Credit Where Credit Is Due Dept: I bought some ebooks from Barnes & Noble yesterday, and I'm reading them on my Pocket PC! Yep, you read that right. Seems that not all of the ebooks on BN.com use the DRM5 encryption that renders them unusable on existing Pocket PCs. Reader actually supports three types of DRM: none at all (what I use), DRM5 or "owner exclusive" and a third form that does not require "activation" but just brands the book with your name. This is almost identical to the way Peanut Press does it, except that the branding is burned in to the book itself, and you don't have to remember your card number to unlock it later. Currently there's no easy way of telling exactly which books will work with the Pocket PC (you have to click on each book and see if the description reads "This eBook is available for only your desktop or laptop computer." or "This eBook can be read on your Pocket PC, as well as on your desktop or laptop computer."), but they are in there somewhere. I picked up Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Teachings of the Buddha, Teachings of Zen, and Meditation in Action, but I saw Pocket PC readable books in every category. Check it out, and email Barnes and Noble to support more Pocket PC readable ebooks and an easier way to find them!

Killing the Goose Dept: I saw an interesting article on ZDNet today about the copy protection being built into Microsoft software. Microsoft is now enforcing the edict that you can only install one copy of office on a maximum of two machines (generally a PC and a laptop). If you need more copies you have to shell out $450 a pop for them. The article makes the interesting point that Microsoft's hegemony in the office suite market was built on "shared" copies, and that had it used copy protection years ago Lotus and WordPerfect might still be with us. More interesting is the idea that we've reached a point in PC software now that new features just don't make a compelling upgrade anymore, certainly not at the prices Microsoft is charging. If Microsoft is intent on saddling users with copy protection, and still wants to charge a small fortune for each copy, then users are likely to decide to just make do with what they have. Rather than seeing revenues go up as people start paying for all those pirated copies, they'll see revenue plummet as people just refuse to upgrade.

The really interesting part of this is the parallel to ebooks, pricing and DRM. Think about it. You want to buy a book, a novel to read in your leisure time. You don't want a hardcover, because you want it light and portable enough to take with you everywhere, and you don't want to lug around audio tapes either. That leaves two choices. You can buy a paperback or an ebook. If you get the paperback, it's small enough to be pocketable (assuming it's not a King or Clancy novel), costs about seven bucks, and you can do whatever you want with it. You can resell it, loan it to friends, even rip pages out of it if you want. And paper, even on a cheap paperback, is a fairly high-resolution medium. If you get an ebook, you frequently have to deal with copy protection restrictions, you can't lend or resell it and in most cases it isn't as easy to read as paper (MS Reader on a Jornada is an exception, as the ClearType font rendering on that device must be seen to be believed). And in most cases the ebook costs more than the paperback! So where's the incentive for the average Joe to pick the ebook over the paperback? Until publishers ditch goofy DRM and start pricing ebooks cheaper than paper, ebooks will remain a niche market. Don't get me wrong; I still believe ebooks are a superior medium to pulp in a lot of ways, but they're going to be a hard sell until publishers get with the program.

They Screw You With DRM Dept:

To quote Leo Goetz in the "Lethal Weapon" movies, they screw you with DRM.

Latest installment, Audible.com. Now don't get me wrong. On the whole, I'm a pretty happy Audible customer. I've found it very easy to purchase and download content from them, and their frequent listener program is a great deal. But they use the same owner restrictive DRM as Reader, where you have to "activate" your device to actually access your content.

So here's my problem. I tried to install an update to Audible Manager 3.0. Something went wrong, and now Audible Manager crashes every time I start it. I can't even get the main window to show up. Every time I try to reinstall Audible Manager, it tries to run Audible Manager as part of the install, which of course then crashes. So I figured I'd just uninstall it and reinstall it. I went to Control Panel and ran Add/Remove Programs, and tried to uninstall Audible Manager. Then it warns me that if I remove Audible Manager without first deactivating my PC, I won't be able to add a new activation when I reinstall, because I'll be out of activations. It suggested I run Audible Manager and deactivate it, but if I could run Audible Manager, I wouldn't be trying to remove it in the first place.

I decided to call Audible and discuss this with them. As I write this, it's Sunday night. I've heard that the online chat on Audible.com is the best way to get in touch with support staff, so I started with that. A javascript window popped up, and sat there blank before displaying an SQL timeout error. I knew email would take forever to get a response, so I called the 888 number listed on the website. An automated voice answered and told me my call might be recorded for quality assurance, then I sat there and listened to silence for a few minutes before realizing that either the system had "lost" my call or that no one was going to pick up the phone.

So I'm screwed. There's content I've paid good money to have access to, but I'm completely unable to access it.

I've said before that all this DRM really does is screw the customer. They probably have it right there in the business plan: "Step 5: Screw the customer." Probably makes the investors go wild. Here I've been a good Audible customer, talked them up at every opportunity, and now I can't run Audible Manager, can't access content I've rightfully purchased, can't get in touch with customer support and I've been left high and dry. Let me say it again: because of technical problems with their customer-hostile DRM, I can't access content I've already paid for.

Unfortunately, Audible is the only legal source for contemporary digital audio books. If you want to play within the rules, you have to put up with this crap. But, I have noticed a lot of audiobooks in MP3 format showing up on Napster and Usenet. Unfortunately, the seventeen year old yahoos ripping it tend to sample it at 192 kbps, resulting in file sizes way too big for mobile devices. (Why do people rip MP3s at 192 anyway, even for music? The CD itself only stores data 128 kbps, so anything above that is just recording empty bits...)

Once people figure out that spoken work audio still sounds okay at 8-16 kbps and start ripping at that rate, MP3 and WMA audiobooks should be acceptable for mobile listening. Maybe after Audible no longer has a monopoly on mobile digital audio, they'll quit screwing their loyal customers.