Adobe Digital Editions has been updated with enhanced DRM support and flexibility, now at version 1.5. Adobe DE is a Flash based, lightweight, internet application used for reading PDF’s and the IDPF’s ePub document formats.
The enhancements to their DRM means that users activate their DRM protection on a named basis, this allows you to move your protected eBooks/eDocuments across platforms and mobile devices, of course we’d rather not have any DRM (or at least just social DRM). There is also a limit of 6 desktop and 6 handheld devices that you can activate, which should be okay for most people in the short term but over a period of several years we are likely to need to activate more devices than this, particlarly if we have to re-format our OS. We shall have to see what the future holds for those needing to activate more devices.
DE 1.5 will also run on a Mac OSX Leopard (10.5) and has been localised to English, French and German.
It was reported that there were one of two glitches for some people when updating their current version of Adobe DE, with a fix here. According to the Adobe Forum though, this has now been resolved.
There is however one rather large flaw with DE 1.5 in that there is still no support for text justification. Peter Sorotokin, one of the DE developers, commented about this on MobileRead. He stated the reason is that “we need to pull new low-level line layout code which would support bidi, glyph composition, etc. and we are hesitant to add features to the current branch” – perhaps we will see this feature in version 2.0.
If you wish to try out the new Adobe DE 1.5 then you can grab it here.
“users activate _their_ DRM _protection_”
It’s truly despicable the way your corporate wordsmith twists the true purpose of DRM to mollify end users.
“…allows you to move your protected eBooks/eDocuments across platforms and mobile devices,”
Sort of like moving a dead-tree book from a house to a car to an aunt’s house to a cousin’s house, to the local used-book dealer and on to the next owner, right? Ohhh, wait…
“… but over a period of several years we are likely to need to activate more devices than this, particlarly if we have to re-format our OS.”
Or you could have written the true intent of the actual wording, something like, “don’t worry, even though we allow you a half dozen transfers now, even though you’ve had a losing experience with all the reformatting/reinstalling windows ends up needing over several years of use and virus/spam/keylogging infestations, we’ll be there to increase the transfer numbers when you really need them, unlike this:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2008/04/drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys.ars
or here for broken link: http://tinyurl.com/cp5mxc
or this: http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=73666
or this: http://www.yourdigitalrights.net/2008/07/yahoo-turns-off-drm-servers-kicks-paying-customer-in-the-teeth/
or here for broken link:
http://tinyurl.com/bxc4op
You might want to add a paragraph reassuring the end-user you’ll be around (regardless of the economy or acquisitions or competition) if/when the end-user outrage is widespread enough for you to reverse any decision on shutting down DRM key servers or supplying whatever’s needed for access if/when you decide running a server for a discontinued product/service/strategy is no longer feasible and your publishers may drag your rear-ends into court if you decide to open up the DRM…
“We shall have to see what the future holds for those needing to activate more devices.”
Or in other words, don’t worry, if we’re around and DRM is still around as we fully expect, we may decide to through end-users a bone or two.
http://www.gutenberg.us/ is turning around in is grave.
Extinction is the process in which groups of companies (sectors) die out. If the incorporation rate is less than the dissolution rate over time, extinction results. Extinction is a natural result of evolution. Companies go extinct when they are unable to adapt to changes in the environment or compete effectively with other companies. Well over 99 per cent of the companies that have ever existed have gone extinct. Moore’s law is accelerating extinction by eliminating the dinosaurs that can’t compete or evolve in a world where the consumers have ever-increasing computing power at their fingertips.
As long as it’s digitized (or can be digitized by the end user) it can’t be stopped from being disseminated. The companies that can figure out how to make/distribute a product/service that is of value to the consumer, priced the same way McDonald’s prices their food in foreign countries, who doesn’t obsess over the false premise of every digital copy in the wild as a lost sale and who doesn’t call their customers and potential customers pirates (aaarrrrrrrr!) will survive and thrive.
Companies stuck in the mindset and used to squeezing every cent in every venue in every format, used to charging customers for the same product after a child damages the original copy instead of replacing it for free, used to the revenue from selling multiple copies of a fragile, easily scratched medium when tough, extremely hard to scratch mediums were invented years or decades earlier but not adopted because the companies would lose revenue from sales of second, third or more copies of easily scratched mediums…companies protected from competition by copyright and patent law hideously distorted from what the original constitutional framers intended…companies protected by cruel and unusual penalties for copyright/patent violation…
Those companies that fail to adapt to the new digital reality will go extinct. And unfortunately take the artists and content producers with them. Those companies that can adapt, that can offer a value proposition to their consumers, that don’t regard their customers as thieving schemers, or burglars skulking through neighborhoods at night armed with skeleton keys to the neighborhood media…has the reader decided who will survive and thrive, and who will be forgotten?