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Apple’s iPad DRM uncertainties make the Financial Times: ePub gummed up
January 30, 2010 | 3:20 am
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By David Rothman
The dogs wouldn’t eat the dog food. Many customers hated iTunes’ proprietary DRM, a fact that Apple’s rivals acted on. So Apple negotiated with the biggies in music and removed DRM from iTunes, so customers could play their purchases on a variety of machines.
Lesson learned for the new iPad—touted by some as a salvation for e-bookdom? Nope. The iPad’s Apple e-book software uses the company’s own DRM with the nonproprietary ePub standard, rather than the Adobe DRM system found on many readers and forthcoming devices. DRM in most any form is obnoxious, of course. But at least Adobe-DRMed e-books are a little less so.
Such issues have just made the prestigious Financial Times in an article linked from the home page. FT notes Amazon’s multi-platform approach for Kindle software and correctly wonders if Apple’s e-book format could end up being “more closed than Amazon’s” despite the use of ePub. At least Amazon allows Kindle books to be read on PCs and has BlackBerry and Mac e-reading software in the works. And unless the killjoys at Apple interfere, the existing iPhone Kindle app will run on the iPad.
“With the iPad still two months away,” writes FT’s David Gelles of the Apple e-book strategy, “there are many unanswered questions. For example, it is unclear whether users will be able to download non-DRM e-books from the web and read them, and what impact a Kindle app on the iPad will have on Apple’s own digital books sales.” Bravo to FT for helping to educate consumers.
Along the way, FT quotes Hadrien Gardeur of Feedbooks (who comments on the possibilities of DRM-related tensions between Apple and publishers), as well as me on Apple’s proprietary approach (“It is not good news for consumers”).
To round things out, let me say I dislike DRM even with the so-called multiplatform approach since even Amazon can’t keep up with all the hardware out there, especially future gizmos.
While many publishers insist on DRM, Apple could at least have used the Adobe system and played up nonDRMed books from the more enlightened houses. At Fictionwise, the B&N-owned stores, management in the past has noted how well nonDRMed titles fare against DRMed ones.
If Jeff Bezos and friends at Amazon are smart about this, they’ll let the Kindle natively read ePub books and introduce a DRM-free ePub store on Amazon, with the offerings of clueful publishers. Talk about ways to outwit Steve Jobs! The image from Amazon’s DRMless MP3 store says it all.
Detail: FT identified me as “founder of the OpenReader Consortium.” Actually I was a founder, as second in charge. The main founder was Jon Noring. OpenReader is significant for prodding the International Digital Publishing Forum into doing ePub to avoid our preempting the IDPF with our own nonproprietary standard.
Related: iPad adds to DRM mess? Apple ebook DRM exclusive to Apple hardware, by TeleRead’s Paul Biba. Also see E-reader rivals hope for boost from iPad and Laying down a challenge to e-the e-readers and Lex: Tablet computers, from FT, as well as an editorial on the iPad. I just wish the latter had zeroed in on the DRM issue.
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Comments:
So you’re advocating giving Adobe an ePub DRM monopoly?
Well, they currently *have* an ePub monopoly as most ePub creation tools target solely ADE and whenever rendering inconsistencies arise between what the spec says and what ADE does they promptly tweak their output to accomodate ADE. The result being that other ePub render engines suffer and are forced to try to match Adobe’s interpretation of the the spec.
In other words, even DRM aside, ePub is what Adobe says it is, regardless of what the spec may or not say.
The only way for this to change is for an alternate render engine to be equally well supported or for a certification program with teeth to reign in Adobe. Neither has appeared so now its up to Apple to (maybe) take a crack at it.
My expectation is the iBook reader is going to take a lot of early flack as a “bad” ePub renderer because it glitches on the Adobe Specific output. If the iPad actually sells enough, we’ll probably see Calibre add a converter like their LIT-to-ePub tool to go from Adobe ePub to Apple ePub.
[Either that, or Apple wil fail and Adobe will rule the world...
...until the french convince the EU that europe's culture can't be dependent on american-supplied DRM and moves all euro ebooks to their own "napoleon" DRM as a counter to Adept.]
Given that Jobs said iPad and Kindle prices will be the same, the only way that is possible is for Apple’s ebook operations to mirror Kindles which use a proprietary, zero license cost DRM and content server, just as Amazon does. Otherwise the cost of using Adept and Adobe content server (the hidden Adobe tax) will either add to the book prices or eat away at the profit margin. Jobs would sooner give up his liver than cut profit margins so any advocacy on idealistic grounds is going to fall on deaf ears.
It is really a waste of effort to expect Apple to change their stripes, more so than getting Amazon to roll over and play dead for Adobe, as Apple only cares what Jobs says. Amazon might listen to the masses but Apple…?
Forget it.
Its TrueType time again.
Actually, Bob, I’m advocating something else: No DRM. If Apple had the guts to promote a no-DRM store for consenting publishers, its wares would probably sell well enough to encourage publishers to drop any variety of DRM. Look what happened to DRMed music within iTunes.
Thanks,
David
Felix writes: “It is really a waste of effort to expect Apple to change their stripes.”
So it didn’t do that with the removal of iTunes DRM? The market forced it to.
Thanks,
David
David, I was referring to your compromise solution of Apple using Adobe DRM. I think that Steve Jobs letter about DRM on music is pretty clear. He doesn’t believe DRM is necessary for other people’s content (just his own). I don’t believe it was Apple’s decision to put DRM on the ebooks.
With DRM there isn’t a compromise solution of giving Adobe a DRM monopoly. If we go that direction the IDPF was a waste of time. We might as well have said “OK Mobipocket is the standard now, everybody pay Mobipocket”.
@Felix, Adobe is making a farce of ePub as a standard. They’ve been given too much power because of the virtual monopoly they have today on the DRM. If you want to do ePub you have to license the SDK from Adobe. If you want to sell ePub you have to give Adobe their cut. The standard needs to be what is documented in the standard and not how Adobe’s SDK renders it.
But, Bob, what do you about consumers’ immediate needs? I’m not happy about the Adobe situation, but Apple is aggravating the current mess by using its own DRM. Again, the real solution is for Apple to do a DRMfree store and promote nonencrypted titles. Whether from Adobe or another company, any DRM is bad.
Thanks,
David
Apple doesn’t care about DRM, they only want to sell iPads. Amazon does care about their proprietary format, it’s a way to lock publishers into the preferred Amazon price points. Adobe does care about DRM, it’s how they make a percentage on every epub book sold, when they leverage their monopoly over the DRM at close to 100%.
I question David’s statement that Adobe’s DRM is any less obnoxious than Apple’s. Apple and Adobe are at war, and so of course Apple is not going to give Adobe a percentage of every book sold at the iBookstore. It seems to me that, failing a common, open, freely licensed version of DRM becoming a universal standard, more DRM schemes are better, as the market will eventually choose a de facto standard. As epub is a newborn, it has lots of time to grow into whatever it’s going to become, and the DRM shoes it wears might end up being Apple’s as easily as Adobe’s, and more likely somebody else’s (like Microsoft for instance, or something created by a consortium of publishers).
Apple is more likely to drop DRM than either Amazon or Adobe. But so long as publishers fear the present, and dream long nights on the golden past, we readers will be stuck with DRM — the more obnoxious and onerous the better. *sidh*
Consumer’s immediate needs?
Short-term thinking is almost invariably long-term foolish. Especially in the technology arena.
Make no mistake, the driving force in ebooks isn’t the publishing houses or the agents or the authors.
For better or worse it will be the different emerging technologies and the capabilities they enable.
Hitching the entire industry to the Adobe ePub pony is akin to selling out the entire printing industry to Adobe’s Type 1 “standard” back in 1995 (which almost happened). Instead, Apple and Microsoft rebelled and we have TrueType and OpenType and $50 laser printers.
I know we’re all impatient for ebook nirvana to arrive but due (competitive) process must be observed. The BPHs must be given time to get over their paranoia over the new, to squeeze out their institutional pbook-dependent inefficiencies, get used to their diminished stature. Consumers must be given time to fully appreciate the pros and cons of proper DRM usage; when it is a hindrance (most of the time) when it is indispensable (libraries, subscription services, corporate documents, etc) and when it is irrelevant.
Give it time.
At this point in time we are merely laying down the foundation for an entire industry and DRM is a secondary or even ttertiary concern; the *real* issues at stake are the integrity and reliability of the data formats and the licensing terms that will dominate the industry along the various steps in the suppy chain. For all the talk about Apple’s DRM ambitions, to me the switch to comission-based retail fees is much more interesting. And a possible model for the ebook business of the future as it entails a change from the traditional “partners-in-crime” supply chain to a transactional supply chain.
If broadly adopted across the supply chain this model could enable entirely new business models that bypass the agent-BPH-distributor model and swing the fulcrum of power closer to authors.
Not any time soon, of course, but over time.
Time for things to play out is of the essence.
The long term is not going to look anything like the present and todays issues are going to seem as quaint as ASCII vs EBCDIC.
ePub is a starting point, not the ending, and Adobe’s hijacking most likely will end up as an object lesson in putting all ones eggs in somebody else’s basket.
Its going to be a wild ride but the ride is only beginning.
(As for Apple dropping DRM, do remember it only came *after* the music studios realized they’d sold their souls to Fairplay in trying to avoidd DRM-free MP3 and had to correct by surrender via Amazon, yahoo, and other Apple competitors. Apple was just about the *last* music vendor to adopt DRM-free. It wasn’t the masses that forced the change, it was the studios.)
In my view it’s a short term pain vs long term gain situation. I don’t want the consumer pain but I feel it’s the only way to get rid of the long term pain. The consumer outrage needs to be directed at the people that are insisting on the useless DRM and claiming consumers don’t care.
We shouldn’t blame Apple for fighting the monopoly.
Felix and Bob: But I do have a long-term solution—Apple devoting some loving attention to the promotion of nonDRMed ePub books via the store I suggested. Among other things it should do a “Books you can really own” campaign and also play up the multidevice angle.
Thanks,
David
Rothman- I am SOOO tired of your constant anti-DRM rant every other posting. Look, the DRM is actually preventing most pirating of ebooks. (The overwhelming majority of pirated ebooks are pdf’s or audio books- NOT hacked DRM ebooks. So the DRM is actually working for the publishers, which is OK by me.) So, it won’t go away. Move on already!!
This is just version 1 of the iPad. I expect they might rethink for the next version. As far as consumers are concerned, the inability to get Flash is a far far bigger issue than the DRM thing. But that too might be rethought for the next version (it might be smart to hold off buying til v2 comes out…)
Richard Askenase: Even if it’s true that most pirated ebooks are PDFs (which I somewhat doubt), it doesn’t mean the source wasn’t hacked DRM ebooks. Pirates may choose to convert the hacked DRM ebook to PDF, perhaps because people prefer that format (e.g. it’s something most PCs can read and even many smart phones) or because people may be scared a format like epub will have DRM so they prefer PDFs which usually don’t. The simple fact is hacking ebook DRM (or any DRM) is trivial when you can view the output. Even Blurays incredibly paranoid scheme with all their protected pathways is well and truly broken. (Many pirated HD movies come in mkv format, does that mean the source isn’t BluRay? Obviously not, most even specify the source.) I expect Apple’s new DRM will be broken within 2 months. If you think pirates give a damn about DRM schemes you have another thing coming. Unless the trusted computing ideas succeed, DRM is not going to.
I have to agree with Felix though. People seem to think Apple was the one that killed DRM or that they never wanted DRM on iTunes. I doubt this was the case. (Talk is cheap.) Anyone who paid attention knows that DRM most definitely played a part in Apple’s success. Apple’s proprietary DRM meant if you wanted to play songs from iTunes you need Apple software or Apple hardware. And if you had Apple hardware then your only choice for music with DRM was Apple (and since the studios initialled demanded DRM then you had little choice but for some DRM). Okay you could get some other DRMed files and break the DRM, but that’s too complicated for most users. This created a vicious cycle which helped feed Apple’s dominance (clearly other things helped create the dominance in the first place).
Sure in the long term Apple may want to get rid of DRM since it annoys consumers. But in the short term they know very well if they successfully control the DRM they can make it very difficult for everyone else. Their only problem is others already have some control, so it’s not clear if they can gain the same power in the book publishing world that they did with iTunes.
The claim: “[Jobs] doesn’t believe DRM is necessary for other people’s content (just his own).”
Apple doesn’t produce its own content (except for OS X and related software, none of which is even copy-protected). From a content standpoint, it’s simply a retailer. If you want to blame someone for the use of DRM on the iTunes Store (and everywhere else), blame the record companies, movie studios, and now book publishers that insist on it.
“With the iPad still two months away,” writes FT’s David Gelles of the Apple e-book strategy, “there are many unanswered questions. For example, it is unclear whether users will be able to download non-DRM e-books from the web and read them, and what impact a Kindle app on the iPad will have on Apple’s own digital books sales.” Bravo to FT for helping to educate consumers.
Furthermore, if you believe the figures, DELL, HP and Toshiba will see a slump in Laptop sales, not even considering the more believable figures of netbooks sold in 2010/11. Considering Chrome OS, Google and software like ‘Netbook Pack’ http://www.netbookpack.co.uk which upgrades any netbook to a Chrome OS version for $49.00 – it seems hard to believe the estimated sales figures for the iPad will stack up.