New Harry Potter e-books have gone on sale over the internet without being locked down by encryption.
The move breaks with industry practice and means consumers can move them between devices and read them anywhere they like.
If Pottermore, JK Rowling’s new online store, proves a success, it could provide a model for other authors and publishers and undermine the clout of Amazon, which dominates e-book sales.
E-books from major publishers are sold in encrypted form. The text of a book is scrambled so that only authorised devices and software can read it. For instance, a book bought from Amazon can be read only on the company’s Kindle e-readers and on its Kindle applications for smartphones, tablets and PCs. It cannot be read on Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-readers.
Conversely, a book for the Nook cannot be read on a Kindle. A book purchased from Apple can only be read on iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads.
Publishers insist on encryption in the form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) because they believe it stops piracy. It also helps e-book retailers such as Amazon defend their business models, keeping non-Amazon books off Kindle e-readers.
But when Rowling fans buy books from Pottermore, they can download them in a variety of formats, including one not protected by DRM. They can be read by a wide variety of applications and devices.
Wider sharing is dissuaded by visible and invisible watermarks inserted by Pottermore before the download, which identify the buyer.
Charles Redmayne, CEO of Pottermore, said that Harry Potter books are probably the most pirated in the world already, even though – or rather because – there have been no legal electronic versions until now. Fans have scanned or even retyped the printed books to make them available in electronic form.
“We believe that people should have the right, once they’ve bought the book, to read it on any device that they choose to,” he said.
Source : Orange News