nov. 18 had been mentioned earlier as the starting preorder date by TechFlash in Eric Engleman’s Q&A with Steve Haber, president of the Sony digital reading division. The Daily Edition will actually begin shipping on or around December 18 if information from a TeleRead community member is correct (thanks, eBook Reader!). December is also the...

Sony, B&N promise to rekindle rights for book owners is the headline on a Boing Boing posting from Rob Beschizza. Without doubt, Sony’s Steve Haber and Adobe’s Bill McCoy have been more sensible on DRM than Amazon, with more flexible approaches. I applaud their efforts. But we’re a long way from nirvana. Gang, what do you think of this snippet from Boing Boing? I recently talked to Sony's Steve Haber, President of Digital Reading, about its flagship ebook reader. Named the "Daily Edition," it hits stores next month. Notwithstanding...

As publishers, we want our readers to be as free as possible to do what they want with the books we sell them, as long as we don't get robbed. Classic DRM doesn't do this. It ties the reader to particular reading devices and software and imposes unreasonable restrictions — on lending or giving away e-books — simply because the technology can't regulate these activities and so must ban them. Classic DRM is equally bad for the publisher because he has to buy in (literally) to one DRM platform or another and be tied to a specific distributor who can provide...

“Most importantly, Adobe’s current DE DRM has been cracked and once Adobe ePub is stripped of its DRM shackles, it is like any other ePub file.” – Spider Mattheson’s comment. The TeleRead take: Hey, Spider, that’s an interesting observation---now that many e-reader-makers will be using Adobe “protection” and the Sony eBook Store will rely on it. Now a question for knowledgeable TeleRead community members. For legal reasons, please don’t get into specifics; but in a general way, without revealing any how-to details or giving links to this information, tell us how easy you think Adobe’s DRM...

Over at Harvard Business Review, Rita McGrath says Amazon could lose out to Barnes and Noble’s multidevice approach. But wait! Hasn’t Jeff Bezos himself given strong hints that Amazon will work to get Kindle books on a bunch of platforms? Considering the far-from-gung-ho reactions to B&N’s current e-bookstore, I wouldn’t worry that much in Jeff’s shoes, at least for now. Amazon still has more of a chance of dominating e-books. B&N so far has tuned out me and others pleading for the chain to try to ditch traditional DRM in favor of no DRM or...

I wanted to run a pro-DRM post that a book biz insider made on an e-mail list. He wouldn’t let me. Feared it would just stir up bad feelings against him and his employer. But meanwhile I was pleased to see another insider, Calvin Reid over at Publishers Weekly, note the following in his writeup of the IDPF’s Digitial Book 2009 conference: “More than ever Digital Rights Management---and even the notion of e-book piracy---was portrayed as more of a problem to the developing e-book market than e-book piracy itself.” Exactly, Calvin. Perhaps someday you won’t just...

DRM is probably E-Book Annoyance Number One for our savvy TeleBlog readers. They understand that if a publisher, store or tech company goes out of business, you eventually may not be able to access a DRMed book. You really don't own DRM-blighted titles for real. You're just leasing them. So who are the heroes in the anti-DRM struggle? Among the stars, as I see it, are Steve and Scott Pendergrast, the owners of Fictionwise, who offer DRM only because publishers insist on it. They really prefer that books appear in a bunch of formats...

Social DRM, an approach repeatedly talked up here for publishers who don't want to release e-book files without anti-copying measures, is already in use in iTunes. Check out a Slashdot item and CNET article for more on iTune's use of social DRM. What's more, eReader gets more or less into social DRM territory by including encrypted credit card numbers in files. Of course, purist might argue that the actual name of the purchaser should be always visible (see related comments). Despite the flaws... The best "protection" is none---why penalize legitimate owners?---but I hope that e-book publishers will pay close attention...

"The Apple rumor du jour is that Sony Music Entertainment will license DRM-free tracks to iTunes, under the iTunes Plus program," reports Billboard.biz. Time for Sony's e-book side to experiment with DRMless ePub, which its new reader devices can display? Maybe with social DRM? I think so! Without traditional DRM to gum things up, ePub is a standard for real. Sony and independent stores---the company laudably plans to reach out to indies, when its forthcoming readers go wireless---could exploit this to the max in marketing. "Buy from us and own your e-books for real." My personal stake...

Bill McCoy, the General Manager of ePublishing at Adobe, wrote an influential blog posting that catapulted the term "social DRM" into wide use. He said "For eBooks, I really like the 'social DRM' approach of The Pragmatic Programmers, who 'stamp' PDF eBooks with a 'For the Exclusive Use of ...' and the name of the purchaser." Traditional Digital Rights Management (DRM) requires implementing technological obstacles that prevent the purchaser of a digital object from copying, displaying, and accessing the object except in limited ways. These obstacles can cause endless aggravation to the consumer. For example a Kindle format e-book cannot...