E-books and DRM: repeating mistakes from the music and video industries

2010/03/01 Leturia Azkarate, Igor - Informatikaria eta ikertzaileaElhuyar Hizkuntza eta Teknologia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Hardwarea
• Softwarea

(Photo: © iStockphoto.com/Claudio Bravo)

As if it had been 10 years useless, the book industry is repeating the same mistakes as those of music and video with DRM systems. And it's because, as we said last September, these systems have two big problems: on the one hand, they generate many problems for users and, instead of encouraging them to buy records, movies or books, they lead them to get them by P2P networks and other similar ways; on the other, these systems are useless and there will always be someone who manages to overcome the backup.

Limitations and problems for users

The DRM systems that are installed in the digital books consist, first of all, in the registration of the seller of the devices used for reading digital books (electronic book, computer, mobile phone...), with a maximum number, in the installation of a specific software that ensures the legal acquisition of the books, and in the acquisition and download of a digital book, which is encrypted and can only be read in those registered devices. In short, the book is not purchased, but the license to read the book under certain conditions, as with the software. And many of the rights we had with paper books and which guaranteed us the law have been reduced: the only thing we can do is that we see them in our devices, and we can't leave books to family or friends, or take them by loan from libraries... The control is completely orwell.

The fact of wanting to perform such strict control generates, in addition, many drawbacks. For example, software for reading some DRM systems only serve certain devices or operating systems. On the other hand, when changing a computer, phone or e-book, this change must be registered in the stores where we have acquired the books and the books that can be read in this new device must be downloaded again, but in order for the change of device to be accepted, we must spend some time and, in some cases, the maximum of downloads can be exceeded if we change the device a lot.

Finally, with all the problems they generate, they induce users to search for books in the network for free, getting the opposite effect of what was intended, avoiding piracy.

Everything in vain

In addition, before or after, users manage to crack or remove all DRM systems. So it happened with systems to avoid copies of music and movies, and so it is happening with those of books. The DRM systems of Amazon and Barnes Noble are already destroyed. On the other hand, books also have an analog hole, nothing can avoid scanning a book by pages and scanning OCR (passing a character knower to convert the image into text). Thus, networks like eMule are filled with commercial digital books.

Apple has recently appeared on the stage of e-books with its iPad, a device basically similar to that of e-book readers, whose most remarkable feature is its color touch screen, so it has been presented as more appropriate for reading newspapers and magazines with photographs. The hope of the newspapers is that the iPad becomes a business in decline in the paper, just as before the binomial iPod-iTunes received that of the music; only in this context can we understand the disproportionate reception of the media to this uninnovative device. And it is known that Apple has no drawback in bowing down the content industries and filling its DRM devices.

However, this model that proposes editorials, shops and hardware manufacturers has no future. He failed in the music and video industry, and so he will do in the book. Although all this has begun, and for the moment the bet for the DRM is majority, other movements have already begun to appear. For example, Sony Reader and its online stores, which initially used Adobe's DRM, have already removed it. In addition, many shops and small publishers sell books without DRM. The rest will try to maintain the situation, but the disappearance of the DRM is only a matter of time.