‘Formatted to fail’: Ellen’s Adobe-related hassles at the New York Public Library—and some possible fixes
“I recently e-checked out a book from the New York Public Library, and it was such a frustrating experience I would not do so again. I’m warning you this is a rant, but there must be a better way to distribute electronic materials. Here’s why it drove me crazy.” - Wormbook blog, written by a booklover named Ellen—thoroughly fed up with Adobe’s DRM-infested software.
The TeleRead take: Libraries care about the interiors of their buildings, such as the NYPL’s, shown here. I hope that librarians at the forthcoming IDPF conference will care just as much about e-book usability; this year, may they 
push hard for alternatives to traditional Digital Rights Management! One sort-of-fix would be to let patrons browse individual books online for X number of days, either through straight browser-based approaches or an online reader like eBooks.com’s. Or maybe even a toaster-simple online ePUB reader someday? Yet another approach would be the use of “permanent checkouts”—the use of social DRM and letting patrons keep books forever, just so they didn’t share them. Patrons could still rely on traditional DRMed books if they wanted. But at least they’d have choices.
Better than today’s nightmare
Granted, there might have to be quotas for individual patrons’ access to SDRMed library books since libraries would be paying for more than conventional lending rights. But that would still be better than the present nightmare. I can think of other models, too, such as TeleRead-style library consortia offering lump sums for some books for national and maybe even global rights, so no one need worry about shackling the titles involved. I’ll have more to say on business models later.
Meanwhile some advice for Adobe…
More immediately, I’ll be curious to see if Washington actually does act out of character and study Adobe and other DRM-related companies for possible failure to provide necessary disclosure to consumers. Might there be legal risks in the future? Adobe would do well to read E-book DRM among Federal Trade Commission’s targets? And how about Adobe in particular?
Also check out my earlier complaint against the Rube Goldbergish Web pages that Adobe uses to try to get people going with Digital Editions. Guys, don’t you ever learn? Nothing against Adobe’s people, including Bill McCoy who, at least at the personal level, has bravely pushed the social DRM concept. It’s the user horrors I hate. May Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen listen—which would help the shareholders, not just the Ellens!
Just remember, Shantanu. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday Amazon made a push in the library market and tried to sell its closed-system approach by focusing on the Kindle’s ease of use. Or what if Amazon, which has promoted DRMfree music and has people reading this blog, actually follows my suggestions on how to wean libraries off over-reliance on traditional DRM? Not to mention the real action, in the retail sector.
So fret less about your past DRM investments, Shantanu and friends, and look to the future. The same for other companies. I’m picking on Adobe for now, though, because your DRM is so widespread—for commercial reasons, not user-related ones—and is thus so toxic to e-books. Any system that users loathe won’t won’t be sustainable for the long haul. I’d hate to see DRM contribute to another e-book bust, the way it did before. Especially now that the U.S. and a good part of the world are in a recession, profits should come ahead of techno-ideology.
Related: Ficbot’s earlier TeleBlog post in a similar vein about library DRM hassles. See? Ellen has company. Lots.
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April 15th, 2008 at 11:07 am
David, I recall writing an artivle for you way back where I detailed these exact same objections e.g. multiple user names, superfluous software and an end result of several junky programs on my hard drive but no actual books. I really think the digital publishing industry is makign some huge mis-steps here. If they want to sell ebooks like a product, they need to think of them like any other product where the goal is to get as many items as possible into as many customers hands as speedily and efficiently as possible. Creating barriers to usage when your problem is already lack of usage is just stupid. Can you imagine going to the grocery store and being stopped at the entrance to ‘register’? And then trying to buy a product within the grocery store and being told that you have to ‘register’ again (but with different people) in order to be allowed to buy it? How quickly after such an experience would you be giving up on that grocery store?
April 15th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Ficbot, you’re absolutely right. Can you track down the URL and post it in the comment area? I’ll also provide a link to it from the present piece. If it’s too much trouble, I’ll track down your older post myself. Nice to have company in New York, eh? And lots of other places! Thanks a lot. David
Addendum: Is this the one? http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/12/17/my-first-foray-into-the-drm-filled-world-of-ebabel/
Thanks, Ficbot!
April 15th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Yup, that’s it!
April 15th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Also, wanted to clarify, I am not knocking Ellen’s article or the post about it. On the contrary, I think it is really important—if more than one blogger is posting about the exact same objections after following the exact same thought process (”I want to read books from the public library on my mobile device, how hard can it be? Answer: too hard”) than that should be a wake-up call to the publishers. Treat your product like any other product and sell it in a sensible fashion, please, without adding needless layers of complication. I really don’t thinkt he ebook market is big enough right now that piracy is really such a huge money-loser compared tot he money-loser of ‘nobody can figure out how to do it without being so annoyed that they vow never to buy one again.’
April 15th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Thanks, Ficbot. No prob. I know you’re not knocking Ellen. I’m delighted that both of you wrote on the hassles that library DRM is causing. Everyone, vendors included, will win if there are better solutions. Meanwhile I’ve added a link to your post. Thanks again. David
April 21st, 2008 at 6:13 pm
It’s been soooo long since I tried ADE and NYPL ebooks that I don’t recall all the frikkin steps. I don’t recall it being hugely bad, but then again that might be a part of my memory Simvastatin devoured.
Anyway, I still do paper books via NYPL. Uhhhh… about 20 waiting to be read.