In a move that should surprise no one after those Amazon sales figures were announced for 2009. Sony has announced by the end of the year they will dump their own proprietary DRM format and will sell and support only ePub format eBooks. Doing this will just place them more in line with their other eInk competitors Cool-er, Elonex, Astak, Plastic Logic (Who does not have a eBook Reader out even though they get mentioned in articles all the time.) and this list is growing bigger every day. All these eBook Readers can use Adobe Digital Editions for their DRM authentication and transfer of Adobe DRM eBooks to the device so no surprise there.
I am beginning to think all basic eBook Readers from now on will, and probably should, provide the same DRM format support of Adobe’s PDF/ePub simply because Amazon through their overly possessive licensing practices basically killed any chance of third party eBook Readers supporting BOTH Amazon’s Mobi DRM format and Adobe’s PDF/ePub DRM format and there really never was a good reason to use any of the other DRM formats I have only heard about. I swear that most of those other DRMs were probably created by nerdy college students and were only used by like two people on the whole planet at their peak.
At least things are becoming much more simple format wise in the eBook Reader wars. You have Amazon on one side with their variations on Mobi and remember even they bowed to the textbook publishers and put PDF support on the Kindle DX and then there is “everyone else” using Adobe PDF/ePub. So depending on how sales go I would imagine this is the final show down in regards to what format becomes the industry standard. In a perfect world I hope all supposedly smart people wake up really soon and realize DRM is a waste of their time and money not to mention I could Google three available python scripts that can take out all of these DRMs in less than a minute but that’s just me refusing to live in La La Land.
Now if only all those existing eInk eBook Readers could be tweaked to display the typical business supported PDF format clearly in a decent font we might have an interesting fight on our hands.
Oh and Amazon, just to get the shock and awe out of the way… Apple supports PDF at the OS level, and are the main platform for most Adobe products, and pretty much always has been. Good luck as an also ran!
UPDATE! A really interesting list of all eBook Devices that officially support Adobe Digital Editions with pictures and descriptions. Basically if the device is not on this list I would think twice and remember kids promises of someday doing this or that are not functional in real life.
Tags: SonyTags: Sony
Sandra wrote,
This is probably a smart move on Sony’s part since Barnes and Noble will be selling ebooks and currently state they won’t be locked. Having proprietary formats drives potential readers and thus, customers, away.
It will be interesting to follow this development.
Thanks for posting about it.
Sandra
http://www.AspenMountainPress.com
Link | August 13th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Amie wrote,
If you look at other format wars, the porn industry has ended up deciding the format. Beta vs. VHS and VHS vs. DVD off the top of my head. Since Amazon isn’t exactly friendly to porn and romance readers, I can’t think that it will end well for them if they don’t make some changes.
Link | August 13th, 2009 at 1:33 pm