DRM Free E-Books

I found an article that talks about how a big publisher, Tor Books, is planning on dropping DRM completely from their e-books. DRM stands for digital rights management. DRM is a technique used to control the distribution of information and content and limit its use.  DRM is an adaptive technology that can change to accommodate different industry specifications. By doing this DRM helps with copyright protection and illegal distribution. The most common technique DRM uses is encryption. The digital data is encrypted to ensure that it can only run on a certain platform and cannot be copied or transferred. DRM also uses restrictive licensing agreements to ensure that the item purchased is controlled. The main reason DRM is used by various industries is to attempt to fight piracy and limit copyright infringement.

The article talks about how DRM makes life harder for the customer, begging the question why use it if it makes you lose customers. DRM is also quite ineffective. DRM is not working as it should because it does not stop piracy or file sharing. Encryptions on DRM can be broken. Asides from the encryptions there are many very simple methods that can be used to bypass DRM. Hackers and users are getting more tech savvy everyday and they have come up with simple yet effective methods to avoid DRM. A few ways customers can circumvent DRM are:

·      When dealing with audio files: they can be burned onto a cd and the ripped from that cd into a DRM-free platform. This can be done to all music files. It can also be done to movies.

·      With books: physical copies of books can be scanned into a computer and made into an eBook.

·      With software: there are many types of software that have been developed to specifically decrypt software to a DRM-free form.

So then, why go through the hassle of it all? It is much simpler and more efficient for the publishers to provide DRM-free e-books so that their customers can use any platform they like instead of being tied down to a certain platform. This will probably open the doorway for other publisher to do the same, making the playing field more equal between e-book providers, such as Amazon Barnes&Nobles and Apple, because the prices of the e-books will begin to decrease as well.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/digital-content/232901070