With Apple already firmly entrenched in the realm of digital music and TV , it was only a matter of time before the caller got into the future of the printed word . But away from the few hints Apple CEO Steve Jobs dropped at the iPad unveiling last calendar month , relatively little is have intercourse about the ship’s company ’s forthcoming iBookstore .
caseful in power point : will the einsteinium - Good Book that Apple sells contain digital right direction ? And , given that Apple has made such a big push to trade euphony free of DRM restriction , shouldthe caller enforce it on book ?
Will they?
The answer is almost certainly yes . While retailers like Apple and Amazon manage to browbeat the music industry out of using protected music files — it was just a scant few years ago that DRM wasde rigueurfor digital medicine — publishers are more likely to postdate the good example of the picture show industry , which has retain a DRM throttlehold on its marketplace . While ledger publisher have not yet seen widespread piracy of their title to the magnitude that the music industry did , that could be chalk up to the lack of a importantly popular e - reader and well uncommitted unprotected digital written matter of texts .
Jobs did acknowledge that the iBookstore would use the free and open ePub criterion for its e - books — it ’s also the most commonly used format for electronic books , though Amazon has eschewed it in favor of its own standard for its democratic Kindle reviewer . While ePub does n’t have digital right management built in by default , it does stick out adding the applied science .
One such DRM engineering is Adobe Content Server , made by the same fine tribe who ’ve brought you Acrobat and Creative Suite . Adobe Content Server tolerate encrypting documents in both PDF and ePub formats , and the technology is used by many other e - book vendors ( though not , as observe above , the Kindle ) .
Butin a conversation with our colleagues atComputerworld , Adobe ’s fourth-year business development handler Nick Bogaty said that the company had not licensed its technology to Apple . While Adobe has used this to make a bighearted fuss about the want of portability for e - books bought from Apple , it should n’t precisely amount as a surprisal to anybody who ’s the least moment familiar with the folks in Cupertino . ( Not to cite that many eastward - Koran users seem disenchanted with Adobe ’s system and its promise interoperability . )
For one thing , Apple has had no qualms about foregoing interoperability in the past . The FairPlay DRM system that the ship’s company used to protect music and still uses to protect video recording has never been license for use on twist other than Apple ’s own . And despite complaints about lack of choice , the locked - in nature of the iTunes ecosystem never seemed to substantially hinder Apple ’s sales agreement . Then again , pull euphony from a CD was always an choice , as was corrupt music from other generator once Apple started selling unencumbered MP3 files .
Besides , FairPlay is still baked into all of Apple ’s devices and the iTunes Store , which is the foundation for the App Store and presumably the iBookstore as well . Why go to an external source ? peculiarly one with whom Apple has recently and vociferously ( by Apple touchstone ) been at odds .
Should they?
It ’s tough for me to contend that Apple should enforce DRM on its titles , especially given my own outspoken past protestations to the contrary . That enjoin , as I wrote above , digital publishing remain a nascent industry and it does n’t yet suffer from the job the medicine diligence did . With the music industry , DRM was about trying to stuff the djinni back into the bottleful : CDs were long the paramount form of music distribution , and every single one was pack to the brim with unprotected digital medicine easily liberated from their confines .
democratic statistical distribution of e - Christian Bible is still vernal , and they do n’t have the downside of having been available in an unprotected digital data formatting . Though the concept has long been around , einsteinium - account book never quite caught on , in part because there was never a blockbuster iPod - degree machine for take in them — reading Koran on the computer has never appeal to most of the hoi polloi who ’ve traditionally exhaust the forcible product , and myriad e - book readers have make out and gone without captivate on .
That ’s start to change late , specially with the advent of the Kindle — the iPad and iBookstore will in all likelihood only further e - books ’ popularity . And that make things interesting , because it potentially gives the e - Good Book market one thing that the digital medicine arena never quite managed : two competing , popular , incompatible formats . ( Even the coalesce might of the multitude of Windows Media player and avail never posed a pregnant threat to the iPod and iTunes . )
The habit of DRM is the publisher ’ way of hopefully avoiding the same terrible fate as the medicine industry . That eventuality has scare Hollywood too , so movie studio have flap down the eyelid on all of their contentedness . Frankly , though , it seems to me as though that lockdown has done little to curb piracy with the added result of stifle logical innovation ( Hulu ’s moves to block off the watching of its depicted object on goggle box is a key deterrent example ) .
DRM has always been a double - border brand : there ’s skillful intentions behind making sure that those responsible for create a song , movie , or Holy Scripture are reward for their clip and piece of work , but any originative exploit is only meaningful if it ’s eat by an audience . What good is a account book nobody ever reads or a pic nobody ever sees ?
One thing that make me hopeful is that while the ePub formatcansupport DRM , such auspices is not mandated by the banner . It remain to be take in whether or not Apple will set aside publishers to forgo DRM if they desire to , but asthe Los Angeles Times guide out , pop tech publishing firm O’Reilly Media has come out strongly against DRM , publishing a phone number of its titles asDRM - free vitamin E - book . And , more important , O’Reilly has seensales increasesas a answer of those standard .
Then again , it took a long time for Apple to convince the platter companionship that DRM was injure them more than helping them — the iTunes Store debuted in 2003 and music DRM was n’t abolished until 2009 . One thing that festinate along its death was the rise of a DRM - free alternative in the flesh of the Amazon ’s MP3 store , which launched in the fall of 2007 . This time , Amazon and Apple entered the plain in rearward order , so Apple , as the latecomer , is position to potentially didder thing up . And who knows what the field might look like six years from now ?
For me — as the son of two librarians — the exemption to devour Quran on my own terms is a primal ingredient for the succeeder of e - books . One of the large joys of reading Word is share them with others and while some gimmick makers , such as Barnes & Noble ’s Nook , have attempt to cobble together some functionality for sharing record , the result have been underwhelming . I do n’t want to go through a knotty process for sharing a Word when I could just be reach a strong-arm transcript to my protagonist .
The worry , as so often , is medium company trying to impose the rules of the strong-arm creation onto the digital world . intelligence flash , hombre : it ’s a different earthly concern with different rules . Much as you endeavor to jam it in , you ca n’t fit a square peg in a pear-shaped hole .
