Thoughts on Ebook DRM Standards

I’ve recently been performing some research into so-called “social DRM” as it applies to digital files for my own knowledge bank. I’ve been very interested in the approaches to DRM shown by groups such as The Pragmatic Programmers and ebooks purchased from outlets like Lulu, where the name of the purchaser is automatically embedded within the purchased file in order to provide it with some measure of discouraging sharing/piracy.

iTunes has done this from the start, and even though they have dropped the traditional notion of DRM from their music files now, they still mark each and every file you download with the email address of the Apple ID used to purchase the song. It’s not used in any sort of enforcement application (that we know of to date), but knowing it’s there stops some people from posting the tracks publicly or sharing them with anyone who is not a close personal friend or relative (my conjecture).

In doing this research, I ran across a two year old blog post from Bill McCoy of Adobe. He has some words to say about the same, which is fascinating coming from the GM of their ePublishing department. His comments are in reaction to the Steve Jobs note from 2007 regarding music and DRM—something that ended up happening less than two years after the fact. I also ran into some more recent comments from McCoy, speaking to the establishment of a DRM standard that is cross-platform instead of complete advocacy for the removal of traditional DRM systems from ebook titles.

Let’s talk about why this isn’t feasible and how we can learn from the past.

First, some quotes from the Steve Jobs piece.


Ebooks have no equivalent to the CD in terms of the adoption of digital files. I can’t just shove my books into my computer and receive ebook versions of the same. This is a fundamental difference in the adoption of digital books versus digital music (and also in the adoption of downloadable video).




This is a good basic description of what DRM is and how it operates. Apple holds all the keys in this situation. Jobs goes on to describe three potential outcomes for the DRM situation in the music industry. The first:


This is the current state of ebook DRM. Multiple vendors, multiple locking schemes. Books downloaded on one device won’t necessarily play on another. Worse yet, if your DRM provider either goes out of business or shuts off their DRM servers, you’re left with a file that doesn’t work any more and has been stripped of its worth. Customers don’t like being ripped off.

The second option:


This has been suggested by many as a standardized counterpart to the Epub file standard. Since the file format has found standardization, why not standardize a locking scheme? Every file will be encrypted with the same hash and method, and then everybody’s files will work on everybody’s machines, since the machine manufacturers have been given access to the same. McCoy actually has spoken in the recent past concerning this very idea.

The problem is that it’s doomed to fail. Jobs knew this:


This, of course, leads to the inevitable conclusion as to why DRM is a bad thing. It’s a neverending game of cat-and-mouse with people who are trying to unlock their files. A universal system will be broken faster than you can invent it. DVD CSS encyption was broken due to this very principle—having the key available to every device out there only ensured that the cryptographic scheme would be broken eventually. All of this leads to changes to the system that can only inconvenience your best customers, who are the ones who like giving you their money in exchange for a product or service.

The third option Jobs discusses:



Clearly (and thankfully), cooler heads prevailed in the music industry—or quite possibly, they didn’t have a choice—and this argument won out. DRM is quickly disappearing from the music scene, and there have been no reports that sales have suffered as a result. Customers are unencumbered with files locked to a particular ID or account, and the music industry still gets its money. Luckily, they figured this out before it was too late.

This is where electronic publishing needs to go, and it needs to get there faster if it is going to survive. The temptation in these tough economic times is to grab hold of intellectual property and refuse to let it go unless its absolutely necessary, but the lessons of the past indicate that to be precisely the opposite action required. Opening up the floodgates for digital content and making it easy to consume and use appears to be the most beneficial path available. Making it convenient and easy for consumers to purchase your goods means more of them will do so. Happy customers means making money.

Not long after Steve Jobs wrote his letter to the music industry asking for the removal of DRM, Bill McCoy wrote this:




“Social DRM” seems to be the future of protecting your digital content from would-be pirates and sharers of information. In the ebook world, this means that the bottom of each page, or perhaps the inside page, of an electronic book is stamped with your name and perhaps your account number or other personally identifying information. This acts as a significant deterrent to those customers who would openly break copyright laws and choose to share these unlocked documents with others or with download sites.

McCoy outlines three options in his most recent article as to the future of ebook DRM, which he sees in a unified format and application:

There are many possible roads to Rome. One is “social DRM“: not explicitly limiting copying, but “watermarking” user information into content, visibly (“Ex Libris …”) and/or invisibly. Another is that the industry, perhaps through a body like the IDPF, would adopt a de jure ebook DRM open standard. Lastly, a particular vendor’s solution might become a de facto cross-platform standard, with support across a critical mass of desktops and devices.

Only one of those roads actually leads to Rome for both publishers and customers: social DRM. A de jure DRM standard would be broken unbelievably quickly, which would limit its effectiveness and drive customers crazy when the industry tried to fix it. As an example of this type of DRM, he (earlier in the article) references the DVD CSS implementation, where every disc and every player has the same implementation of DRM. That system was defeated years ago, and in any case certainly hasn’t stopped people from pirating DVDs. Putting all the eggs in one vendor’s basket likewise seems to be a very poor idea, as it puts pricing and distribution under monopolistic control (but discussion of Kindle will have to wait for another post).

Social DRM does everything it needs to. It provides customers with a file they can use and even lend to people within a certain circle—something they can already do with print books—and it provides publishers with at least some kind of buffer that people aren’t going to be throwing up complete collections on Web sites for the entire world to download.

It’s easy to say that ebook publishing is in its infancy, but the truth is that it’s not. Ebooks have been around for longer than a decade; this is merely the second go at them. The first one didn’t make it because of cost and platform restrictions. It’s too early to say what’s going to happen this time around, but I do hope that the publishing industry takes its cues from the music industry and makes the right choice for the customer.

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