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By Paul Biba

screw.jpegI received the following email from a reader after I did the posting on Adobe shutting down their DRM servers. An Adobe employee commented on that post saying: Just to be clear this was a two weeks notice for something that we publicly announced over a year ago and provided a clear migration path at the time of announcement.

Well, that comment seems to imply that everything is really pretty simple. Now read the email I mentioned above (name witheld):

Hi, Paul,

Sorry to bother you, but the Adobe DRM post is very confusing to me.

What exactly is at risk? Is this something an everyday user needs to
be concerned about? (I’m talking here about content I already own /
have created, not anti-DRM sentiment in general.)

If I install ADE and authorize it to an Adobe ID, all my at-risk
content will be available to me? Is that all I have to do?

Again, what is at risk? Old ebooks I bought in PDF format? PDFs I
created myself with Acrobat 6 or 7? EPUBs? Only Digital Editions
created with Acrobat 6 or 7?

Is this just for content creators a la ebookstores? Sorry to be dense
about this, but I have no idea if this applies to me or not.

Sorry for all the questions, but I am completely in the dark about this.

So no, it isn’t simple, it’s confusing and a disservice to the consumer. To be honest, I don’t even understand what Adobe is talking about myself and I certainly couldn’t answer our reader’s email. Just another case of DRM screwing the reader.

 
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