Bad Apple! DRM imposed on new iPad tablet
Oh Apple, how you disappoint me. It appears that the new iBooks app for the newly announced iPad will be bogged down with DRM, making it hard (if not impossible) to share ebooks you buy from Apple. I’ve had a hard time getting specifics, but I found a few reputable blogs posting the same thing.
The first blog comes from Adobe, of all places. Reports say that Adobe is steaming mad that the iPad doesn’t support Flash. But on their blog, they go further than that. Apple’s iPad – A Broken Link?
It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers.
In other words, I won’t be able to buy an ebook from Apple and then load it onto my Sony Pocket Edition. And I’m assuming that if I were to buy ebooks from other sites, I would not be able to load them onto the iPad’s ebook reading app.
Ars Technica also picked up on this DRM lockdown by reporting that a very small group of protesters from the Free Software Foundation were at yesterday’s Apple event. Protesters: iPad is nothing more than a golden calf of DRM:
Members of the Free Software Foundation staged a small protest outside today’s Apple event in San Francisco, making the case against Apple’s use of DRM.
The big question I have is now that Apple is in the ebook business, will they forbid ebook reading apps like Stanza (one of the most popular for the iPhone/iPod Touch? Will iPad users be unable to download such apps from the app store. If there are no such restrictions, than the DRM on iBooks becomes less of a worry.
Still, if Apple really wanted to put a dent in the Amazon Kindle and all the other ebook readers out there, they’d just have to open up their ebook app on the iPad by getting rid of the DRM. I guess they don’t see it that way.
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- Sony to adopt ePub for ebooks
- Venture capitalists pour money into iPhone apps, big potential for ebooks!
- EPUB Standard coming to a Sony Reader near you!
Read More: Technology, eBooks
