What RMS fears is the overall (nefarious, conspiratorial) plan of the tech/publishing/content corporations, to get us to pay to read books…every single time we read them. I don’t know if this is an actual conspiracy, but it certainly fits in with all the other efforts by ‘content owners’ (who are not artists, musicians, or writers, but the publishing entities and ‘rights holders’) in music and movies.

The notion here is that some device, or class of devices, will win out the ebook reading device war, and gain critical market acceptance the way the iPod won the portable MP3 player war. This device would feature its own proprietary DRM method…like Apple’s FairPlay in iPod, and like the Sony Reader proprietary method. We all groaned when Sony came out with yet another proprietary DRM, but sooner or later, Sony et al are hoping, some sort of DRM/device will win out.

On the other hand there is the ‘consortium’ model. This would work rather like MPEG-LA only for books/magazines/newspapers. It would be a standard like the one for DVDs and the HiDef DVD formats, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The players that are judged ‘compliant’ with the format would include DRM on a hardware level. And the devices would not be able to view any text that does *not* have the DRM in it and OK’d by the consortium.

This is the kind of thing that would set publishers’ hearts at rest, lay to rest all their fears of ‘piracy.’ And if it comes about through a Sony-style proprietary device, it represents a home run financially, profits for years to come a la the VHS windfall that JVC won when Sony’s Betamax videorecording competitor died.

RMS seems to fear that the successful reading device will serve as a sort of Trojan Horse bringing in DRM to ebooks. I can’t argue with this, I do believe that publishers and device makers want this to come to pass.

As ever with this general subject, the confusion persists between ‘ebooks’ which are files we read, and ‘ebooks’ which are dedicated devices on which we read those files. It seems from the transcript RMS may have been referring to both with the same term, so it isn’t always easy to determine which he means at any one reference.

The danger does exist, however.

His GNU / Linux arguments are things of legend, and are heeded by no one.

Arguing against ebooks in the way he has makes no sense at all, and ignores the very real desire among many to carry large amounts of text in a low-energy format. Dismissing that desire because of the potential DRM usage is stupid and short-sighted.

He didn’t have any problem with the biography publisher who did an e-book about him, one that had no DRM.

Mike Ward

In the new device for reading lBOOK V3 we have refused obligatory use of a SIM-card for protection of electronic books. You can freely read open e-books in format TXT, FB2, RTF, PDF, CHM, HTML, DOC, WOL, RSS…

Publishing houses and bookshops should find a correct way to receive money. We are ready to co-operate with them. But while they do not wish to see electronic books. It is a policy of an ostrich. They will lose the market to cleverer and progressive publishing houses. Will lock it not a method for normal business.

However, I think this tirade would be similar to Stallman (who I respect) asking us to avoid using computers because they’re going to be used to force closed source software on us.

I do agree that there should be a model where books don’t expire. I re-read some books. I keep eBooks. I don’t see why eBooks must be worse than paper on this front.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

In fact, I hope that eventually marketplace pressures will encourage publishers to move from Draconian DRM to social DRM, which isn’t perfect but at least doesn’t pose the same preservation risks. Scaling back or eliminating DRM, whatever term you want to use, would be good for consumers and actually grow publishers’ revenue. At stores like Fictionwise, the nonDRMed titles do best, so perhaps there is hope for rational marketplace pressures to prevail. Meanwhile, however, E Ink devices and other dedicated readers are helping to pave the way for e-books to take off.

The new IDPF epub standard should also help. I myself hope that the IDPF will do an “epub1″ logo for nonencrypted software and books—so that consumers can use a nonproprietary standard without hassles. Epub2 could come only if/when the industry agreed on DRM interoperability. Meanwhile the DRMless approach would have the attention of the marketplace through the epub1 logo. Let’s hope that IDPF will see the advantage here in separating the term “e-book” from the use of DRM.

Because of the convenience of e-books to aging baby boomers—and more importantly, the economies, which can help narrow the digital and educational divides—I personally hope that e-books will thrive. Perhaps in future statements, Richard Stallman, who has made many notable contributions, will take greater care not to tar all e-books with an association with DRM. What about Wikipedia, for example? I truly agree with Bill J. that it would qualify as an e-book. So would the networked books that the Institute for the Future of the Book is developing. In fact, Project Gutenberg’s offerings, readable on the Sony devices among others, ARE e-books.

So let’s not get the semantics scrambled up, Richard. Far better to let the good guys dominate the technology than to discourage them with unfair associations.

Meanwhile big thanks to Robert N. for noticing the Stallman talk and bringing the e-book aspects of it to TeleBloggers’ attention. I hope that others will join me in analyzing Stallman’s comments from an e-book perspective.

Thanks,
David