DRM for the most part still has miles to go in terms of user friendliness, but as E-Commerce Times notes, the music industry has made progress–as shown by the example of Apple’s iTunes service. Now if Microsoft and the like in the e-book area can catch on.
Interestingly, PalmDigital, which has been one of the most stubborn companies in resisting a nonproprietary consumer e-book format that includes DRM Lite, as I’ll call it, has a more enlightened DRM policy than many rivals. A PalmDigital exec noted to me recently on the eBook Community List:
Our DRM is not locked to a specific hardware device or set of devices–books are locked to the purchaser’s name and credit card number, so you can install and unlock a book on any supported device. Upgrading all your hardware doesn’t necessitate contacting anyone to ask for another activation. You can read the same book on as many devices as you own.
I like that last sentence. Now if Palm can just stop chest-thumping about its e-book format, see the virtues of a Universal Consumer Format building on the work of the Open eBook Forum, and influence the UCF’s evolution in healthy ways! Meanwhile Microsoft and the like would do well to reduce the number of DRM hassles, if they want to keep PalmDigital at bay.
(E-Commerce article via eBookAd.)
