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Friday, August 14, 2009

Adobe's proprietary DRM-protected ePub / Sony

NY Times's Brad Stone writes about Sony's announcement that "...by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard created by a group including publishers like Random House and HarperCollins. and that Sony "will scrap its proprietary anticopying software in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied."

Note that Adobe's DRM-protected ePub format (in effect, a proprietary format when DRM is added to a standard container format with no native DRM) can be read by e-readers that incorporate Adobe's Digital Editions firmware (Astak's 5" Pocket Pro Reader for one).  Most e-readers will not read the DRM-protected books and PDFs.  Publishers do tend to insist on some kind of protection.

  As Teleread points out, Sony is not going to a really 'open' format (which would be non-DRM'd ePub) -- and Adobe will call the shots as more e-readers sign up for their proprietary protected format.  However, Stone's NY Times piece did point out (see above) that Sony was opting, with respect to its own anti-copying software, " in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied."

GigaOM explains the implications of Sony and Adobe's latest moves.
at

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 14, 2009 at 10:28:00 AM PDT

    the current line of sony readers already support non-drm epub. by adopting adobe's drm epub in the future, it does not necessarily mean that sony will abandone support for non-drm epub.

    i would imagine that drm-epub support would be add via a firmware update.

    but as i have a sony reader now, i would be severely pissed off if the list of formats supported in a later firmware update actually takes away support of any format in a previous update.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 14, 2009 at 10:58:00 AM PDT

    Anonymous,
    I doubt they'll take anything away! Astak will help keep things in balance.

    In mid June, Bezos announced to the Wired magazine conference that

    "In the future, Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader will display more book formats beyond its own."

    I sure hope ePub's one of them!

    Thanks for your feedback. I did realize Sony currently supports non-DRM ePub but a few of us ar pointing out that the big change from their own DRM-protected format to Adobe's, while a bit more open, is not exactly open.

    But, a good sign. To loosen Amazon's grip on them, or at least the feared grip, publishers
    are putting a lot of power now into Adobe's hands, re pricing etc. Interesting times.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousOctober 16, 2010 at 2:12:00 AM PDT

    does that mean that kindle books can read books in EPUB Adobe® DRM format? sorry if this is a stupid question but thinking about buying a kindle and i'd like to know if I can buy books from casa del libro in that format as amazon have a pretty poor selection of books in spanish.

    thanks.

    ReplyDelete

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