Fairy Leaves: DRM and Trust

[andygates]

I have a dilemma: I want to spend money and I don't know how.

The problem is good old DRM.  Ebooks outside the Kindleverse* are mostly EPUBs with optional DRM from Adobe Digital Editions (ADE).  As DRM goes, this is pretty sophisticated, allowing you to register multiple devices to your ADE ID and handling device recovery and even some lending (gasp!). 

But the key to my book is still in the hands of Adobe.  And that means that there's a trust issue: Will Adobe honour that key in perpetuity?  Hell, will Adobe exist in perpetuity? 

I'm reminded, always, of the Wal-Mart music DRM failure a couple of years ago: The ongoing cost of running a DRM service for some old music site isn't trivial and they cancelled it; users' music died on its legs.  Who is to say that the same won't apply to Adobe, or to the conglomerate that buys Adobe in five years' time, or the standards refresh that makes ADE hilarious legacy tech in ten? 

And how about corporate spats?  What if Adobe disagree with, say, Amazon over some deal and they stop honoring the keys (think of the recent Macmillan spat and escalate it)?  Or if currently unwritten legislation requires them to do so (imagine a corporate merger and the unintended consequences of an antitrust ruling)?  What about a book vendor that goes out of business?  Or is declared seditious?

There's no way ADE can kill the book on a device - it's not got the Kindle Killswitch.  In fact it's pretty darn good as DRM goes.  It communicates only infrequently, when move or copy a book, so the danger is at refresh time.  Imagine five years from now, new reader: You log onto ADE to get a "service unavailable" message and your books are so much junk.  Or a new PC: You install ADE, log on and... your books are so much junk.  It's like discovering that bookworm has eaten the pages of everything on your bookshelf.

This untrustworthy hint of the ephemeral -- the threat, however small, that the pages of an ebook will turn into so much dust ten years from now -- that makes me unwilling to spend money. 

Books last.  Cracked downloads last too.

That's why the industry needs to sort this: there needs to be a non-profit universal key service, supported by all actors, used by all actors, so that when a private service dies it goes into escrow heaven there to serve ad perpetuum.  It needs to be as universal and as infrastructural as DNS. 

Until then, DRM'd ebooks are a rental with an uncertain return date.


* Inside the Kindleverse the DRM is all handled by Amazon: the trust issue is the same, it's just more contained - like Apple, the whole shebang of content, reader and DRM is handled by one organization.  It makes things slick and easy (and therefore popular) but doesn't addresss my fears. 

Comments

[calum]

I view DRMed ebooks as being a long term rental.. I fully expect to have to buy another copy at some point. if I want permanent, i buy paper

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That's a fair view; would you agree that such a rental has much less value to you than a purchase? Feels to me like popping down the video shop.

[calum]

It depends on the book. Some books, eg reference books that become outdated anyway, may actually be worth more if they are on my iPhone, searchable, etc.. Others, eg fiction I will re-read over the years, is worth significantly less.

How sharable something is has a similar effect on value.. depending on whether its something i want to share.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Good point about documents that are ephemeral by nature (my shelves are stuffed with junk like "JavaScript 1.2!" and "PalmOS Programming for Dummies", pure junk in technical terms, they need to go).

There's a decay-curve that seems to fit pricing: High when it's the new hotness, dropping rapidly to a trade-average, then down into the dollar tail specifically when obsolete. That matches with the physical publishers' hardback-tpb-paperback-cruft route pretty closely, so it should feel reasonable to the punter too.

[calum]

I did a huge tech book clearout a few years ago.. but I already need another

[shifty-176.livejournal.com]

I 'm a strange mix of techno-geek and Luddite. It's probably an age thing. I still like books which are made of paper. As long as I look after it, nobody can stop me reading it, loaning it, or giving it to someone else. If I want to read it in the bath, and I drop it in the water, I don't lose a whole library - plus I can always dry it out. Doesn't stop me using Gutenberg if I want to, but it does make it easier to read when I'm not attached to the batteries.

Upside: Great thermal insulation from walls covered in five inches depth of paper.
Downside: Not got enough walls.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Aye, but that is the same discussion that was had with music. Oddly, the industry doesn't seem to have learned from the music DRM experience.

[ladyjulian.livejournal.com]

Definitely a Luddite. Apart from anything else I like to share books with friends, and I gather this would be of questionable legality with non-paper books.

Also, I like the way books feel.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I wonder why discussions of a foible of X always veer to X vs Y instead? It's like maps-vs-GPS, which always comes up when someone asks about how to get such-and-such on their superdoofer 9000. :)

Strictly, sharing books might be naughty anyhow. Old 70s American paperbacks said that the jackboots would get you if you dared it; the principle was ruled silly by law of first purchase (ie, you really own it) but the menacing warnings remain to cause hilarity in secondhand bookstores.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

I guess my position is sort of monolithic and lacking in subtlety: if I'm not buying it, I'm not giving them money for it. And, if my use of it depends, in any way, on them continuing to provide some service, then I haven't really bought it.

Which is too bad -- I like the idea of the ebook readers, especially the Kindlekin electronic paper/superthin/built-in wireless/etc. I like the idea of having my entire library in my Timbuk2, so if I feel like looking up that quote that reminded me of Kant in Carpe Jugulum, I can, wherever I happen to be at the time. If I'm unexpectedly delayed waiting for service at the deli, I can re-read that bit in Jhereg where Vlad finds out he used to be a Dragaeran. Or even the first chapter of a book I didn't own before I downloaded it just then, standing on line, waiting to order my lunch.

None of which will, I believe, ever wholly replace paper books for me. I love having shelf upon shelf of them, love flipping through them, love being able to turn to favorite sections entirely by feel and the shape of the text blocks on surrounding pages.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Turns out the ADE DRM was cracked last year, so if I want, I can buy a DRM'd up book and crack it, but I resent having to hack about with things just to make them work properly. It's like buying a bike and having to true the wheels.

And I resent funding a publisher who thinks that this is clever. I'd rather torrent the book and throw into the authors' site tip jar. The always-unreliable WikiAnswers suggests that on average authors get about 16% of retail...

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I occasionally think that it'd be useful to have PDFs of the various roleplaying books I own in handy searchable form, but I'm somewhere between 'Call me when the DRM issue gets settled, because I'm not paying the price of a new paperback to rent a book' and 'Eh, I'm not an early adopter. I might buy one when I know what I'm getting isn't a Betamax'.

Also, I spend all my money on things to stick in my hair. So all in all I will probably not be buying an ebook reader for a while.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I think the simple readers will plummet in price the way DVD players have. Two years and there will be one like mine for under £50, betcha.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Reading on a screen for too long gives me a headache. I doubt I will ever be an ebook person. I like being able to handle the words and their papery flesh, not something that resembles a literate etch-a-sketch. So I can't help you spend money, unless you want to give me some.

Oh, and it doesn't really get warm up here, but it should have stopped snowing by the end of March.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Brr!

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

It was supposed to be dribbly tonight but it's very fluffy and white for dribble.

Fluffy dribble!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It's not rain it's FLUFFY!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

The etch-a-sketch is surprisingly easy on the eye, but it's hard to describe. I was so wowed I bought one. But I'm a preposterous gadget tart.

[simoneck.livejournal.com]

There are various data archiving levels within our company, 3, 5, 30 and 64 years (or something like that, I try to avoid archiving projects).
The only formats acceptable for 64 years are csv and adobe. Can't find any links in a 2 min google, but I thought these were the formats the UK government says are acceptable for archiving over the 64 year time frame.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That's ... arbitrary.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Ah, I get what you're saying now. Old file formats aren't the issue. I'm assuming that archive files are not encrypted - at least not at the file level - as it would be a key management nightmare even now. It's the perpetuity of the key, not the legibility of the format, that is my concern.

[simoneck.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I've reread your original posting and I see what you are getting at now.
DRM, the horror.
My limited experiences from music downloads mean I'm more likely to bittorrent next time, than pay them for the privilege of losing my music when I rebuild my hard drive.