I do agree that non-DRM would be good but I wanted to point out one incorrect statement:
"..Kindle, which can read only Amazon-formatted e-books"

That is incorrect. I have over 200 books on my Kindle and only 4 of them were bought through Amazon or are in azw format. The device can read all the popular ebook formats (AZW, TXT, MOBI, PRC, EPUB and LIT)- it is just the books bought through Amazon that can't be read on any other device.

To use the iPod/iTunes analogy - the iPod could play any compatible file put on it but only iPods could play songs purchased from iTunes. The DRM is in the file, not the device.

I think it should be noted that one publisher has learned the drm lesson, and they learned it in 1999 when they started publishing e-books. Baen books has never used drm and does not belive in it. its webscriptions service has been providing e-books for a decade now, and they offer hundreds of e-books free, in their free library

Following lunan.
Many Role playing game publishers offer PDFs of their books which are watermarked but have no DRM.

This is ideal since you can reduce piracy (just cancel the account) without attacking consumers. Attacking media consumers for wanting to acquire your product is inherently counter productive even if it is done in the name of profit.

Remember folks, you cannot stop piracy, only adjust the proportion of people who choose to acquire media that way. This is a battle that is won more easily in the court of public opinion then in a legal court room.

If this wasn't the case then how would Wikipedia et al survive.

I think the E-readers are still way too much money to consider them an alternative to paper books. How about we look at this market differently.
I don't get why Amazon didn't just raise unit price of each e-book to amortize the value of the kindle over time. Something like, get a Kindle for $100 and then the rest will be paid out over time, (which would be similar to how cell phones got to be so ubiquitous at first). With higher sales, larger economy of scale will lower production costs and drive down the price in the mid-term (while profits from both book royalties and hardware sales start pouring in). It works for video game companies, it would work better here. Take my advise Amazon, and in exchange I'll ask for the credit and a free Kindle.

Stewart, I'm happy to reassure you that the future (and the current situation) is nowhere near as bleak as you fear it may become.

Your Kindle can read books that aren't from Amazon, and that's a popular thing to do. There are tens of thousands of free books (and books for which you pay) that can be read on the Kindle that are not from Amazon.

For example, it can read txt files (just like mp3 files, they can not contain Digital Rights Management...DRM) without conversion.

It's also easy (and legal) to convert EPUB files to be read on the Kindle.

I'm surprised the experts you consulted couldn't give an answer to your questions. Of course, the situation could change in the future, but the current situation is pretty clear. I think they are commonly understood by Kindle users: there are several forums out there where you can ask questions like this.

1. Can you loan e-books to a friend? If they are compatible file types and you have an appropriate license, you can give them to them (loaning isn't quite applicable here, unless you give them the e-reader). For example, if I read a .txt file of a public domain book, I could send it to someone with any of the device types you name, and that person could read it on that device.

2. If you upgrade to another reader, can you read your library on it? It will again, depend on the formats and the licenses. Currently, .azw, .azw1, and .tpz files (the proprietary ones from the Amazon store...the latter two are the same, with a different extension only being the result of the delivery method) could not legally be read on a device besides a Kindle, iPhone or iPod touch. That may change in the future.

I've also written about the use models of music and e-books...and the difference seems to me to be an argument that favors DRM for e-books over music. Music is typically consumed repeatedly, books are commonly consumed once...although some fans (or fen, if you prefer) do read the same book many times. So, a single time listening to a song is less likely to forestall a purchase than a single time reading a book. That doesn't mean that DRM is the right way to go, but it isn't an argument against it for e-books, in my opinion.

I'd be happy to point you towards more specific information, if you like. I've found that Kindle users tend to be friendly and helpful...a post on one of the forums alerted me to this blog entry, for example. :)

I won't buy anything with DRM (which is properly called Technology Users Rights Denial Systems, aka TURDS). In fact, it is *imnpossible* to buy anything with DRM - because you don't really own it. Amazon proved that by taking back _1984_ - you've only rented it and you don't even know for how long.

So there's no reason to buy an ebook reader, is there? Waste of money.

Hi, sorry if I missed the core in there, but your headline seems to say that certain options must not be permitted to exist. Can you summarize, so that I could pass your argument along to others?

tx, jd/adobe

I buy far more books than music and hence the ereader for me is an excellent idea and I hope that they continue with such

About lending e-books. Why not just make it so that when you transfer an e-book the old copy disappears? So just like a normal book there is only one copy of it in existence that you own, and because of that you will want that book back at some point or you can just gift it to someone.

E-readers should be able to "read" every text format out there.(Or at least most of them :) )
There must be some kind of protection for copy and use to maintain some kind of order.
Limit the transfer only from e-reader to e-reader (or from an account to other account ) and the download should be only from the online stores. Watermark the books so it's known who bought the book in the first place, and when a "new" book is loaded on a e-reader it should check if there are other copies of this book somewhere else and if there is: Lock the book and alert the e-store(or someone)

Sorry if this is already done, never used e-reeder and probably won't in the near future (not from US). But i'm looking forward to having one :) so i do care what happens to this new tech.

I just bought a 32$ writers guide for 20$ downloaded. what I did not notice till after I bought is was that if was only for 180 days in .vbk making it cheaper for me to buy the book insted of paying for a two semester deal

eBooks are having the same problem that downloadable games are having in that they leave the price on them comparable to the bought version as to not undercut retailers. They do this even though the production and distrobution cost are throught hte floor on the download version. There is a price point on books or anyother thing that once you pay it, you have a need to hold something tangible in your hand. And no one likes being told what they can and cannot do with something they have bought.

I have a Sony touch, and prior to that I had the Gemstar 1100 ( .RB books). I also have been getting *all* my books through Baen. Since I'm a SciFi specific reader, Baen has everything I want to read. When I upgraded from my Gemstar to the Sony, it was a cake walk to download the free calibre, and have it mass convert 800+ Rocket ebooks into epub format, which is compatible with the Sony. Also Baen even has books for the Kindle, and will send it to your kindle device. any book that I want that's not available at BAEN, i can generally get it as a LIT book. And it's pretty easy to get a lit book into another format, that you can pull into calibre and convert it into what ever format you need to read with. So, boycott Amazon Books, until they get their crap together. Every book I have i've paid for. At least baen is fairly priced for their books. Especially when you consider, that there's really only 1 copy of the book, and your just getting a copy of it. So why the high prices? There's not printing costs, or shipping costs involved anymore.

ereading books is krap.sorry but you could not pay me enough to stop reading real books and collecting real books that i can buy/sell whenever i feel like.

and i won over 1,000 scifi and history books.lots of rare harcover 1st editions.

hahahahaha !!! how much will you get for one of your DRM used ebooks. (NOTHING)

I have a few requirements for books.
1) I lend and borrow books
2) I buy used books
3) I read on the toilet, in the bath, on my bed and on the bus.

Until ebooks can meet all the above requirements, I'm killing trees.

Note that the author of the article includes a comment about paying $10 for a legal ebook. He or she has already been suckered by Amazon into thinking that $10 is the only price for an ebook. Most small publishers and university presses selling specialized monographs cannot support a $10 price point for ebooks. Amazon is pricing these books at $10 even though they are paying more than $10 from many publishers. They are taking a loss now to set an artificially low price point to pressure publishers later. Also, they can raise the price for consumers once they have enough of the market to themselves. To use the author's own point, books are not the same as music and there is no reason why an ebook version of a $50 hardcover archaeology text should cost the same as Mariah Carey's new MP3 download just because Amazon says it is so.

I have been reading ebooks since the firs Palm reader - which is now free and available for Iphone, windows mobile, blackberry etc. I own many and would like to loan them out. I prefer the ereader (palm pdb) over the mobi and have yet to try the epub. I am already a O'Reilly person so I will probably try the epub mobile if it is compatible - that will give me 4 readers on my mobile device!. Remove DRM and let's keep moving on! Read-on!

As a consumer I'm beyond sick of companies telling me how and where I can use their content. When I purchase something, I want to be able to transfer it from device to device and use it on whatever gadget best suits me at the time.

As an independent author who makes a living thanks to people who purchase and read my eBooks, I have to admit that going non-DRM was a little frightening at first. That didn't stop me from finding an online retailer who would provide my work DRM free to everyone who chooses to enjoy my books. Why?

The proof is in the results. When I announced that my books would be available through Smashwords (this DRM free wonderland for indie authors), my readers sent me numerous emails thanking me for not limiting them. Many of my readers see DRM as a punishment for the honest consumer, and I have to agree.

My books are still sold through sites that force DRM onto the books, but at least any of my readers can choose to grab a copy of my work through Smashwords instead and be free of the irritation provided by most online retailers.

I'd rather see an article on here about, "Why the e-reader market needs to DIE!" Get a virus in it, its done. Nowhere to charge? Done. New tech? Done. Dropped? Guess what. DONE! I don't really know that many people that want to carry around a few hundred books all the time, anyway.

I agree with the author that DRM needs to disappear, but someone needs to do a little more research. And in more than one area, I'd say from a couple of other comments here.

Apple didn't institute it's DRM to lock in consumers to the iTunes store and iPods. That's another piece of anti-Apple FUD that just won't die.

DRM was mandated by the music labels. Starting with EMI (if I remember correctly) Apple was eventually able to convince the labels to drop DRM.

FWIW, Apple's DRM was probably the least onerous format and allowed users to share music files across several computers. At first it was limited to 7 computers but later dropped to 5. In fact, Apple actually gave users a rather simple way to remove DRM if they wanted.

I'm surprise that in the 'research' for this article the author completely missed the leading provider of econtent for libraries. http://www.overdrive.com/ Overdrive provides lending services for hundreds of libraries including the New York public library. They provide over 150,000 copy protected ebooks, including new works like the latest Dan Brown novel. As someone that works in library services I can say that this service is unbelievably valuable, they provide the lendable copy of the ebook in a self expiring format. Simply put we can lend an ebook that deletes itself in 14 days, and the system also automatically handles stock, we can't lend more copies then our institution owns, and finally it eliminates the overhead of books returns and collections. When the 14 days are passed the system releases a new copy for loan because the previously lent copy is auto expired.

One exception it can't loan books to a kindle, by design kindle has a 40 digit ID and Amazon has taken legal action to prevent any other service from supporting a 40 digit DRM unit ID.