Re: ebook security

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:10 PM, Stuart Bray <stuartbray-/[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> Unlike a conventional book, and unsecured eBook (I like PDF)
> is easily transferred and copied. Great for the buyer who
> wants a backup. Also great from someone who wants to copy
> and sell your eBook as if their own to do so and thus profit
> from something you have made, perhaps leaving you out of
> pocket had the buyer simply unwittingly bought this pirated
> copy.

And if they'd bought a physical book, they can sell it, and the author
sees no royalties or profit from that. With ebooks, they have the
chance to keep a copy for themselves--but they could do that with
pbooks as well; nothing prevents them from making a photocopy before
selling the book.

The idea that every reader is going to pay full-price for a book is
the problem, not "security." Books have never been mostly read by a
single person and then discarded (or kept to re-read.) They're loaned
to friends and family, given away, or sold.

> This place looks interesting: http://www.ebook-security.com/
> and I wondered if anybody has any experience with this system.

It requires an active internet connection to read the books. Means it
doesn't work on portable ebook readers (I read a *lot* on my Sony
PRS-505), and it's probably hell on dialup users. But hey, authors
don't need customers who'd spend $300 on a reading device, do they?
And people on dialup probably shouldn't be reading ebooks anyway. (I'm
on dialup.)

> I guess the simple fact is if you release an eBook, it will
> get copied and others may profit and this is just something
> you live with.

Same thing happens with pbooks. With those, the issue isn't so much
copies, as second-hand use--a book can change hands a dozen times, and
the author only gets paid once.

The weird thing about ebooks is authors & publishers have convinced
themselves that 1 purchase is supposed to mean 1 reader. Books have
never worked that way, and their attempts to force that model onto
books is inspiring a lot of piracy and DRM codebreaking.

If DRM were *transferable*--if you could send an email to Bookstore
and say, "pls transfer the DRM of [book] to the person at
[accountname], and remove it from my account" they might get around a
lot of that. If Kindle users could transfer their kbooks to someone
else's kindle when they're done reading, they wouldn't be cracking the
DRM just to share a book with their sister.

-- 
"I follow Eris blindly in all things. That She is the Goddess of Chaos
simplifies this immensely."  -- Christian the Pagan


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