Home » post » Incompatible DRM for ebooks

Our mission

Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Incompatible DRM for ebooks

Digital Rights Management (DRM) techniques are bad enough when applied to digital content, but this article notes that when there is not even a standard for DRM, the difficulties and problems that DRM creates are multiplied:

  • E-books need a common language, By Troy Wolverton, San Jose Mercury News, (02/14/2010)

    I never need to worry about whether I can read a book. As long as a book’s a book, that is — printed on paper, in English. I know I can pick it up and read it no matter how long it sits on my shelf after I bought it. But as we move into the era of e-books, that assumption no longer holds.

There is more on Apple’s decision to impose DRM on ebooks, after dropping DRM from music, here:

  • Digital handcuffs for Apple ebooks?, by Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times “Jacket Copy” blog. (February 16, 2010)

    Apple’s old digital rights management software (DRM), FairPlay, is slated to make a comeback with the e-books it will be selling on its iBook Store. While music users have been free of these “digital handcuffs” for the last year, Alex Pham reports that readers will not be.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Archives