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DRM turns e-book experience into confusing maze of incompatibility and missing features
October 31, 2011 | 10:32 pm
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By Chris Meadows
PBS’s MediaShift is running a series on e-books this week, and not all the articles are as lame as the one I talked about earlier asking whether Amazon was short-changing authors. MediaShift’s business columnist Dorian Benkoil wrote a lengthy column complaining about the annoying maze of incompatibility and missing features that purchasers of DRM-locked mass-market e-books have to face.
When given a book he wanted to read, Benkoil went looking for an e-book version that he could both read and have read to him, and thought that Google, which is pretty open, would have the best version—but was disappointed to find the Google Books version used Adobe Digital Editions DRM that wouldn’t allow it to be read aloud. The iBooks version would read aloud, but not let him take notes he could access from multiple devices (or, indeed, any non-iOS devices at all) the way Kindle could. And so on.
Benkoil then goes into a long list of drawbacks engendered by DRM and device incompatibility, such as text-to-speech issues, lack of availability in specific formats, inability to lend, inability to buy e-books directly through the iOS Kindle app, and so on. It is not a short list by any means, and even if every one of them is familiar to TeleRead regulars it’s worth something seeing them acknowledged in print by a reasonably major media outlet.
There are workarounds. Someone with the right skills and motivation can, for example, strip DRM from a book, convert it to an unprotected PDF, and then access the book on many more devices.
To get media onto a Kindle I have removed the device’s back panel, taken out its memory card, and attached the card to my computer via a converter to transfer the file, then put the card back in. But who wants to suffer that hassle repeatedly?
He lauds the example of O’Reilly, which doesn’t use DRM so as not to hamstring customers, and suggests that publishers and e-book vendors could benefit from giving consumers fewer headaches and more functionality. I certainly sympathize…but doubt that this is likely to happen very soon.
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Comments:
When you write something like “I certainly sympathize but …”, it makes me wonder why you write for Teleread. If you’re going to take a point of view, and you do quite regularly, it would be helpful to take a point of view that promoted the ease of access to digital content. But when the fights are tough, you become the realistic observer. That doesn’t help.
DRM is a business model. It frustrates demand, and it doesn’t stop piracy. It is used to limit the utility of content. We know this. It’s analogous (and in some cases tied to) the access that publishers deny to libraries. We claim that publishing serves a higher purpose and then we deny people cost-effective ways to gain from that purpose.
David Rothman founded Teleread for a purpose. I know it is in corporate hands now, but you still have to stand for something. Just reprinting press releases and commenting abjectly is not enough.
“To get media onto a Kindle I have removed the device’s back panel, taken out its memory card, and attached the card to my computer via a converter to transfer the file, then put the card back in.”
Huh? All you have to do is plug the Kindle in via the USB cable, the computer treats it like the flash drive it is. The Kindle doesn’t scan or validate the file, there’s no reason to take the steps listed to ‘get media onto a Kindle’.
Older Kindles used to have a memory card in it. Though, you can send the pdf by email on the yourname@free.kindle.com and you’ll get it.
I would suggest this article is as “laughable” as the previous one, just in a different vein.
This one merely shows the cluelessness of a reporter who believes it is a good idea to strip DRM off a commercial ebook to “liberate” it, and then promptly cripple the result by converting it into a frakking pdf?! Which he considers to be *open*?
What is this, 1994?
The Kindle he seems to be referring to sounds like it would be a Kindle 1, which again shows how up-to-date the report isn’t. It probably will be a few years before he hears there is such a thing as USB. Or on-device user manuals.
I suppose it’s a sign of progress that luddite central is becoming aware ebooks exist, but it would help if they actually had something meaningful to say. Yes, DRM is a pain. And this is news?
Mind you, this is taxpayer-supported NPR.
Two days, two duds.
Uh, make that “lame”.
They both are painfully laughable, too, though.
And way too transparent in their not-so-hidden agenda.
“There’s this thing I can’t do. I’ve heard of this other thing called ‘dee-are-em’. Therefore this ‘dee-are-em’ is reponsible for me not being able to do what I want.”