One of the boldest parts of JK Rowling's strategy to self-publish her Harry Potter e-books is the associated lack of DRM and how it has forced e-book retailers to fulfil sales of her book for no commission.
Although Rowling is selling her e-books via her own ecommerce site, she wants to ensure that people can enjoy them on whatever device they have -- be it a Kindle, an iPad, a Sony Reader or a Nook. As such she is opting to digitally watermark her e-books as opposed to encrypting them with strict DRM.
Currently, both Amazon and Apple have restricted their e-book files so that they can only be read on the Kindle and the iPad respectively. But in order for Kindle and Apple to be able to offer their owners access to the e-books of the biggest selling author of the decade, they will have to create an exception to this rule, and forgo the 30 percent commission that they usually charge authors or publishers. This is a big precedent and perhaps indicates the start of a sea change. Will there be a sliding commission scale for authors depending on their stature? Will they finally scrap their proprietary DRM?
Many e-book retailers (including Sony, Kobo and Nook) sell ePub files that have been encrypted with Adobe's DRM, which allows files to be shared across any devices that have the same encyrption system, but restricts readers to a limited number of downloads and devices. This is more flexible than Apple's FairPlay and Kindle DRM, which only work if you have an Apple or Kindle device respectively.
Google has tried a more open approach with Google Editions with "Books in the Cloud". By storing e-books online, Google will let readers access their books on any device wherever they are, provided it connects to the web.
Rowling's approach -- where she eschews strict DRM in favour of digital watermarking -- is even more flexible. While strict DRM ensures that you are the rights holder before you can access the content, digital watermarking (sometimes known as social DRM) simply associates the file to the purchaser. This means that e-books can be used across any platform, but if they are uploaded to file-sharing websites, the copyright holder should be able to tell which purchaser was responsible (although any file-sharer worth their salt would know how to remove such a watermark).
The issue that all of this raises is the complete lack of standardisation of digital rights management techniques across the industry -- with many more competitors than we saw in past format battles such as VHS versus Betamax or Blu-Ray versus HD DVD.
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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
