This idea could be turned into a really cool feature. Imagine embedded digital bookplates designed by talented–and perhaps famous–artists. The merchant could charge extra for these, the artist could make some money, and the book buyer would have bragging rights. And that’s just for openers. There are a million other neat things that could be done with social DRM that could benefit all parties involved.

As for eReader, it does use social DRM, in the sense that it includes “From the Library of…” But it also includes scrambled credit card numbers. For social DRM purists, that would be beyond social DRM and perhaps even be in the realm of “hard DRM.”

I’d welcome perspective on the above from others, including, of course, Steve or Scott at Fictionwise/B&N, the owners of the eReader format.

Let me add that Steve and Scott prefer that there not be any DRM. They also offer multiformat books in different formats without “protection.” Ideally publishers will catch up in time. Mike Shatzkin’s name is well known among them, which is why his comments are so helpful.

Thanks,
David

You have confused me and that is good — because after the dust settles I will understand this issue better than I did before.

It must be that eReader is using some kind of DRM system beyond social DRM, since my credit card number is used to unlock the ebook on my handheld device.

This isn’t Social DRM: it is DRM using the credit card number as the unlocking key.

Social DRM (according to a TeleRead article by David Rothman)
http://www.teleread.org/2007/02/07/adobes-bill-mccoy-on-social-drm/

is simply stamping the ebook with the name (or other information) about the buyer. Everyone who looks at the ebook can see this information; and that “social” nature of this shared information is the piracy deterrent.

With social DRM, there is no “unlocking” key required: that is DRM proper, or what has been called “hard DRM”.

True or false: eReader uses “hard” DRM, not social DRM?

I’m guessing this from reading the eReader FAQ pages: so please help me to figure this out.

Thanks … Michael

My own preference, if social DRM is to be used, is for credit card numbers NOT to be involved.

> My name is OK to include

Exactly. And maybe a snail address. But, hey, that’s generally public anyway.

Thanks,
David

You think epiracy is a problem now? … Imagine the new black market for selling ebooks — ebooks with valid names and credit card numbers inside.

Whether it is data or meta-data, whether the format is PDF or ePub or mobi — any added information can be removed from an unencrypted ebook in less time than it takes to read this sentence.

I would be honored to have my name included in every ebook I buy — especially if it could appear on the dedication page:
“To a treasured customer, an excellent ebook consumer with extraordinary taste in literature … YOUR NAME HERE.”

My name is OK to include. But please, let’s not get any more personal than that.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

Try renaming the .html to .txt. I have no idea what fraction of HTML markup this approach supports, but renaming has been “good enough” for simple single-file html ebooks on the Kindle. If you want multi-file HTML or images, then there is still no need to send to Amazon. Just use Calibre (say) to convert from HTML to MOBI.

My RSS delivery service, kindlefeeder.com, goes through a circuitous process of generating an HTML file from RSS feeds and sending it off to Amazon for conversion into an *.azw file that the Kindle can display.

Even before sending off the HTML to be converted, Kindlefeeder does extensive pre-processing on RSS content, stripping out tags that the Amazon Digital Text Platform doesn’t allow, and converting everything into safe ASCII to be compatible with ISO-8859-1, the character encoding required by DTP.

Why does DTP-compatible HTML have to be converted to *.azw in order to display on the Kindle? I wonder. The Kindle has a web browser that reads web pages. So why can’t it directly read documents that contain a strictly controlled subset of HTML?

Just as you noted, I’m suspecting it might be because some people at Amazon — probably members of the proprietary party, as opposed to the open, forward-thinking party — want to foster lock-in. The Kindle could be a far more fertile and generative platform if you could directly send or copy an HTML document to it and read it, without going a seemingly wasteful and superfluous conversion process on Amazon’s servers.

The best social DRM is to sell a product in a way that makes your customers appreciate you enough to shun the idea of taking advantage of you. It’s called “value-added” products.