Helene

iRex Technologies is the company behind a line of ebook devices/readers like the iliad and the digital reader series.

In a recent blog entry iRex announces that in the fourth quarter of 2009 they will provide support for Adobe PDF and epub. iRex currently supports mobipocket on their devices.

The twist however is that ebook readers today can only support one DRM technology on a device, either Mobipocket or Adobe. So the consumer have to make a decision of what DRM technology to use on their device, and it will affect all book purchases. People usually don’t care who publishes the books they read, or what type of paper is used on a paperback. Choosing what DRM to use is in the same category, a decision most people have no knowledge or interest in taking.

Furthermore, if one already have purchased books in one format and suddenly switch to another format, it will leave the previously purchased books unreadable.

This brings the issue of DRM and ebook formats even closer to the consumers, and how it limits the access one has to purchased goods. It’s a bold move made by iRex, and it certainly is interesting that they try to satisfy “everybody’s needs” by leaving it to the consumers to choose which DRM to use. But, will it be a positive change in the long run?

I don’t think so. Most people don’t want or need to consider what DRM they use on their purchased books. I can only see that this will generate more questions and uncertainty to people (that makes them even more uncertain to purchase an ebook device). On the bright side, DRM will continue to be a hassle for consumers, and may be the publishing houses in the end will learn something from the music industry – DRM don’t work!

Requiem is an application that works on all platforms and it removes the DRM on (purchased) videos and music in ITunes. The application can be downloaded from this torrent. This is of course something Apple is not happy about, so therefore each version of ITunes works on a specific Requiem version. Thankfully the developer of Requiem updates the application to match changes made by Apple.

Now, the torrent link will soon be outdated as new versions of ITunes and Requiem is released, so therefore I also supply the search that will find the latest release of Requiem. Enjoy!

Fictionwise have issued a statement saying that Overdrive will cease serving (DRM’ed) files to Fictionwise customers. All customers that have previously purchased books from Fictionwise served by Overdrive have to download them before 31st January. After that date, the books will not be available for download again.

This is a good example of why DRM isn’t consumer friendly. I have purchased six ebooks served by Overdrive and from 1. february those books will no longer be available to me. If my ebook reader breaks down, I can’t read them on another ebook device unless I have downloaded, saved and stripped the ebooks of the DRM.

ITunes and the music industry have at last understood that DRM haven’t worked the ten years they have used it. I hope the book publishing industry will reach the same conclusion soon.

A sample encrypted pdf file can be downloaded from Adobe’s site:
Sample

NB. The encrypted file must have printing permissions.

1. Open the file with Preview
One can verify that it is encrypted by going to Tools -> Inspector -> Encryption Inspector (the lock icon)
2. Go to File -> Print -> PDF -> Save as PDF. And voila, an unencrypted version of the file is saved.