There’s a great discussion on this topic at MobileRead, complete with mention of wrong-headed DRM and warring formats. The harder it is to buy or use legit e-books, the more piracy. Related: New DRM system.
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August 2nd, 2006 at 9:11 am
The next logical question is “have you ever used a conversion program to crack the DRM of an ebook?” I purchased an ebook in the Microsoft Reader format only to discover that while it worked fine on the desktop it wouldn’t work on my PDA which is the main reason I wanted it! I now have: Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, Palm Ereader, and Mobipocket on my PDA. I don’t think most people are looking to steal content or cheat publishers and authors out of their revenue, they just want to be able to READ without the complications and irritations of these draconian DRMs!
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:24 am
Amen! In fairness to Mobipocket, there probably is a solution so you can use it on both your PDA and desktop. Still, isn’t this a hassle? Not to mention the Tower of eBabel stuff. The TeleBlog will keep up its battle against reader-hostile proprietary formats, and I hope other sites will step up their own efforts. Just be glad you don’t own the forthcoming Sony Reader and want to use BBeB books on your Palm. – David
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:08 am
Since I can’t find the books I want in digital format and I can’t afford a book scanner I’ve been more or less forced to find “illegal” sources.
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:14 am
I’ve been known to go out and buy the p-book, after finding the txt/doc/html version and converting it to LRF (BBeB) by various means.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:03 pm
This is of course the main reason for the development of tools like Convert LIT, which I am happy to say that I continue to use in order to convert my legitimately purchased ebooks into something that I can use with Plucker on my PalmOS-based Sony UX50.As far as illegal sources are concerned, I imagine that the same kinds of places that harbour illegal music and movies might also have some ebooks – BitTorrent, P2P networks, Usenet, and the like.Surprising as it may seem, the publishing industry could actually learn something from the movie industry at the moment – their new download-to-own model where a downloadable version becomes available on the same day as the DVD is a good idea, even if the pricing scheme isn’t quite right yet.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:27 pm
David Rothman said: Just be glad you don’t own the forthcoming Sony Reader and want to use BBeB books on your Palm.
I was one of the lucky people who was blessed by Sony’s root kit scheme. I now avoid Sony like the plague! They’ve always suffered from a chronic case of the “not-invented-here” syndrome, but they keep getting worse. Instead of using available, popular formats(MP3) in their mini-disc players and hard drive players they tried to force buyers to use their format(ATRAC3). Does anyone remember the mini-disc, the beta-max?
Speaking of conversion programs, I found one called Book Designer 4.0 that will convert most non-copy protected formats I own including my old Rocket eBook files so I won’t lose them after all.
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:49 pm
For products like Sony Reader, Iliad etc it will only help to have “free” books out there.
Do you think people buy thousands of songs for 1$ each to fill their iPods?