Librie to be Sony debacle, with possible clones on the way and DRM still hated?
Time’s slowly running out for Sony–creator of the DRM-hobbled Librie, the E-Ink-based tablet released in a test version in Japan. So far, I’ve heard no news of a possible U.S. Librie, hopefully with less Big Bro inside. Meanwhile Mobileread.com carries this report:
…Juicebox shows us how cool an E-Ink device can be if not manufactured by Sony. It is small (50×56x3.7mm), has a multimedia card interface, includes a MP3 decoder, and of course features the wonderful E-Ink panel. The great thing about this project is that it gives the schematic and source code (alas excluding the confidential sources for the E-Ink display) for download. Btw, the smart guy behind the project, Holly Gates, has actually worked for E-Ink since 1998. Why on earth did they make E-Ink technology exclusive for Sony until now?
Do Sony and Philips have exclusive rights to use E-Ink technology? I don’t know; there’s a difference between an insider like Gates doing something and E-Ink’s letting an outside vendor act. But rival technologies or better could well be on the way in the near future–ideally without DRM used on the hardware. The librie email list with 183 members in the States, Europe and elsewhere is hardly large enough to be a source of definitive polls, but here are the results of a recent one:
–Existing Librie owner: 3 or 11.11 percent
–Expect to buy one soon: 3
–Only if DRM problem is solved: 20 or 74.07 percent
–Want some other e-ink display: 1 or 3.7 percent
The good news for Sony is that if it will compromise on DRM, then there might be a market. So what’s up? Could Sony address the DRM issue in a more conventional, less harsh way by coming out with a version that ran, say, Mobipocket–hardly an ideal solution but far better than the worse-than-Gemstar-ish approach in the Japanese test model? And meanwhile just what does Philips have up its sleeves?
Related: Prose and Cons: Sony’s New E-Book, by Peter Lewis, in Fortune, and Slashdot’s discussion of handhelds, some of which might be of interest to e-bookers even they are not as promising as a Librie would be without vanishing books and similar fun. In the hardware area, also see a tidbit about a PDA rumored to be on the way from Dell with a 3.7-inch screen of VGA quality.
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