ebook reader DRM hell - and why I hate DRM

There have been many articles on the web over the years about DRM - digital rights management - putting forward both the pros and the cons of the technology. The basic premis is the copyright holders ability to make sure they get paid for their work, which is perfectly sensible and correct. DRM failed in spectacular fashion with the music industry, so that now every music download site you use does not have DRM enabled. The music industry is doing extremely well and selling billions of tracks, so the need for DRM has been completely disproved.

However, the books and video industries are going to have to go through the same learning curve and get rid of this stupid technology as it is a real barrier to people legally purchasing material.

Here is my little tale of woe , and bear in mind when I tell you this tale I have 25 years experience in the IT industry, goodness know's what some people would do if hit by the same problems.

I borrowed a friends Sony PRS-505 ebook reader to play with and see if I liked the idea, and I have to say that I do so far, apart from buying books for it. I visited the Waterstones ebook web site and bought an ebook, and this is when my problems started. I needed to install a piece of Windows software from Adobe - their DRM application - which does not work on Linux. So I brought up my Windows virtual machine and installed it there, no luck it couldn't see the ereader. Now , I had previously installed another ebook piece of software called Calibre which worked perfectly with ereader, so it was not obvious what the problem was, so off to the Adobe help pages.

The issue was that I had to not only install the Sony ereader software, but I also had to upgrade the firemware ( the program that makes the ereader work) before I could progress. I would think for a large percentage of the population this would be game over, and they would give up. Don't forget here that Calibre has been working perfectly from day one, and if I had been able to just download the file I had bought, I could have spent this wasted hour reading my book I had paid for.

You also need to bear in mind , that with any firmware upgrade, if you get it wrong, you can completely mess up your device, to the point it has to go back to the shop to be fixed.

I eventually got this all sorted and the file onto the ereader - Iain M Banks "Matter" by the way - and hopefully I should have no further issues, but what a mess and a complete waste of my time and effort. I spend hundreds, if not thousands of pounds a year on books, and this is just very annoying.

This is a real barrier to using this device , and I started to understand, but not agree with, why people just buy into Steve Jobs locked down proprietary hell with the Apple iPod,iPhone and iPad using iTunes as it all just works. This is not the way technology was meant to be, and it is a disgrace that our Governments have allowed the companies to visit this nonsense on us.

O'Reilly , the technology book sellers, have solved this problem with a far more elegant solution, they just put your name and details watermarked into everybook you download. At a stroke 99.99% of people are never going to allow their bought material onto the web, would you want your name splashed over every P2P network? I know I don't. You also wouldn't have to be a particularly clever lawyer to find out where it had come from either.

If anyone from Adobe or Waterstones ever reads this post, for goodness sakes re-think this stupid policy and just make it easy for your customers to buy your books. Go visit the O'Reilly site and look how they do it with their Safari library and you will be doing your customers a big favour.

Adobe Air, The BBC and Ubuntu Linux a perfect partnership

Many months ago the BBC was rightly lambasted for trying to force a service on the fee paying public of the UK with a system that only worked with Microsoft. After a massive protest from the MAC and Linux world, their little Redmond toadies were either sacked or moved sideways, and proper public server was introduced. Why anyone could think they could get away with this is beyond me, but maybe there are still some ivory towers in the lofty spires of broadcasting house.

I have been watching the back issues of many comedy programmes on the web, and they have been working fine on Linux for some time, but today I noticed that there was a download option. It might have been there for a while but I hadn't noticed it before.

The upshot is that there is now an Adobe Air application written by the BBC for all platforms ,including the MAC and Linux, and installing it was ridiculously easy. You just click on the download button and follow the clicks.

I'm currently downloading a test program, and all appears well.

I know there is an argument to be had here about the protection of rights of the programme makers, but as we already pay for the BBC, the argument about who actually owns the right in my view is up for grabs. I would contend it is the license fee payer, however I digress.

This is a great new feature, and one well worth looking at. Unfortunately if you live outside of the UK, you won't be able to get the content, that is unless you get TOR to pretend that you do ;-).

Floating with Abobe Air on Linux in the Cloud

As I'm sure you already know, cloud computing and new client software that will take advantage of our applications moving to the cloud are coming at us thick and fast. We have Google Gears offering us Google apps when we are not connected to the web, AJAX that is being used by just about every to offer richer applications. We have Mozilla Prism, which is based on their Webrunner technology and now Adobe Air. I also believe Microsoft have an offering with Silverlight, but as it is not cross platform I won't be able to use it. There is a Linux port called Moonlight, but I hate products that are not designed from the ground up to be cross platform, that is very anti web.

As a recent convert to using twitter (@codfather), I started to look around for clients that offered more functionality than just the bog standard web interface. I found a great new web application call tweetdeck. Now this requires Adobe Air to use, as it is cross platform development environment, very much like Java, but designed for the next generation of web applications.

Installing this onto Linux is very straight forward, the instructions on their web site are great, all you need to do is do the following:


1) Download the binary installation program to your home directory by clicking on the link
2) Open a terminal and make the binary file executable - good old Linux security
3) Run the Binary

nick@nick-laptop:~$ chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
nick@nick-laptop:~$ ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin


Once you have done this very simple operation, the installation process is done through a point and click installer.Once it has been installed, you will have two new application links in your Gnome Applications --> Accessories menu bar.

Installing applications couldn't be easier, you just identify an Adobe Air application you want to install in Firefox, and just click on it. They all have a .air extension, and firefox will tell you it's an Air application and will offer to open it with the Adobe Air installer. Give this a go by installing tweetdeck.

I have installed this on all my laptops and desktops to give it a good test and to try and shake down any issues. I'm currently using it on my Eeepc with Eeebuntu installed as I type this. Now a twitter friend of mine , @glynmoody, has found some potential memory hogging, but I haven't seen this as of yet.

I would definitely recommend giving it a go and trying out the many applications that are available for it on the Adobe Air web site , but also out on the web.

I suspect we have not seen all the potential that this new web development has to offer yet, but the initial products are good enough for us start enjoying them.