Authors Without A Yacht (AWaY) discussion

http://www.marketingoninternet.com/eb...

I believe that this may be an advertisement for eBook Pro, and there is no copyright notice.

Here is a snip to give you an idea of what is being discussed.

When you purchase your copy of eBook Pro, we provide you with software that will allow you to:

* Deactivate any eBook right from inside the software! Did someone request a refund? Did someone bounce a check or put a "charge-back" on their credit card? No problem! Simply deactivate the user's registration code, so that when the eBook checks back with the server, it will become unavailable to the user. Of course, you can also reactivate their registration number once they do make good on their payment, and all at the click of a button!

* View any registration Username and Password and know exactly who they have been registered to.

* Create customizable Usernames! Your Username can be almost anything you want. For example, it could be "thisismyusername000". This allows you to create unique Usernames that fit your publication.



In addition to these great features, eBook Pro provides you with a number of other major advantages including:

* The user cannot "copy and paste" anything from your publication. They cannot right click on the mouse to copy it, they cannot use "CTRL-C", and so on... In other words, it will not allow them to copy and paste your information into any other format.

* Be secure in the knowledge that all HTML files - even directory structures - that are put into the eBook software will be instantly encrypted with a custom built algorithm that is virtually impossible to crack. Because decryption of the content happens as the user is reading the eBook, at no point are there ever insecure, decrypted eBook files residing in the user's computer. This ensures that no one can bypass the security of the eBook by taking the HTML files and copying them.

* You can also set the print feature to either "on" or "off" so that users of your eBook can (or cannot) print your information. This is a personal decision that the eBook Pro software allows you to make while designing your eBook.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg! The fact that we take the HTML which you give us and encrypt it means that an entire encryption scheme would have to be broken in order to view the source of your file! Now that's what we call security! Can you tell we're excited about this?

I like this very much - in theory. The reality looks sadly a little different because unless you publish your books exclusively on eBook Pro it doesn't do a whole lot of good. As long as people can just download an RTF version of your book from Smashwords or even an ePub file at the Apple iBooks store or what not, which can be easily dissected for redistribution, a protection like this does not have a lot of real-life value.

Going exclusively on eBook Pro is, of course, out of the question because they have zero market penetration.

DRM/copyright protection has to come from a major player in the field or through a concerted effort in the best case, like Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Apple all banding together, settling upon one protection theme and making sure it is being properly deployed.

Someone somewhere on one of the boards told me that one of the cellphone companies has invisible DRM.

Yes, that was me. :)

The bottom line is, if man can make it, man can break it. There is currently no foolproof, unbreakable DRM in existence. A secured book comes out and is broken within weeks. Even the software in cell phones is broken within weeks.

There may never be such a magical unbreakable software that is functional and affordable, and even if there is, how many people will use it? Until there is a DRM that doesn't strip the benefits of ebooks while it "secures" them (that allows personal back-ups, that allows someone that purchased the book to use it on whatever electronics they have and may own in the future, that is not intrusive, that allows them to have the book read to them if they are vision impaired, etc.), you will never have active support from the majority of readers for DRM.

Brenna

Play it by me again, Guido.
;-)

Brenna,

What you're saying is only partially correct. The problem is that when the term DRM comes up, people tend to think in certain patterns - usually about copy protection technologies from the past that have proven to be weak to say the very least.

There are DRM systems out there that are working and have been working for years, and they are so transparent most people don't even know they are in place.

If you've ever bought an application on your cell phone from Verizon, for example, you have been subjected to the DRM system inherent in the BREW system they employed. For 8 years or so, his system has been free of any piracy, despite selling content in record numbers. The same is true for games like "World of Warcraft" for example. It is not possible to pirate these games, and that is the single-most popular computer game on the face of the earth with millions and millions of players.

The key here is technology. They are using online authentication technology to make sure only people who have legitimately purchased a product can actually use it. On cell phones it works - among other things - with a unique fingerprint of the device, in the case of online games, it usually works with user information. However, they work!

eBook readers could employ the same kind of technology as Verizon does and make sure that only authenticated books can be read on the device, simply by a quick over-the-air handshake with the content provider. eBook readers like the Kindle are already wireless enabled, so doing that would be a minimal step. Other eBook readers - if they were to take copyright protection seriously would have to implement wireless capabilities as well, of course, but given that it costs a few cents to add to the hardware, this would not be a major stepping stone. In fact it would allow new companies to step in and handle all the authentication over-the-air traffic for them.

Be that as it may, my point is, that the old paradigm that there is no safe DRM is no longer valid. It is true for outdated and old-fashioned copy protection schemes, but not if a company employs modern day technologies. Having said that, I am amazed that a company like Adobe, for example, has yet to catch up with even the most basic DRM capabilities, because what they have offered so far as part of PDF has been laughable at best.

You miss the point. ANY authentication process that limits how people can use the book or ties them to a single reader that they then have to stick with is USELESS to us. Completely, utterly useless. Someone is only going to play WOW on some sort of computer (desktop, laptop, etc.). An iPhone App is only expected to work on an iPhone. If you switch to Samsung, you've lost it and you know it.

People don't want to lose their books. They don't want told they can only read their books on an iPhone or only on a full-sized computer or only on a Kindle. They don't want to be told that they can only read on X software that may not be able to be loaded on the next machine they want to purchase. They don't want to be told they are locking themselves into Y type of machine forever and HOPING that the company that makes it doesn't decide to pull out of the market; if they do, you lose all your associated books.

Even if the software to read the precious library can be put on anything and the other concerns are met, if you tell them they have to remember the same user ID and password from several years and possibly an email address ago and a credit card or bank account ago (so scratch those as reliable code keys), I am telling you right now that a lot of people will be turned off by the need to revalidate. I've had to deal with people that couldn't remember IDs and passwords they chose themselves 6 months ago, let alone something changeable or something some other system chose for them a few years ago.

Until you solve those sorts of problems, you are talking about "solutions" that are anything but.

Brenna

There is absolutely no reason why a DRM system that works on one platform wouldn't work on another. That's why I said earlier, I believe, it would take a concerted effort, and why I said any company that takes copyright protection seriously... sadly we are living in a world where the mighty dollar is holier than common sense.

My point was merely to make sure everyone understands that really good DRMs do exist contrary to common belief. How applicable they are is a different question entirely. From a technical standpoint there are no problems.

But from the standpoint of what software the hardware providors will allow to run on their units, it is. As you said, the almighty dollar. If they'd all give this preconceived notion of market domination a rest and give us a universal reader and universal formats, we'd be in MUCH better shape than we are today. As close as we get, they keep blocking the industry from what we need most, IMO.

Brenna

Absolutely. Sadly that won't happen, and in many ways it's already too late anyway, with the penetration that platforms like Kindle, Nook and iPad have reached without any sensible DRM in place. Hard to go back...