Purchasing and using eBooks comes with a number of advantages over traditional books. From their lighter weight to adjustable font styles, and generally lower prices. However, where there is light, there is also shadow. eBooks do have a few drawbacks as well. One of the biggest disadvantages is the fact that you usually acquire only a license to use and not ownership. This usage license is often tied to hard […]
For some time now, a customer-friendly trend has been emerging in Germany regarding the use of strict Adobe DRM, as more and more publishers are forgoing this largely ineffective and often disruptive measure for many lay consumers. Today, with Random House announcing that they too will now adopt a soft watermark protection, the largest public publishing group joins this movement. Random House is thus following a growing trend within the […]
In mid-December 2011, the publisher Haffmans & Tolkemitt made the first move: from then on, paper books were sold with the eBook version included. Since then, two more publishers, h.f.ullmann and Walhalla, have followed suit—and now, according to Buchmarkt, a fourth publisher joins them. The Hamburg-based publisher Edel will also adopt this distribution concept in the future and sell books that include the digital counterpart. The publisher has named this […]
About a week ago, we reported on the latest Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 and Content Server 5 update. At that time, we primarily questioned whether the software update had any target audience at all. Although we couldn’t definitively answer that question, there was considerable skepticism about the necessity of switching to the new system. One reason for this was the suspected lack of backward compatibility of the new DRM protection […]
Few other eBook topics spark such intense debate as DRM protection. It’s not just the existence of DRM that’s hotly debated; the removal of DRM also stirs strong opinions. Often, it’s unclear whether you’re actually allowed to remove copy protection. The following article succinctly clarifies the market modalities. Before diving into details, I’d like to point out that the theoretical debates on the legality of DRM removal have long been […]
Already last year, there were initial reports that Sony would soon enter the market with its own eBook copy protection. At that time, however, there were only a few details, among which was the speculation that Sony might offer the new DRM protection for the sale of “used” eBooks. Considering that second-hand sales of digital books continue to exist in a gray area in many countries, the usefulness of having […]
Update May 18, 2014: Although Adobe’s cloud services have previously experienced some downtime issues, the overall impact hadn’t been very severe. However, the recent Adobe network disruption was quite annoying because of its long duration. The DRM provider officially confirmed the problems on May 14 at 11:30 PM (German time). Initially, the error was apparently underestimated, as they announced that the issue would be resolved within two hours. In the […]
We already know that the growth of the German eBook market was successful in 2013 from Thalia and eBook.de. Both retailers reported an 80 percent growth in the digital sector for the previous year. The Cologne-based publishing group Bastei Lübbe released figures yesterday for the period from April 1 to December 31, 2013, which are at least as successful as they are interesting. Apart from the general revenue figures, the […]
With the announcement that Adobe intended to enforce the new DRM protection by July 2014, leaving content providers with no choice, the company sparked outrage in the eBook community. The new copy protection does not work with older eBook readers, which means the devices would require a software update. However, not all devices will receive such an update, especially not older eReaders. Adobe ultimately pulled the emergency brake after two […]
On Monday, we reported on how Adobe intended to enforce the new DRM protection, which will be introduced with Content Server 5, starting in July 2014 through coercive measures. It was originally announced in a webinar with Datalogics that the new software would no longer work with Digital Editions 2 or RMSDK 9.x for content providers from July onward. Such a move would mean that eBooks downloaded from Content Server […]
