Recently, J K Rowling launched the Pottermore online reading experience that will sell Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free eBooks of the series for the first time. Although devices such as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad lock downloads to their respective platforms to prevent illegal sharing and copying, J K Rowling will be the first author of many to take this open and unprecedented approach. eBooks may soon be available to read on any device, changing the way publishers and the eBook industry conducts their business.

When it comes to textbooks, it is safe to assume that publishers who charge $200+ for their textbooks would not want their student purchasers to have the ability to share their digital textbooks (eTextbooks). With DRM, we can imagine these billion-dollar textbook publishers have only a few major options to protect their texts:

1. Restrict access. To control the use of the eTextbook, publishers could employ a licensing server that locks the use to a specific PC or Mac computer. However, in a student environment, when studying or homework can be done on an iPad, laptop, library computer or even an iPhone- this may limit the usage on college campuses for students.

2. Password Protect. Although passwords can be issued through programs like SharePoint, there are just as many if not more software packages, like PDF Unlocker, which allow users to break into locked the documents. However, if they have the money and the resources to create a non-standard DRM system, they may be successful.

3. Lock digital rights. When offering eTextbooks publishers could secure the digital rights to USB drives or other medias and will therefore charge the same amount or more than their current printed textbooks justified by the cost of the large storage space.

As opposed to the alternatives above, the Pottermore online reading experience is watermarking each eBook at the time of purchase with the identity of the person who purchased the eBook. “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),” said Wired.co.uk. They say this is so authorities can track down the “sharer” of the ebook, but it prevents the purchaser from sharing the eBook with someone who did not pay for it by effectively shaming him or her for his or her illegal behavior (although, people often lend out printed books to friends, and they are not often thought of as book pirates.) This watermark strategy challenges the purchaser removes the anonymity of illegal sharing, and pressures him or her to “do the right thing.”

This evolution of eBook and eTextbook can also be compared to consumer purchasing in the music industry. Although there are several free music-sharing, platforms, there are now over 75 million accounts on iTunes linked to credit cards. Obviously people, somewhere, are choosing to purchase their music as opposed to stealing it digitally. Our conclusion is that if the purchaser can justify the 99 cents it costs to buy a song, they will also justify a reasonable price for an eBook or eTextbook and choose to purchase it instead of steal it.

The Center of Math is looking to discover new and innovative ways to release our eTextbooks in a fully functional, fully interactive and DRM-free way. Therefore, we believe if we charge an affordable and reasonable price for our eTextbooks and grant students free-use of the download (as if they purchased the hard-copy text at the bookstore) they will justify this purchase and choose not to share infringe on the copyright.

But just a thought… if these eTextbooks were to be openly shared with the world and math was made available to anyone and everyone, would that be so bad? We don’t think so.

Question for the Math World: Do you think that eBooks should be DRM-free?

Sources:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2081247/rowling-unveils-pottermore-drm-free-harry-potter-ebooks
http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/itunes-sells-6-billion-songs-and-other-fun-stats-from-the-philnote/
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/23/harry-potter-e-books-drm