{"id":14764,"date":"2013-11-25T11:39:50","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T19:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2013\/11\/25\/14764.html"},"modified":"2013-11-25T11:39:50","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T19:39:50","slug":"coraline-and-the-perils-of-drm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2013\/11\/25\/coraline-and-the-perils-of-drm\/","title":{"rendered":"Coraline and the perils of DRM: A case study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2003, on the evening when Hugo votes were due, I bought a copy-protected PDF ebook of Coraline<\/cite><\/a> from the now-sadly-shut-down ebookstore Fictionwise<\/a>. I read the book and liked it and probably voted for it.<\/p>\n

This past Saturday night, after rewatching the movie of Coraline<\/cite>, I decided to refresh my memory of the book. So I found the PDF and double-clicked it.<\/p>\n

The next section of this post recounts in detail my attempts to open the PDF. Spoiler: I couldn't. If you're uninterested in the details, then skip down to the next section break for general discussion of DRM and such.<\/p>\n

\n

A dialog box appeared, with the Adobe Reader logo and the following text:<\/p>\n

\n

This document requires digital rights management (DRM) features supported by Adobe Digital Editions. This software is free and takes only a couple of minutes to download over a broadband connection.<\/p>\n

Would you like to get Adobe Digital Editions now? (No) ((Yes))<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Regardless of whether I clicked No or Yes, my browser opened the Adobe Digital Editions home page<\/a>. So I downloaded Adobe Digital Editions 2.0 and launched it.<\/p>\n

After poking around a little in the interface—it wasn't immediately obvious how to proceed—I chose File > Add to Library. I selected the Coraline PDF and clicked Add.<\/p>\n

An error dialog appeared:<\/p>\n

\n

Unable to add document<\/strong><\/p>\n

Errors were encountered in this item ((OK))<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Later, it occurred to me that perhaps I needed to authorize my computer before I could use Adobe Digital Editions. (It didn't say so, but it seemed possible.) So I went to the ~easily findable~ Help > Authorize Computer command.<\/p>\n

It asked me to choose from a list of ebook vendors. Fictionwise wasn't listed, so I went with \"Adobe ID.\" I entered the email address and password that I use for Adobe stuff. It didn't accept them.<\/p>\n

I told it I had forgotten my password. It took me to a web page for resetting your Adobe ID password<\/a>. I entered my Adobe email address, and clicked Reset my password<\/b>, and it said An error occurred while communicating with the server. Please try again.<\/b> I tried several more times, with a couple of different email addresses, but no dice.<\/p>\n

I tried creating a new Adobe ID with my usual email address, but it told me that an ID with that address already exists.<\/p>\n

And that appears to be that. There doesn't seem to be any way I can open this PDF.<\/p>\n

\n

Paper books that I bought ten years ago are still easibly openable and readable (and loanable to friends) (though not searchable or backupable or carry-in-pocketable), but this PDF that I bought ten years ago is apparently now unusable, apparently because of the DRM that was built into it.<\/p>\n

I was already planning to remove the DRM from my iBooks books<\/a> and remove the DRM from my Kindle books<\/a>; this is a good reminder to me that it's important to do that kind of thing if you want to ensure longterm access to the books (and other content) that you buy.<\/p>\n

As for Coraline<\/cite>, I did a web search, and the first search result was a pirated copy of the PDF, easily and freely available online. That makes me sad; I believe that authors should be paid for their work. But for me at that particular moment, it was awfully convenient, and since I did<\/em> pay for my copy that I can no longer read through no fault of my own, I have no qualms about having read the pirated copy.<\/p>\n

It was awesome of Mr. Gaiman and his publishers (and Fictionwise) to provide the ebook version, and I was very pleased with the convenience of being able to buy it online and download it. I just wish that whoever required the book to have DRM had reconsidered.<\/p>\n

PS: If you want to read Coraline<\/cite> in an ebook version (and you haven't already purchased it in an ebook version), I strongly recommend buying it rather than reading the pirated version. For example, you can buy Coraline<\/cite> on Kindle<\/a> for $6, half the price I paid for the PDF ten years ago. (And you can read Kindle books on most major computer and mobile platforms<\/a>, in a web browser if nothing else.) And then you can remove the DRM, so that ten years from now you won't have the same problem I had.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2003, on the evening when Hugo votes were due, I bought a copy-protected PDF ebook of Coraline from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,71,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-intellectual-property","category-software"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}