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iTunes already using a form of social DRM
January 13, 2009 | 5:07 am
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By David Rothman
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 to iTunes and the better side of the music industry. Are big publishers really more conservative than RIAA members?
Despite the privacy risks, Social DRM is far more consumer-friendly than traditional DRM. At the very least, e-book-lovers ought to have a choice.
Image credit: Here. CC-licensed.
(Thanks to Arthur Atwell, cofounder of Electric Book Works in Cape Town, South Africa, for the tip.)
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Comments:
All eReader titles that I have purchased have a opening page that says “From the Library of …”, which stamps them with my name. Of course you have to have unlocked it to see this, but it is there anyway.
Good point, Christo, even though the purists might still challenge you–since the personal inscription isn’t visible all the time. At any rate eReader’s DRM, however “social” or not, is much better than Mobis. In the future, when I read a book from a large, DRM-fixated publisher, eReader will be the DRM-tainted format of choice. – David
David, why do you prefer eReader DRM over Mobipocket? Mobipocket DRM can be stripped easily without putting credit card info at risk (note: I’m not really familiar with eReader DRM but in the past I think I read on the Mobileread boards that cracking it can put your credit card at risk).
Also, I don’t think I really understand how social DRM will “penalize legitimate owners.” The penalization with traditional DRM is that while tech savvy people who aren’t concerned with the laws on the books can crack it, the people who don’t know how or who prefer to follow every law (something that’s really damn near impossible these days) are unable to change formats (and thus keep the book forever), copy quotes, or do a slew of other things that people should be able to do with their e-books. I’m no fan of copyright law and I don’t agree with DRM but as someone who is an incredibly harsh critic of “digital piracy,” I’m wondering what you have against social DRM. As far as I know, it allows you to do whatever you want with the book but if you put up online for free, the company can trace it back to you. And you don’t even need personal information attached to the book. It could be some kind of personal identification number unique to the store you purchased it from that allows the company to single you out without putting your personal information out there. It probably wouldn’t take very long for pirates to strip that information off the books, of course, but I can’t see how it penalizes “legitimate owners.” They won’t be sharing their books on the net and can still do as they please with what they own.
I can see one drawback which would be a scenario in which the computer was stolen or hacked and the books were taken and put on the net. Getting hacked or having someone make copies off your computer would be hard to prove.
NOTE: For security reasons eReader does not actually store your card information in the eBook or on your device, rather it uses a 1-way “hash code” of the information, and it is impossible to recover your information from this “hash code”. – http://www.ereader.com/iphonehelp.htm
I don’t want to be bothered cracking the DRM of my ebooks; I take the easy route. I don’t care for DRM, but when I can’t get a ebook without it, I prefer eReader’s version. I can use their encrypted ebooks on all my old Palm and Windows handhelds, my Mac and Windows computers, and now my iPhone touch. There is no limit to the number of different devices I can put my books on, as I don’t have to authorize any of the hardware.
eReader is my ebook reader of choice. When I buy ebooks, I first look for unencrypted eReader versions, then HTML (I can quickly make my own eReader versions) and then encrypted eReader files. If the ebook is using a different encrypted format, I put it on a “wish list” but don’t buy it.
If I really did want to share a book with someone, I could put it on their device and then I would unlock it in person. If they moved the book file to another device, they would not know the unlock code to re-open it.
P.S. Sorry David, I’ve always been a “ebook” gal – can’t change me now…
In eReader DRM, your credit card number is part of the information required to unlock books you purchase, but the number is not stored anywhere inside the book. The number is used as part of a one-way hash that is used to decrypt the book’s contents. There’s no way to extract the credit card number from the book file, because it’s not there.
I was a long time Mobipocket fan, going back to my early Pocket PC days and continuing with my iRex iLiad. I considered the Mobipocket Reader the best reader for my Pocket PC, so I accepted the DRM which came along with the many books I purchased. Over the years, though, I’ve had to redownload books several times, since I’ve changed out devices and needed to use a new PID. With ebooks purchased from more than one vendor, it has never been the most convenient thing to do.
I now own an iPhone. Though it’s not optimal for reading, it is convenient. Mobipocket has been dragging its feet for a long time regarding a reader for the platform. I can still carry my iLiad with me (second one, since the first had the dreaded screen problems), but I can carry less if I can read on the iPhone. I could strip DRM from my existing Mobipocket ebooks and use Stanza to read them, but what about new ebooks? It didn’t make sense to continue with Mobipocket, so I recently purchased my first ebook in the eReader format. I think I’ve found my new format of choice. I don’t mind the DRM, since I can use it on any device which can run eReader software, without worrying about servers shutting down and not being able to access the files again — a problem hitting all too close to home with the Fictionwise third party server issue.
I put up with the Mobipocket DRM because I considered its Pocket PC reader to be the best available. I continued with Mobipocket because the iLiad allowed me to access all the ebooks I had already purchased, even though redownloading them was a hassle. Now, however, I’m done with Mobipocket. I really don’t consider the eReader DRM to be much more than social. It verifies that I’m the owner and lets me get on with reading. Is it proprietary? Yes, but I don’t consider it onerous.
Thanks for clarifying the eReader issue. Another issue with eReader, though, is longevity. On Mobileread I started a thread inquiring about the best quality ebooks. The question was mostly between LIT and Mobipocket and it seemed to ultimately be decided that “LIT e-books are better formatted with markup which is easier to re-convert and otherwise manipulate” and that “both [LIT and Mobipocket] are better than eReader…[which] uses its own, much more limited markup (with a syntax \p\ilike\i \bthis\b) called PML.” It seems to me that cracked LIT books are the best option for the long-term since dominant digital formats are often subject to change based on things like hardware. Personally, I want something with the most flexible markup so that I can more easily manipulate the format of my books in the future. In any case, permanent ownership seems to rest on cracking DRM and I wouldn’t want to have to “unlock” a book every time move it to a new device.
The nice thing about eReader DRM is that you can move it to as many devices as you want to, unlike Mobi’s 4-at-a-time limit. The idea behind it was that, since it involved your credit card number, you wouldn’t want to post the book on-line because you’d have to post your credit card number, too. They understood that you might transfer it to and unlock it on a friend’s device or two, but considered that the moral equivalent of handing your friend the paperback book you just finished.
eReader’s markup really isn’t all that hard once you get the hang of it. (Certainly no harder than hand-coding html.) And there are scripts for Word and OpenOffice that can actually automate the majority of the mark-up process. For me, it’s gotten easier and easier.
The eReader format is getting a little long in the tooth, in that it still shows its PalmPilot roots (you cannot have graphic images larger than 64K, because that was the size of a single Palm database record, so cover images can look a little hinky), but it’s being updated this year to accept ePub with an eReader DRM wrapper.
Irritatingly my credit card provider called me today to say that my card had been compromised and that they were issuing a new one. Sadly that is the card that I had used for the last 4 years of Fictionwise/eReader purchases.
Although I still have all my books and can still unlock them, there is another variable now to add to the different permutations of my name when trying to unlock an older book!
You do know you can re-lock your entire Fictionwise/eReader bookshelf to the new card number with just one command, right? (Or at least, one for each site.)
My question about social DRM was serious… I would like to know what people have against it if it does not inhibit the reader.
The only thing I can think of is that it means you aren’t free to share it all over the place because people will know you were the one who did it (or at least someone who had access to a copy of your version of the file).
Though, considering it further, a file with any form of DRM on it might very well have the same problem that the more restrictive DRMs have today: you can’t read it on unsupported platforms because the DRM interferes with unsupported clients’ ability to display it?
Spider, people don’t have anything against it. Any negativity you see is likely a gut reaction.
DRM is heinous. iTunes is probably one of the most commercially-successful DRM providers. When people are told the DRM-free iTunes tracks actually have “social DRM” their hackles go up. This is part of the problem when you try to force a term, DRM, onto a concept to sell to the businesses with the hope that the customers won’t use the same term.
Oh, and I’d like to hear why you don’t like the PML format. It may be more limiting (versus the the crazy combination of modern HTML and CSS), but it is easier for non-technical people to grasp, book-oriented, and, in many ways, more semantic. How do you specifiy a footnote in HTML? A chapter header? Sub-chapter? Have you ever looked at the mess that is the soft hyphen in HTML? None of these are an issue with PML.
I feel that, going forward, XHTML/CSS is the way to go, but I wish the IDPF had spent a little more time specifying how books should be structured rather than focusing on what should be cut out of the standards they were using.
In the end, though, both formats are roughly equivalent.
Seemingly referring to DRM of any kind, David said in the above post, “The best ‘protection’ is none—why penalize legitimate owners?” I’m sure he has a reason for saying this about social DRM but I don’t know what it is. I was hoping he’d explain it. Social DRM, Chris, is widely known as not being restrictive in terms of format and clients. That’s what confuses me about the animosity towards from people who are generally against piracy.
Concerning PML, I have nothing against it. I’ve never purchased an eReader book and have only made eReader books using Book Designer when eReader and Stanza were the only apps on my iPod Touch. Now I have all the same books on my Kindle on Bookshelf since it supports Mobipocket. I’ll admit I’m unfamiliar with most mark-up styles (although I do have a basic grasp of HTML). That’s why I posted my question on Mobileread. My main concern, as I said before, is longevity. If I purchase an e-book, I want to make sure I have the most versatile format so I can manipulate it in any way I desire in the future while maintaining the highest quality formatting. The winning format on the boards seemed to me to be LIT. Does this mean I would certainly notice the difference between a converted eReader file and a converted LIT file? Not necessarily. However, I might become much more knowledgeable on formatting e-books in the future and these types of details might make a big difference to me at that point. That’s why I’m taking the advice of people more knowledgeable than I am on this subject today. I was just curious as to why eReader’s DRM was popular, which I now know, and why anyone would settle for keeping DRM on their legally purchased e-books, which still baffles me a bit. But I’m not criticizing and I certainly can’t knock a format I’ve hardly used.