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Mobipocket fix supposedly to come Friday—but damage to DRM’s rep will linger on
August 23, 2007 | 9:23 pm
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By David Rothman
“Engineers at Mobipocket.com,” Fictionwise is now saying, “have informed us that they hope to be back online sometime this week, August 23 or 24.” One more day, eh? It’s already Friday, the 24th, in Europe. Fix Day? Or are other delays ahead?
Time for social DRM experiment
No, Mobipocket isn’t shutting down for keeps. But the current outage/outrage, which began August 15, isn’t exactly building confidence in DRMed books. Isn’t it time for Mobi to experiment with social DRM, at the very least, to show it cares about customers?
And wouldn’t that actually be prudent business in other ways? Long-term damage from DRM could be immense to Mobipocket, not just customers, if the company suffers other surprises, whether from crackers or just the vagaries of technology. A week or so ago, could Mobipocket have predicted an outrage that would last this long?
DRM as an e-book toxin: Amazon and publishers, beware!
Once again DRM is showing itself to be an e-book toxin. If I were a shareholder in Amazon.com, Mobi’s owner, I’d be fuming. Same if I were a publisher reliant on Mobi as a major format.
Hasn’t Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo said that e-books will be books’ main show by 2013? Will Mobipocket be trustworthy enough to be a major player when e-book sales finally are more than a speck of the tens of billions spent on paper books?
Meanwhile Fictionwise, a major outlet for Mobi books, has started to offer books—apparently not DRMed—in the rival Sony format. Let’s hope that the IDPF standard for e-books catches on and ends the industry’s reckless format wars.
Heavy investments in Mobi books
Some TeleBlog community members have almost surely invested hundreds or even thousands of dollars each in Mobi books over the years, and they need reassurance now. Ajax may or may not have bought that many, but even if he hasn’t, consider his growing frustration:
“I got a replacement for my broken T-Mobile Dash, reinstalled the Mobi reader, and was disappointed when the client couldn’t validate my rights to continue reading the book I’ve been engrossed in for a week. I really want to finish that book.”
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Comments:
What’s going on with Mobipocket is not an occasional problem anymore, but a sign of pure and simple technical and managerial incompetence and disregard to its customers.
I always enjoyed buying e-books and reading sample pages on their eBook Store and fortunately I never needed their Customer Service for anything (which seems to be, in fact, inexistent). Their system worked fine and seemed to be quite reliable, but I am seriously about to change my mind about them.
A company that maintains its web store for maintenance for more than a week and keep telling customers the same message can only be made up of a bunch of idiots. Sorry.
Due to this, I did my first e-book purchase in the Microsoft Reader format this week and will keep doing so until I have a good explanation from Mobipocket directly from their website, not through third parties.
Charles Stross is blogging about the Mobipockets fiasco at:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/08/why_drm_sucks_redux.html
As it seems, Mobipocket is back at work. 3:50 PM Eastern Time. No apology note included.
Too late, I suppose.
News for those who are about to access the Mobipocket account:
1) As you try to log in with your usual username and password, you will be directed to a page with the following message:
Greetings from Mobipocket.com.
On 8/24/07, Mobipocket reset your password, so you will need to choose a new password to log on to the site. Please click the “forgot your password?” link below to reset your Mobipocket.com password.
Then:
Thanks.
We’ve sent an email message with the following subject line: “Mobipocket.com Password Assistance”. When you click the link contained in the message, you’ll be taken to a page where you can create your new password.
2) You will receive an email describing exactly what the message above tells. When setting a new password, you can actually use the same previous one if you’d like (that’s what I did).
Fortunately, all my previous purchases are still there at My Bookshelf, and this should not be a problem for anyone of you, I hope.