I’m not sure that’s possible. What DVDs have isn’t DRM in the same sense that files of data (like e-books or music files) have, but copy-protection, that (supposedly) prevents the information from being separated from the physical object on which it resides. That’s not going to happen with e-books unless they start being sold on discs or chips or cartridges or some such, which I don’t think anybody wants.
That may be what eventually happens, but only if DRM schemes seem to be more trouble than they’re worth.
E-ink for me; I want that long battery life much more than I want to see magazine photos on a small screen. I don’t read magazines on my Kobo anyway; it’s for traveling, as a backup to the stack of print books I always pack when I go anywhere. I’ve spent my life packing way more books than I could read on every trip, to make sure I didn’t run out; now I can pack a reasonable number, then pack the Kobo. I’d have to be stranded for months to finish everything on the Kobo.
The Kobo uses the Epub format, which is non-proprietary; I’ve added books from Kobo’s own site and from Baen, Gutenberg and the Internet Archive so far, with no problems.
That’s basically what e-book DRM does – makes an e-book file work only on the particular device(s) registered by the purchaser. There’s no reason (other than the marketing crap I mentioned earlier) why it shouldn’t be possible to register Company A’s reader as an authorized device for an e-book purchased from Company B. The main current obstacle is the lack of ePub support on the Amazetamax, er, Kindle, device.
I hear ya – I hate that reverse contrast flash. I find it blinding. That’s why I bought an Aluratek Libre Pro. It uses non-backlit LCD technology – I liken it to a digital watch – and so it doesn’t do the crazy flashy thing that the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony etc. do. Also, because it’s not backlit, it’s very nice on the eyes, giving that “Wow, are you SURE that’s not a printed piece of paper on that display?” effect. It’s one of the cheapest (in price, not quality) e-readers out there, as far as I know, so it’s got that going for it. It reads PDFs, EPUBs, MOBI (Kindle format), and many others, and I’ve never had any DRM problems. Plus, it plays MP3s, too, but I hear it slows page turning down if you’re running the MP3 player (I haven’t verified this, as I don’t listen to music while I read). Throw in an SD card for all the storage you want.
I guess the big con (not to me, but I’m sure to others) is that it has neither 3G/4G nor WiFi, so you have to connect it to a computer to transfer books onto it. Totally not a big deal to me, but I could see it being detrimental to others. Also, you only get 24 hours of reading time instead of Kindle’s 30 days or whatever, so I’m charging mine about once a week. Bottom line, I frickin’ love mine, and heartily recommend you see if you can try a demo (I first saw one at Borders, and it was head and shoulders above all the others for me – although the newest Kindle’s display is very nice, too).
This product exists – it’s called the Entourage Edge, and is available in both 7" (the Pocket Edge) and 10.1"varieties. I own the 10.1" kind, and it has revolutionized the way I work. My job requires me to read and annotate a LOT of PDFs, and it’s unparalleled for that task. You can load the PDF on the e-ink side (note: it’s not as nice a display as Kindle’s newest offering [the Pearl screen], but it’s the generation before that I believe), mark it only with an included pen (so no worrying about your other hand making stray marks), highlight, write, draw, whatever, and save it as a PDF, email it all over the place, what have you. You can also use the e-ink screen like a piece of paper (for jotting notes). Plus, if there’s a color image, you can send it over to the tablet side to display in color, and then leave it there if you want to turn the page on the e-ink side. (You can read EPUB books, too, but I prefer my Aluratek for that; see above).
The tablet is touch-activated (no special pen required, although it works with the included pen) and is running Android. (It ships with 1.7, but I think they just updated it to 2.0.) You can watch videos (although not especially well – my biggest complaint about this item is the processor is underpowered), play music (through headphones or speakers), plug in both USB drives and SD cards, do all the usual Androidy stuff (potentially limited by the Android version), surf the Web, etc. And the built-in microphone (I’ve heard, not tested) is supposedly amazing and gives awesome recordings in lecture halls.
There’s a lot of minor issues I have with the thing, but no dealbreakers. It’s absolutely not for everyone – it has a learning curve, unlike something like the Ipad – but if you read a lot of PDFs, you simply cannot beat it. My biggest complaint at this point is that rumor holds that the company that makes it is going under (I guess the learning curve is daunting for some), so support will probably be lacking in the near future. But if mine lasts for a few years, it will definitely be one of my smartest purchases ever.
(I should add, I don’t work for or own stock in either Aluratek or Entourage, but they are two devices I’ve purchased and greatly enjoyed using, and I never see them mentioned on this board, so I thought I’d gush a little bit.)
Realizing this was a big part of getting over my eReader hurdle. I realized that the digitally archived copies I’m buying through major corporations are probably more permanent that my flimy paper. The lack of lending is a frustration, but that’s part of why I went with nook – at least there’s a LITTLE lending support. And obviously free eBooks can be lent with abandon.
You can convert your e-books to whatever format you want with Calibre. It also organizes your e-book library.
You already can use the same e-books on different devices via things like Kindle for Mac/Windows and Kindle for iPhone/Windows phone in addition to your Kindle. If you want to use your e-books on another device then you have to strip the DRM from them.
There are plug ins for Calibre that can strip the DRM so you can use your books on other devices.
You can use Kindle books on another device because Amazon has written a Kindle app. What if Kindle stops supporting the Kindle iPhone app? What then?
What if I want to read a book I buy from Apple’s iBookstore on a Kindle? What then?
Can I read a Kindle book on a Nook?
Are those legal? Are those supported by the vendor? Or is it one of those hacks that are written by a third-party and could stop working at any moment?
Those questions are why I stick with paper books. If there were a common format (with or without DRM, but preferrably without DRM) that every book reader were able to use I would think differently. I would want to be able to have the book on my reader device and also backed up on another device (e.g. my home computer) so that if one device breaks or fails I still have a copy of the book I bought. I don’t want to have to depend on the company that sold me the eBook to provide me with another copy - that company could go out of business at any time.
The major advantage I see with paper books in their current state that might make me consider getting one is that I am running out of space for books, some of them are in boxes in storage, and eBooks take up no room.
If you’re content to limit yourself to freely-available, non-DRM’ed books (like, for example, all the public-domain works available through Project Gutenberg), all of this already applies.
Even with proprietary-format DRM’ed ebooks bought through Amazon.com, you can still make as many copies of the file as you want. The only thing that might be an issue is being able to read those copies if the company went out of business or decided to restrict your access somehow.
It appears that Kindle is about to shed one of it’s major limitations compared to the various e-book readers based on the EPub format: Amazon has struck a deal with Overdrive (the major provider of e-books to U.S. Public Libraries) to provide the books in Kindle format as well as in EPub.
Legal – probably not. Removing DRM is a DMCA violation. They are not vendor supported.
But it’s not something that could stop working (for already stripped titles) – once DRM is removed, it’s removed. It’s possible DRM changes could prevent removal moving forward, but it won’t “re-DRM” your files.
I’ve dabbled with Calibre, and found it punishingly un-user-friendly. It’s a solid tool, no doubt, but it’s a long way from being “iTunes for eBooks,” which is software that needs to exist before non-vendor-managed eBooks could become mainstream.
I bought an iPad in part because I thought it would make a good eBook reader. I installed iBooks and the Kindle app, and at first it seemed fine.
Over time, I realized I wasn’t reading books on it. I had a bunch of Kindle books backlogged that I was trying to get through, but I never seemed to get around to reading them. The iPad is too distracting, for one thing. Whenever I’m reading a book I feel an urge to check my mail, or check for new messages on the SDMB, or play a game, or do something else. It’s like trying to read in an arcade.
It’s also too heavy for comfortable book reading, and the backlighting does give you eyestrain over time.
When Apple released IOS with Wi-Fi hotspot capability, I realized that I didn’t need the 3G Kindle, so I finally sprung for the wi-fi only model for $139. It’s a bargain. My wife has the 1st generation Kindle, and this one is nicer all around - better display, smaller, more comfortable, and the case with the built-in light is genius.
I’ve now read a couple of books on it, and I vastly prefer it to the iPad, and after several weeks of reading, it’s still on its first charge.
If you want to read magazines or books with a lot of visual content, use the iPad. If you want to read novels or other text-only work, the Kindle or another e-reader is far superior.
One nice thing about the Kindle is that you can have the same app on many devices, and even your bookmarks will be shared among them. So I can read a book at home on the Kindle, then if I’m at work and only have my iPad and want to read a chapter at lunch, I can. Or I can even read on my iPhone if I’m waiting in line somewhere. Having your library always at your fingertips is very cool. So I wouldn’t think of the Kindle as being a replacement for an iPad, or an iPad being a replacement for a Kindle - I think they’re rather complementary devices. The more ways you can access your book library, the better.
I also love how easy Amazon makes buying books. Often I’ll follow a book review from a web site, and if there’s an Amazon link in the review (and there almost always is), i’m only two clicks away from having the book show up on my Kindle. It’s even easier than downloading a PDF file and opening it. That’s the way to do e-commerce and to thwart piracy - make it easier to get the book legally than to pirate it, and you’ve won half the battle.
I understand that, what I meant is, as you said, that the tool that removes DRM can stop working at any moment, so just because I can use it today to remove DRM from my eBooks doesn’t mean I’ll be able to use it for the book I buy next month.
Out of curiosity, what is it that you were doing with Calibre? Because I find it very user-friendly, but the only thing I use it for is to strip the DRM from library ebooks and then send them to my Kindle. I don’t use it to organize my collection or anything. There are a bunch of options on it that I don’t have any idea what they do, but I don’t know what else I’d want it to do for me anyway.
Man, I want a case like that so bad, except not made out of leather. I can’t figure out why Amazon or someone else hasn’t made other types of cases with built in lights.
Hmmm… Given that development (especially since it seems to cover all existing Overdrive e-books and doesn’t add costs to the libraries or users), the remaining advantage for the Nook is that it will take add-in memory cards. (The first version of the Kindle took SD cards; dunno why they removed that feature from later models. I mean, for the iPad it makes an evil sort of sense – even Appleheads wouldn’t pay $100 for an extra 16GB if they could slip in a $25 card instead – but Amazon doesn’t sell a “same, but with more memory” version of the Kindle.)
I’m not clear why the Kindle would even need the ability to add more memory. It already holds 3000 books, you can only read one at a time, most books contain minimal graphics, if any, and they’re converted to gray-scale anyway, therefore requiring extremely minimal memory. It’s not like the Kindle is a multifunction device. It’s a reader, that’s all, and a very good one.
I mostly use Calibre to convert EPUB files into MOBI files so I can read 'em on my Kindle. It works so well that I’ll often run MOBI files through it to clean them up and customise the display (I like a blank line between paragraphs, and Calibre will do that). Also good for fixing meta data and so on.
I don’t find Calibre that hard to use, and there’s a forum which you can check for advice.