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EPUB and DRM question | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 1 of 9 10 September 2012 at 2:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Could someone kindly give a quick overview of exactly how DRM or watermarking (if it is
not the same thing) applies to commercial EPUBs, and what is and what isn't normally allowed for an EPUB you have purchased for your own use? Or does it vary according to who sold the EPUB? Please note that I am not asking about DRM-removal, or piracy, or any of those bad things we don't talk about on HTLAL. I'm simply trying to find out the scope of what you are allowed to do with a purchased EPUB e-book. In my case, it's only for use on my computer, as I don't currently have any form of e- reader, and no immediate plans to get one, although of course that may change. I assume I am allowed to read it on the computer from which I purchased it and to which I downloaded it. Am I allowed to use it on any other computer that I own? If so, how many different computers would I be allowed to use it on? And how is this controlled? Or is it more the case that if I give it away to someone else, and the seller finds out, they will know it's my copy, and could prosecute me (or the person I gave it to, (or sold it to, I suppose...)? And (for the future), are there a separate set of restrictions for what e-readers I might be able to read it on? I was trying to keep Kindle out of this discussion, since that may raise a whole list of issues to do with Amazon's own proprietary format for e-books, namely MOBI. I hope the issues with EPUB are a bit simpler since it is non-proprietary. I had a search through the forum, but couldn't find any posts that covered my specific question(s). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5522 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 9 10 September 2012 at 4:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
The rules vary according to who sold the ebook. Most EPUB-based DRM relies on special software from Adobe, which can be used to unlock the book on a specific computer. You're usually limited to a certain number of machines, and you need to install ebook reader software on each, and sign in using your personal account. In some ways, Kindle books are actually easier, because the Kindle software will run on almost any computer or smartphone, and it requires less fooling around to make everything work. But it won't work on many ebook readers sold by companies other than Amazon. (Android devices, iPhones, iPads and Kindle devices all work fine, of course, as do desktop computers.)
That's typically known as "watermarking", not DRM.
Yes. If you buy a DRMed ebook, it may only work on specific readers.
The DRM issues are different with EPUB, but not really simpler. DRM is always tricky once there are several companies involved, many of whom are competitors. You essentially have several choices: 1) Lock yourself into a single ebook vendor and accept their limitations. 2) Learn way too much about moving EPUB books between different readers, and which combinations of ebook stores and readers can be made to work. 3) Limit yourself to DRM-free ebooks and use the excellent Calibre to use all your books on the ebook readers of your choice. Calibre can convert between EPUB and Mobi with the push of a button, it can organize and sort an enormous collection of ebooks, and it can work with almost any ebook reader. Calibre is amazing and it's completely free. 4) Buy ebooks with DRM and use various 3rd-party Calibre plugins to remove the DRM, then proceed as in step (3). This may or may not be legal in your country, and it may or may not violate the Terms & Conditions of any given ebook store. I won't explain how to do this (and you specifically didn't ask!). Personally, I go to very great lengths to pay for ebooks in my target languages, because so many "mid-list" writers (i.e., authors who are less successful than JK Rowling or Stephen King) barely earn a middle-class income for their work. Many US authors are paid $5,000 to $10,000 as an "advance" for each book, and they never see any royalties. And they don't get medical insurance. And before they sell their first book, they've often spent 10 years writing a million words, none of which will ever see print. Seriously, writing makes farming look like a good business. I'm selfish. I want more cool books. So I pay, and I encourage others to do so as well. But that doesn't mean that I'm happy about DRM or region restrictions, which have caused me all sorts of really nasty headaches as a student of a foreign language. Edited by emk on 10 September 2012 at 5:03am 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 9 10 September 2012 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I will gladly pay much more than I pay now (which is not little, considering my love
for paper books) when I know most of the money will go to the author, not the parasites around. Just think for a moment:How much money goes to advertising (and especially stupid advertising)? how much goes to creating DRM and other things which just limit the buyers and give people another reason to find a not so legal source? How much goes to bribing people who are supposed to protect our rights so they create stupid and harmful laws instead? (copyright lasting 70 years from authors death, acta, sopa, pipa, rules for associations "protecting" the authors, censorship known as "regions" etc) When my money goes to the authors/musicians/film makers, when I get full service for my money (no DRM restricting me from using a DVD on my laptop, no need to choose the source based on the reader I use, no need to buy whole CD when I only want three songs), when the money is reasonable considering the quality, than I will gladly buy everything I read/watch/listen to. Not before. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 4 of 9 10 September 2012 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
That would be an account with the EPUB seller? Or Adobe? or...? I have installed Adobe Digital Editions, just to see what it was like (I didn't like it), and there was some process of "authorizing your computer", or similar, which I didn't like the sound of. I got the impression that I could have used it to look for and buy books, but I wasn't planning to use their clunky interface to do that!
Thanks. That's worth knowing.
Thanks. One Danish store I've bought EPUBs from says they are watermarked, and I thought it was just another term for DRM, so it's useful to know they are different.
I have indeed installed Calibre, and can see that it is powerful (although it's more than you need when you simply want to read a book and not convert it). I remember reading the dire warnings in the documentation about it not touching e-books that had DRM and I assumed that meant it couldn't then be used with any commercially-purchased e-book (thinking, for example, of my watermarked EPUBS from Denmark). But if watermarks are not DRM, then calibre would probably work with them, so that's good if I need to convert them (which I don't really, at the moment).
I know about that option, and I see that it can at least be morally justified when you only want to read a book you have purchased (or thought you had purchased) on the device of your choice. But that's for another thread, and probably another forum...
Fair enough, and you are right of course. I've bought a small number of EPUBS, but I didn't want to make a massive investment in them, only later to find I couldn't do with them what I wanted. Having a computer go bad on us the other week reminded me that if I'd only been licensed to read them on that computer, then I might have had to buy them again, which is ridiculous. (My wife is probably going to have to buy some software again for that reason though - nothing to do with e-books :-( ). I used to get enough brain-damage from software licensing issues in my old job to last me, and I don't want them to follow me into private life, in an activity (i.e. reading) which is supposed to be a pleasure. The irony is that if I buy audiobooks, there are no technical restrictions (as far as I know) controlling what I do with them, and these are usually a more expensive product. Anyway, thanks for a great summary. Exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Oh, sorry one more question: Is there any simple tool I can find that would inspect an e-book file to give some sort of summary of its DRM-status, i.e. whether it had one or not, and who the issuer was, I suppose, would be the most basic info. NB, again, this is specifically not for nefarious purposes, but simply to find out what is DRMed and what isn't and (ideally) what the scope of the DRM-ing is. Not quite the same, but I just found this nifty feature of Calibre which you probably know about: http://blog.calibre-ebook.com/2011/09/all-about-get-books.ht ml i.e. know the DRM status of a book before you buy it. Only problem seems to be that some stores might not provide the info. :-( Edited by montmorency on 10 September 2012 at 4:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 5 of 9 10 September 2012 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Seems to be relevant to the last part of my previous post:
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20120306-00 (About vendors being coy about the exact DRM status of their products) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4647 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 9 10 September 2012 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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The whole DRM problem is a big mess which is developing toward complete chaos. Every big store seems to have their protection and you could spend weeks trying to find out what how it works and what it exactly means.
It is usually much worse than software protection - as much as we complain, I did find that you can talk to software company and get lucky. Years ago, I had electronic dictionary with license locked to one harddisk. I had hardware failure 3x in 2 months after I had bought it. I contacted the company, sent the repair reports and got each and every time issued a new license number. At the same time, I have ebooks bound to pda which stopped to work 4 years ago and one which stopped to work 2 years ago. All the time, I had to keep 3 different applications, because they could read the unprotected books across formats, but not the protected ones. And I owned some books in lit format, which worked only on my PC... I accepted this - for cheap books I wanted to read only few times, this was still better solution than to pay postage for a book which would cost me 10x the cost of the paper book. And yes, I could break the protection on some of these books. I would need to look up about 3 different credit card numbers (none of them current), 4 or 5 different identities (pda, palmreader and mobipocket software of few different generations). My advice? For books you want to keep, go paper or break the protection straight away and convert to a (hopefully) universal format. Sorry, there isn't anything else you can do unless you accept that an ebook is not much better than a library book... 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5007 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 9 10 September 2012 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Take care that if a book is copyrighted - you do not have the right to use the words you read in this book - some people don't have any words to talk any more, because they lost all their words reading kilos of words that were not free.
Also if you are learning foreign languages with the help of an I-tool, your new skill does not belong to you but to the owner of the i-tools trade mark. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6933 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 9 10 September 2012 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Watermarking is about sneaking information that identifies the buyer into the ebook file. DRM is about encrypting the ebook file, whether watermarked or not. To be on the safe side, assume they are all watermarked, so if you buy an ebook and give it to a friend, who gives a copy to a friend, whose buddy uploads the copy given to him, they may eventually come looking for you, because they could tell where it came from.
To be honest, I am OK with watermarking, because I see no reason not to have to pay for content. In fact, even though I don't have to, I plan to delete, pay for, and re-download some of the free Kindle ebooks I downloaded and read in the last few months, because the authors need money to write more books. (Amazon pays something like 70% of the cost of the ebook to the author, so it may be a better deal for authors than paper books. They must get less, of course, if they go through a publisher instead of self-publishing the book.) DRM, however, is quite another story. I bought a quaint and now utterly forgotten REB1100 ebook reader in the early 2000's. Mostly used it for public domain content, but also bought a few encrypted books. The vendor then went under (or dropped the product, I forget which) and three years later turned off the servers. That means I can't read those ebooks on any other REB1100 nor on any modern device, so when the old one dies, the content I paid for is gone. Will Amazon be around forever? Will Barnes & Noble? Will their devices and reader apps? What about 20 years from now? The way I see it, who is to know. It certainly seems risky to invest in a large ebook collection that is encrypted with any proprietary scheme. ePub's can be encrypted in different ways. Most smaller ePub ebook and ereader vendors seem to use the Adobe encryption scheme. So does our public library. (My Sony reader does. I think Kobe readers do too. They are likely not the only ones.) One Adobe account allows up to a certain number of desktop and a certain number of mobile devices. Apple and Barnes & Noble use ePub's, but each with its own proprietary encryption, so despite being ePub, you can only read their ebooks on their own devices or the apps they supply. Unencrypted ebooks can be converted between ePub and Kindle formats using Calibre. Calibre will tell you if a file is encrypted - import it into Calibre and try reading it. If you can read it, it's unencrypted; otherwise, you'll get a message saying it's under DRM. Edited by frenkeld on 11 September 2012 at 2:38am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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