DRM

As Amazon no longer allows people to download e-books I would like to look at the collection of e-book readers that we could use today. We have Kindle, Nook, PocketBook, Kobo, iOS devices, Android devices, Tolino and more. In effect we could fill a book shelf with e-books if we wanted to. That’s because almost each ebook seller has their own device.

Amazon wants us to get a Kindle to read their books. Barnes and Nobel want us to get a Nook to read their books. Fnac wants us to get a Tolino device. Ebibliomedia encourages us to get a Pocketbook and others also want us to get their e-book reader. The result is that if you want to shop around to get the cheapest books you need to be ready with a number of e-readers. Instead of a book shelf filled with books you end up with a bookshelf filled with e-book readers instead.

The Guardian has an article from yesterday that dicussses the fragility of content ownership in the digital age. Specifically it looks at how “My whole library is wiped out” after a streaming service stopped streaming content. It told people “pay 200 USD to move to service B”.

I encountered this issue eight or more years ago. I was using Spotify for a year or two, and one day realised that I was spending 300 CHF when I never spent more than 90 CHF in music on a single year. I stopped my membership and for my loyalty I found myself with nothing. I paid for a membership and from one day to the next I was left with nothing.

For a while I had been thinking of getting a device to play audible books that was not an iphone. The reason for this is simple. A portable MP3 player costs the same, or less than an iphone battery, and can play audio books, or music for 17-19hrs in a row, if you want to listen for that many hours in a row.

No Need For Constant Synching

With podcasts you want a device that can sync while you’re walking and listening. With books the experience is different. At most you may need to sync 12 times a year, or 24 times a year, depending on which Audible contract you have.

Chillout® is an open source implementation of the DMP DRM software. The idea is to create a multiplatform toolkit that allows for the easy managment of rights for media files. Built with Java it has several levels of rights managment for a number of files. This includes encrytion software and more. For a PDF document of what I saw today it’s available here.