Adobe to 'Harden' their Broken DRM

Last week we asked questions about the state of Adobe’s widely adopted ACS4 DRM service and the implications of their announced migration to ACS5. Then we knew little of their plans and only of their intent, but today more has come to light on how they plan to achieve the move and the potential implications for those who sell the service and the consumer who has the files.

Below is Youtube link to a webinar that Datalogics did alongside Adobe last week. It is not recommended that you watch it all as it is not user friendly and aimed at technicians. However some of the salient points can be obtained by cutting to this shortened clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qb-sXVlK_o&t=24m48s . Adobe confirms that it will ‘harden’ their DRM in July and force migration and that this will effectively kill compatibility with older RMSDK9 (reader) based apps and devices. The move is understandable from Adobe’s perspective and very reminiscent to the language that came out in 2006 when the introduced ACS4 to strict deadlines.

What Adobe have failed to grasp is that many devices (readers) that have supported ACS4 will have significant software and maybe firmware upgrades to achieve in what is a relatively short period and inevitably there will be disconnects. It is not possible to comment on the myriad of old eink readers out there but…

Many pundits have taken aim at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Nook and their proprietary DRM systems. However, all of these effectively can control their own environment and evolve seamlessly. Adobe’s DRM may be usable by others, but as demonstrated by this announcement, it puts your business and commercial transactions charges in Adobe’s hands. Short term this may be fine, but long term is it wise.com?

The Adobe use of the term ‘hardened DRM’ is quite apt and we have to question whether we are being taken done a road which is technology applied for technology sake? ACS4 was easily hacked and broken so one option is to ‘harden’ it and make it more difficult to hack. The other is to migrate away from encryption and find ways to make business easier for all and grow the market.

DRM is not about encrypted hard DRM. It is about digital rights management, be it hard, soft or none and we have to ask what we are trying to achieve and what works best for the market? Adobe by moving part of the individual licence that was previously on the rendering server back to the issuing server and in doing so have tightened their grip on the file, but they have increased the cost of doing business and offered little in return. Adobe is increasingly creating its own walled garden and it begs the question – is it all necessary, or is it a simple case of the Emperor having no clothes and nobody strong enough to say so?

This migration to ACS5 in fact could do more damage to the reputation of DRM that all the stones thrown at Amazon’s system.

We were around pre ACS4 and were involved in the initial services. We also sat down with others trying to seek an alternative option to ACS4 but had little time and much pressure to roll over. Trying to change Adobe’s corporate mind-set is all but impossible. Today there are many alternative options and cloud based services all but render the existing ebook model redundant. As we move towards subscription based online and ‘as much as you can eat services’, many now seek a way to escape the Adobe locked in transaction charges.

However, as we have suggested before we should not rush headlong into no DRM as that could be equally as short sighted. We must look at softer watermarking DRM which can be individually hacked, but if tied to a central licencing registry would provide provenance of legitimate ownership, which in turn could enable that often feared resell market some creditability.

It is also interesting to note the only now some 8 years after ACS4 came to market are some of the business models and issues, which were raised at the beginning are starting to be addressed. Shared devices, bulk downloads, subscriptions, educational loans etc where raised at the time but not seen by Adobe and Overdrive as important then. It drives home the point that hard DRM may not just lock up the files but may also lock up the business from doing business their way. 

Is Publishing Experiencing Its Own Arab Spring?

The Arab spring swept across many Arab states and was driven by the confidence that others had succeeded and maybe they weren’t alone.

It has always been true that much of publishing tends to be ultra cautious, but when it turns, it does so quickly and often on mass. Things we thought were never going to happen, suddenly start to be talked about, the evangelists spread the digital word and one player moves, watched closely by many others. If the noise is positive and the resistance small, the change can happen and we all become born again believers. It’s as if everyone is constantly waiting for someone to dip their toe in the pool of opportunity and watch if they sink or swim.  

The latest cry of ‘me too’ would appear to be surfacing around DRM. Is it born out of the final acceptance that DRM is an inhibitor and not an enabler, or that it is often seen by the consumer as a pain to deal with and a straightjacket to work within, or the fact that music went DRM free and the market didn’t die, or by authors demanding it? For everyone you speak to, their will be many and often different answers and the arguments that supported its adoption are like yesterday’s regime support – forgotten.

Has anything fundamentally change to promote this new enlightenment and movement?

Yesterday, Tom Doherty Associates, sci-fi publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen and part of the Macmillan trade empire announced that by July, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free. Their logic was that there authors and consumers were a technical savvy group and had demanded it for some time. DRM was cited as an inhibitor. We will not know if this was a shrewd move by Macmillan to test the market in a controlled vertical, or they just woke up one morning to a cathartic moment and realised what they stakeholders wanted.

Now every digital evangelist, industry thinker and consultant is jumping on the bandwagon and the state of DRM could be in for a bumpy ride and possible a people’s Spring, or maybe Summer, uprising. 

It is interesting that once again many are talking about the removal of the strict DRM regime as an opportunity to clip Amazon’s wings. The truth could be very different and the move to DRM free MP3 helped Amazon in its music business against Apple’s iTunes, but even iTunes, when they finally changed, were not significant impacted. DRM itself has nothing to do with stimulating or suppressing market competition. It is naïve to link them as closely as some have, or perhaps they are jumping on that other Spring uprising of anti Amazon feeling.

So lets think about a DRM free world? Are we dismissing ‘soft’ or ‘social’watermark DRM too, or is it just the hard encrypted and hardware specific DRM?

It’s often hard to gauge the feeling of the crowd, but what is clear is that hard DRM is fast loosing support even quicker than some Arab regimes did in their uprisings. Will this lead to an explosion of piracy? We think piracy will increase but will not be driven by the lack of DRM so much as the issue of pricing and other variances to the physical rendition. Let’s finally face it, a serious pirate will rip it irrespective of DRM and increasingly individuals will rip it if they feel it justified. The markets with most to fear due to their high ticket price; education, academic, professional, also could have the greater opportunity to minimise the risk. These sectors are moving away from the 'tome in a straight-jacket' to an environment rich with interactive media and links. They are now, or should be, raising the added value of a media and rich platform and leaving behind the commodity featureless tome.

What remains interesting is that this potential uprising is taking place against the backdrop of the sales ‘honesty box’ and lack of rights registry. We must recognise that making fundamental changes in one aspect will have a knock on impact in others and without considering these and taking some action, the sprit of the uprising, could sour as authors find reconciling sales unacceptable and potential infringement under ever stone. Publishers will have to step up their legal diligence and actions, which mean increased cost and resource and small publishers may have to act co-operatively, or face some often scary digital reality.