DRM - ReadWriteWeb

J.K. Rowling's Next Chapter: A Transfiguration Spell on the Publishing Industry

Audrey Watters — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:31:42 -0800

Author J.K. Rowling unveiled the plans behind the mysterious Pottermore website this morning, and fans that were hoping for a new installment in the beloved Harry Potter series or for a wizarding MMORG may be disappointed. But for those who've been waiting to read the novels on their e-readers, good news: Pottermore will involve, in part, the release for the very first time of the Harry Potter series in a digital format.

In what's an uncommon occurrence, Rowling retained all the rights to digital copies of her books. And until now, she had not struck any deals with publishers or distributors to make the series available digitally. All that will change when Pottermore officially launches this fall.

]]> That's big news for e-books as the bestselling series will undoubtedly be wildly successful in its new e-format. (It's as good an excuse as any to reread all the novels, right?) But the announcement is significant in a number of other key ways, not just because of Rowling's decision to release the e-books now, but because of the way in which she has chosen to do it.

Self-Publishing's Defining Moment

The books will be available exclusively through the Pottermore site, meaning that Rowling is self-e-publishing the novels. While self-publishing is, of course, nothing new, digital publishing and digital readership has helped self-publishing become more popular and, for authors, more lucrative. As we reported earlier this week, Amazon recently announced that self-published author John Locke had joined its "Kindle Million Club" after selling over one million copies of his e-books on the Kindle platform.

But Rowling's decision here isn't just another mark of legitimacy for self-publishing, nor is it simply yet another blow to the traditional publishing industry - although no doubt, both of those are true. Rowling's announcement has several other ramifications here for the publishing industry.

DRM-Free Content

Digital rights management (DRM) technology is often placed on digital content, so the argument goes, to help prevent piracy. And indeed, the Harry Potter series may already be among the most pirated books in history, no doubt because of fans' desire to read the books in a digital format. But rather than viewing that desire with suspicion about sharing, Rowling is trusting they'll do the right thing. The Harry Potter e-books will reportedly be DRM-free, although they will be digitally watermarked with purchasers' information.

Wired calls this the publishing industry's "Radiohead moment" and likens this to the band's release of its albums on its own site. "The crucial parallel between Radiohead and Rowling is the fact that they both put their faith in the fans rather than any intermediary. For Radiohead, this meant self-releasing their album In Rainbows after the end of their contract with EMI with an honesty-box pricing strategy."

E-Book Standards

DRM-free content also means that consumers won't be locked in to one particular format. As it currently stands, DRM is one mechanism that prevents users from sharing e-books; but it also means that Kindle owners can't read Nook content, and Nook owners can't load their iBooks onto their devices. But DRM is only part of the problem here; file formats are another. Rowling says that the books will be made available for all formats - to Kindle, iPad, Nook owners alike.

It's not yet clear how that will be accomplished, but the most obvious way to do that would be via ePUB, the open e-book standard. However, Kindle does not currently support ePUB. But as paidContent's Laura Hazard Owen posits, "if any author could get Amazon to change its policy, it's J. K. Rowling."

There have been rumors recently that the Kindle will begin supporting ePUB, and that may come as part of Amazon's new library lending program this summer.

(Another) Tipping Point for E-Books

The tipping point for e-books could have been when Amazon announced that Kindle versions were outselling print bestsellers two-to-one or when it said that e-books were outselling all print copies. The tipping point could have been when the company announced that a self-published author had managed to sell one million copies of his e-books.

But it seems likely that with the excitement and passion that Harry Potter fans have for anything associated with the series, that the release of the digital Pottermore will unleash yet another milestone in what is a quickly changing landscape for publishing.

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Humble Bundle Returns With Another Pay-What-You-Want Video Game Offer

Audrey Watters — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:28:20 -0800

The good folks at Humble Bundle are launching their latest project today: The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle.

I say "good folks" for a number of reasons. First, of course, it's another pay-what-you-want deal, with which Humble Bundle has had great success in the past. You set the price you want to pay for a package that includes 5 great DRM-free indie video games. "DRM-free" and "indie games" - two more reasons to like the Humble Bundle.

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In the past, the Humble Bundle has offered games from multiple sources, but this time around the titles are all from the Finnish game makers Frozenbyte: Trine, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, and Shadowgrounds. As a bonus, you'll also receive Splot, which is currently in development, and Jack Claw, a prototype that unfortunately is only available right now on Windows (but the source code is included). The other games are available cross platform, in a couple of cases appearing on Mac and Linux for the first time, and can be redeemed on Steam and Desura (and Trine can be redeemed on OnLive).

These differences between platforms are interesting to watch as the Humble Bundle offer progresses, as in the past, Linux and Mac users have proven to be far more generous than Windows users. Linux users contributed twice as much as Windows users.

That generosity isn't simply about getting a good deal on 5 indie games. When you purchase the games, you can set your price, then allocate how much of that goes to the game developers, how much to charity, and how much is a "tip" for the Humble Bundle itself (as Humble Bundle doesn't have one of its own games in this package). As with the two previous bundles, the charities here are the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play. Last year, Humble Bundle raised over $1 million for these charities.

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Do E-Book Users Need a Bill of Rights? (Librarians Think So)

Audrey Watters — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:00:53 -0800

The news that the publisher HarperCollins would be capping the number of times a library could lend a digital copy of a book to 26 has raised concerns - yet again - about the ramifications of our rush to embrace e-books. As one librarian, Joe Atzberger writes on his blog, the new model from HarperCollins "eliminates almost all the major advantages of the item's being digital, without restoring the permanence, durability, vendor-independence, technology-neutrality, portability, transferability, and ownership associated with the physical version."

Libraries may be on the front-lines of this latest battle, one that makes it clear that issues like DRM and lending policies can have troubling repercussions. Although the HarperCollins announcement impacts just lending through libraries, librarians are quick to point out that it isn't simply their institutions that will suffer.

To that end, librarians have started issuing statements, posting an "e-book users bill of rights" to their blogs. The statement, posted in full below, addresses "the basic freedoms that should be granted to all e-book users."

]]> The Bill of Rights insists that users have access to their e-books - unrestrained by proprietary platforms - and can retain, archive, annotate, share, and resell their e-books. Many of those actions are forbidden if not restricted by e-books.

Should Libraries Avoid DRM Content?

The librarians' statement challenges the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) which makes possessing an e-book a lot less like ownership and a lot more like licensing or subscription. As author Cory Doctorow notes in his story on the HarperCollins e-book lending policy, DRM media is "unsafe at any speed."

I mean it. When HarperCollins backs down and says, "Oh, no, sorry, we didn't mean it, you can have unlimited ebook checkouts," the libraries' answers should be "Not good enough. We want DRM-free or nothing." Stop buying DRM ebooks. Do you think that if you buy twice, or three times, or ten times as many crippled books that you'll get morenegotiating leverage with which to overcome abusive crap like this? Do you think that if more of your patrons come to rely on you for ebooks for their devices, that DRM vendors won't notice that your relevance is tied to their product and tighten the screws?

HarperCollins isn't the first time that access to e-books have been retracted. Amazon set off an uproar several years ago when it summarily deleted Kindle users' copies of George Orwell books.

Is DRM the price we pay to move to digital content? Is it a necessary move in order to convince publishers that their products are (relatively) safe from piracy? Or is this price too high, closing down access to information, art, and literature?

The E-Book User's Bill of Rights

Below is the text of the E-Book User's Bill of Rights:

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks. I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users' rights.

These rights are yours. Now it is your turn to take a stand. To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others. Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

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No iBooks For You: Latest iBooks Version Won't Work On Jailbroken Phones

Audrey Watters — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 09:53:50 -0800

Apple's e-reader app iBooks received an update last week, boasting a fairly typical set of changes: better stability, better layout, and a connection to AirPrint. But according to some reports, this latest version can cause problems for those trying to open e-books on jailbroken iPhones.

According to Social Apples, the iBooks app will no longer launch on a jailbroken phone: "Today marks a new realization for me as a jailbreaker: Apple deliberately crippled my device."

]]> That might sound a little melodramatic, but for those who have paid for books via iBooks and have jailbroken their phones, it's more than a little frustrating. Jailbreaking, after all, is not illegal. And while it does void your warranty, you can always reinstall the latest iOS to "un-jailbreak" it.

By jailbreaking a phone, you allow it to run unsigned code - that is, code that Apple hasn't approved. If you try to run a Cydia app on an un-jailbroken phone, for example, it won't launch.

Interestingly, it appears as though Apple has protected iBooks with a variation of this strategy. According to iPhone (jailbreak) developer Comex, "It seems that before opening a DRMed book, iBooks drops an improperly signed binary, tries to execute it, and if it works concludes that the device is jailbroken and refuses to open the book."

Presumably, Apple has instituted these measures to both protect the DRM content of its books and to discourage jailbreaking. However, as there are other places to get e-books (with and without DRM restrictions) and as jailbreaks are constantly responding to these measures, it's likely that this isn't the last stand - from Apple or from the jailbreaking community.

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Read Library E-Books on Your iPad with the Bluefire Reader App

Audrey Watters — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:07:00 -0800

As e-book sales continue to grow, the bibliophiles among us are wont to ask "Hey, what about libraries?" Will we be able to check out digital versions of books from our local libraries and read them on our e-readers?

Yes, if your library uses Adobe Digital Editions for its e-books and if you have the Bluefire Reader app. The app, available for free for iPhone and iPad, allows you to access the digital version of the books you check out from your (participating) local library.

]]> The Seattle Public Library, for example, has a large selection of e-books to choose from. And via the library's website you can add e-books to your cart, check them out and download them. The files can then be transferred to the Bluefire Reader app, which verifies you're authorized to access the book (provided, of course, you make sure you use the same ID for both Adobe and the Bluefire Reader app).

As we've noted before, the DRM restrictions on e-books can complicate the ability for libraries to make them accessible to patrons. But the Adobe Digital Editions and the Bluefire Reader app address this issue.

By using the Adobe Digital Edition, the Bluefire Reader app will also allow you to transfer books that you've purchased from many different booksellers between your various reading devices and personal computers.

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Will Your Local Library Lend E-Books? (Or Can They?)

Audrey Watters — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:31:52 -0800

Amazon has recently touted that sales of Kindle books are outstripping those of both hardcover and paperback editions. And a Forrester forecast earlier this week gauged that the sales from e-books for 2010 would hit over $1 billion. It seems as though the market for digital literature is strong.

But according to some publishers, if libraries start lending e-books, it could serve to "undo the entire market for e-book sales." Those were the words of Stephen Page, CEO of the publisher Faber and Faber who spoke last month at a library conference in the U.K. and announced the Publisher Association's new stance on e-book lending via libraries.

]]> Lending E-Books, But With Restrictions

He told those present that "all the major trade publishers have agreed to work with aggregators to make it possible for libraries to offer e-book lending" with the addition of certain "controls." These controls would require library patrons to be onsite in order to access the e-books. And furthermore, libraries will only be able to lend one copy of an e-book to one individual at any given time. Why, it's almost as if digitizing books did not free them from their physical confines.

These restrictions hamper the access of those who cannot visit libraries in order to read books - the homebound and the disabled, for example. They make the process of interlibrary loan impossible. And honestly, they seem a little absurd. But these policies - both for personal and library lending - echo the sorts of restrictions that DRM has long demanded around music and movie sharing, and they come with the same sort of doom-and-gloom predictions should people be able to share content freely.

Looking for (DRM-Free) Alternatives

But not all publishers are on board with this idea. Springer Verlag recently announced that it would make its e-books available without DRM restrictions to institutional purchases. "Libraries buy direct from us and they own the content," says the publisher's director of channel marketing George Scotti. "Once users download content, they can give it out, share, whatever. They own it. Some of our competitors are afraid to do this, but we say, free the content."

Challenging the publishing industry's attachment to DRM, in an article this weekend in the Guardian, Simon Barron contends that "Applying physical paradigms to digital commodities shows a lack of digital understanding. Cory Doctorow argues that trying to control digital copies of work on the internet is 'a fool's errand: that digital works require different models for control, distribution and profit. The price for trading in digital commodities is to accept the nature of digital commodities: they can be copied, they are accessible virtually anywhere, and that physical restrictions do not and cannot apply."

Libraries of the Future: Lending E-Books and E-Readers

Whether or not they can access DRM-free content from publishers, Some libraries are adapting. Recognizing the growing demand for e-books, they are pursuing not just the lending programs for e-books but those for e-readers as well, in order to help their patrons access material digitally. While the Terms of Service say you can't share your account information on the devices, the Library Journal suggests that Amazon may be simply turning a blind eye to the enforcement around this.

Libraries will have to embrace digital books to stay relevant to readers looking for books. Of course libraries' relevance involves much more than simply being a repository for books, e- or otherwise. Libraries are community centers. They are places where people can access not just literature and the latest magazines, but also find Internet access and computer stations.

It's worth noting too, that despite the great role that libraries play in literacy and in the preservation of literature, they are only a small part of the buying market for books - less than 4% by Faber and Faber's own admission. So to say that allowing libraries to lend e-books will destroy the publishing industry seems - excuse my literary reference here - a bit of a tall tale.

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Fair Use Legalized, Says EFF

Sarah Perez — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:55:21 -0800

New exemptions have been added to the the Digital Millenimum Copyright Act (DMCA), a U.S. copyright law that criminalized attempts to bypass copyright, access control technologies or digital rights management (DRM) measures. The exemptions now provide protections for "fair use" in several different circumstances, the most notable of which is the (now legalized!) process of jailbreaking a phone, a popular activity among iPhone owners in particular.

]]> The term jailbreaking refers to hacking a smartphone in order to gain access to additional features or install unapproved applications. However, it is only one of the many new protections announced today. Also included are protections that would allow owners to use their mobile devices on different wireless networks - a practice known as "unlocking" a phone - plus exemptions that allow breaking of copyright protection mechanisms on both videos and games, exemptions that make e-books more accessible, and finally, exemptions that allow bypassing external security measures on computers in specific circumstances involving dongles.

The advocacy group EFF has been lobbying for these changes for some time due to the overly broad language used previously in the DMCA legislation, which seemingly requires an ongoing list of "exceptions" for so-called fair use activities in order to stay current with the rapidly-changing technology of the Internet era.

"The Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA," said Jennifer Granick, EFF's civil liberties director, in regard to today's changes. "We are thrilled to have helped free jailbreakers, unlockers and vidders from this law's overbroad reach." (We believe she means "video creators" there - "vidders" is a new one for us, too.)

Specifically, today's exemptions include the following:

Permission for cell phone owners to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers or "jailbreak" their device
Permission to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws
Permission for college professors, film students and documentary filmmakers to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos
Permission to enable an e-book's read-aloud function or use a screen reader with the e-book, even when built-in access controls prevent this
Permission for computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced

This is Bigger than iPhone

Apple claimed that jailbreaking an iPhone allowed people to install unapproved (and often pirated) applications and therefore should not be permitted. The Copyright Office rejected this claim saying that jailbreaking is actually fair use.

Although the EFF reports that over 1 million iPhone owners are suspected of having jailbroken their devices, the bigger (though initially less glamorous) news may be the new permissions for creative types to break copyright in order to include clips of other works into their videos and films. By previously not permitting this activity (legally), the law has stifled the ability for artists to tell their stories and for educators to simply do their jobs without fear of repercussions. Although at first this may mean a lot more "fan-made" videos don't get yanked down from YouTube as quickly as before, we expect to see in the near future, as the EFF does, some "amazing works" of art resulting from this change.

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Amazon Allows Some Publishers and Authors to Opt Out of E-Book DRM

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:50:37 -0800

Amazon quietly made a major change to its Digital Text Platform last week that went largely unnoticed: Small publishers and individual authors who use the Digital Text Platform can now opt out of the Kindle's digital rights management (DRM) program. While this change only affects a relatively small number of publishers and authors for now, this move could hint at a larger change in Amazon's DRM policy. Right now, Amazon's DRM policy means that its customers can't transfer their books to a non-Kindle e-reader.

]]> Update: Amazon just contacted us to let us know that a DRM-free option always existed for publishers using the Digital Text Platform. Amazon just added new functionality that makes it easier for publishers to set these options.

For Amazon, it makes sense to experiment with this new option on the Digital Text Platform. Given that this is a self-publishing tool, the company doesn't have to explain this change to its partners in the publishing industry while allowing the company to experiment with a DRM-free solution. Most publishing houses tend to be very conservative when it comes to DRM-free e-book solutions. In the self-publishing world, however, DRM-free books are very common. Self-publishing platform Smashwords, for example, doesn't even offer a DRM solution.

Right now, you can't take your Kindle e-books to a Sony Reader, for example. While the Kindle is a huge success for Amazon, the current DRM solution is surely holding quite a few potential customers back from making the jump to e-books.

The Beginning of the End for E-Book DRM?

If the e-book world follows the same path as the music industry, however, chances are that restrictive DRM solutions will disappear over the next few years. At least for Amazon, giving its self-published authors and small publishing houses this option is a first step in the right direction. For O'Reilly, publishing a DRM-free e-book has turned out to be an advantage. Hopefully, other publishing houses will also realize that DRMed e-books do very little.

Tip of the hat to Nieman Lab's Joshua Benton for noticing this change first.

Image Credit: Nieman Journalism Lab.

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BBC To Kill Open Source TV?

Dana Oshiro — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:10:05 -0800

The BBC is looking to encode TV listing metadata and employ a compression algorithm to circumvent piracy, ad removal and illegal copying. According to a recent blog post by the EFF's Danny O'Brien, the group wants to get mandatory DRM onto digital TV receivers via a broadcast flag. In other words, a "public service broadcaster" wants to lessen the way we consume media by forcing manufacturers to limit product playing abilities. While open source TV services like Boxee allow users to view programs over home networks regardless of the device, a broadcast flag would force all HDTV receivers to include content protection. For those of us who watch our programs online, this could pose a serious problem.

]]> Says Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen, "Boxee believes there's a way to deliver entertainment in a way that is consumer-focused, while respecting the rights of content owners. We've built our company around it. People are still buying content off iTunes, and labels / artists are still making money. The way for content owners to make money is to cater to their audience, not to stifle innovation by creating a DRM racket like what's proposed here."

In 2004, the Federal Communications Commission and the Motion Picture Association of America attempted a similar enforcement regarding the US transition from analog to digital television broadcasting. However, by 2005 the broadcast flag was thrown out and regulators argued that the FCC lacked the authority to ask for HD encryption.

Photo Credit: Josh Bonain of Grooveshark

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Sony Adopts Open (But Still DRMed) Format for eBooks

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:03:00 -0800

In a move that took most industry pundits by surprise, Sony today announced that it will adopt the open ePub standard as the default format for books in its eBook store by the end of the year. EPub is an XML-based standard for publishing eBooks that has been adopted by a wide variety of hardware manufacturers, publishers, and retailers - with the notable exception of Amazon and it's Kindle store and eBook reader. Thanks to this, even owners of non-Sony eReaders will soon be able to read books they have bought in Sony's store. It is important to note, however, that adopting this open format doesn't mean that all the books in Sony's store will now be DRM-free.
]]> Adobe DRM
While it isn't quite clear what the specifics of Sony's DRM scheme will look like, the company did announce that it will use Adobe's Content Server to power its DRM solution. Adobe's server relies on a proprietary DRM solution. EPub is a very flexible format and allows developers to put a DRM-wrapper around eBooks. Publishers won't have to wrap DRM around their offerings. However, it is unlikely that a lot of book publishers (who are just as fearful of piracy as most music executives) will be able to resist this. In effect, this gives Adobe a lot of power in the eBook industry, as our friends at TeleRead point out in more detail.

Opening up the Store

Still, Sony should be lauded for adopting the ePub format and making its eBook store compatible with more devices from more manufacturers. All of Sony's eReaders, including the first-generation PRS-500, will be able to read these books, but what is far more important is that users will not be locked into having to buy a Sony device just to make use of the Sony eBook store. In addition, as other publishers adopt this format, Sony's own Reader will also be able to access books from a wider variety of stores.

Sony is clearly taking the eBook market very seriously. Just last week, it brought the prices for most of the books in its store down to $9.99 and announced two new eBook readers that look very promising.

Will Amazon React?

The question now, of course, is how Amazon will react to this. Amazon's Kindle ecosystem is almost completely closed - starting with the proprietary eBook format up to the Kindle's inability to display ePub-formatted books. In the press release, Steve Haber, the president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division, argues that ePub is "quickly becoming the de facto standard for eBooks." If that is indeed the case, Amazon will have to adapt quickly if it doesn't want to be left behind.
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Weekly Wrapup: 2009 Web Predictions, iTunes Drops DRM, Twitter Security Scare, And More...

Richard MacManus — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:00:00 -0800

Welcome to the first Weekly Wrapup of 2009 - and a very happy new year to all of our readers! First up we look back at our top web products of 2008, then we look forward to 2009 with our annual Web Predictions. In product news this week, Apple announced it will remove DRM from iTunes, Twitter had a major security scare, and we spotted some Semantic Web technology in Google search results. In the first RWW Live of 2009 we discussed how startups can survive in a down economy, Alex Iskold wrote about the growing importance of the digital world, and we looked at a report showing Apple's dominance of the Mobile Web. Also check the latest in our Enterprise Channel and Jobwire, our new product which tracks hires in tech and new media.
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2008 Year in Review

In case you missed our 2008 Year in Review series in December, here's a re-cap of the posts we did -- and you can find these and other top stories in our Best of ReadWriteWeb page.

Best LittleCo of 2008 & Most Promising for 2009

Best BigCo of 2008

RWW Live Special: 2008 Year in Review (RWW Live is our regular podcast show: subscribe in iTunes)

Top 100 Products of 2008

The Top 100 Products of 2008 was comprised of the following 10 lists:

Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008

Top 10 International Products of 2008

Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008

Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008

Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2008

Top 10 Enterprise Web Products of 2008

Top 10 Real World Web Apps of 2008

Top 10 Digital Lifestyle Products of 2008

Top 10 Alternative Search Engines of 2008

Top 10 Web Platforms of 2008

That was 2008, let's now turn our attention to 2009...

2009 Web Predictions

At the beginning of the new year, we posted our annual predictions post, in which the ReadWriteWeb authors look forward to what 2009 might bring in the world of Web technology and new media.

check out our predictions for '09 and please contribute your own in the comments to that post.

iTunes Goes DRM Free

The first week of January is Macworld time. While this year's conference had no major product announcements, Apple announced that by the end of this quarter, all 10 million songs available on iTunes will be DRM free [Digital Rights Management]. As of today, 8 million songs will be DRM free, with the other 2 million done by end of Q1 09. This is long overdue, especially considering that Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to the music industry in February 2007 asking them to abolish DRM. Since that time, many of Apple's key competitors have gone DRM free or have significantly loosened the restrictions - Amazon in September 07, Rhapsody in June 08, Yahoo Music in July 08, and Walmart in October 08, to mention just some. So it's great to see the market leader in online music, Apple, actively killing off DRM too.

Also from Macworld: Apple's iWork Goes (Partly) Online

Twitter Security Collapses; Obama, Fox and Britney Accounts Hacked

The start of 2009 brought a major security scare for one of 2008's top web products, Twitter. Days after a wave of phishing attacks fooled thousands of Twitter users, another security hole was found. Obama's account, unused since election day, sent out an affiliate link to a survey with a gas card prize, Fox News said that "Bill O'Reily is gay" and Britney Spears' account made a lewd post about her anatomy. Rick Sanchez, the Twitter loving CNN anchor, says he's "high on crack and might not be coming into work today." Twitter eventually said that the issue had been resolved, but that users should change their passwords.

Did Google Just Expose Semantic Data in Search Results?

In what appears to us to be a new addition to many Google search results pages, queries about birth dates, family connections and other information are now being responded to with explicitly semantic structured information. Who is Bill Clinton's wife? What's the capital city of Oregon? What is Britney Spears' mother's name? The answers to these and other factual questions are now displayed above natural search results in Google and the information is structured in the traditional subject-predicate-object format, or "triples," of semantic web parlance.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

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RWW Jobwire

January Kicks Off With Cool Hires in Tech

The economy is depressing but there's no shortage of cool new individual hires in tech to report already this year. Mozilla, Dell, AOL Sports and some of our favorite startups have picked up new engineers and executives this week. The biggest tech job news of the New Year, though, may be that Lifehacker's long time editor Gina Trapani announced yesterday that she's leaving her position.

Check out some of the young year's first highlights in tech hiring as reported by our site Jobwire below. Jobwire is sponsored by VisualCV, which is a service for job seekers. Jobwire reports on 10 to 15 completed new hires in tech and new media every weekday.

SUBSCRIBE TO READWRITEWEB'S JOBWIRE FOR THE LATEST NEWS ON JOB HIRES IN TECH

Web Trends

RWW Live: Running a Startup in a Down Economy

In the first RWW Live of 2009, we tackled an issue that is of vital importance to all startups right now - how to navigate through the choppy waters of the current economy. The ReadWriteWeb authors were joined by entrepreneurs from BrightKite and Zoho, two startups that were recognized by ReadWriteWeb in our annual end of the year awards: Zoho won 'Best Little Co' and BrightKite won 'Most Promising Little Co'. In the podcast they had some excellent advice for startups, which you can listen to below and read about in our post-show round-up.

Download MP3

Brave New World: More Digital, Less Physical

Alex Iskold writes: "Yesterday, I was with my wife in the L'Occitane store. The shelves were filled with fragrances, soaps, lotions: all sorts of handcrafted beauty products. It occured to me while looking at the labels that I have no idea how these products were made. I am reasonably versed in chemistry, but the process of manufacturing perfume is not something I know anything about.

In general, I am just not good with physical things, because I am a software person. I've always been fascinated by people who can easily make sense of physical objects, because for me it takes a lot of effort even to put together children's toys. My brain is wired differently, to see patterns in software, not in hardware. But most people are the other way around."

Report: Apple Dominates the Mobile Web

The latest data from AdMob, the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, shows that Apple now dominates the mobile web in the U.S. with a 48% market share. This growth, interestingly enough, does not just come from the iPhone, but the iPod touch also saw a meteoric rise in usage during the last month. Traffic from the iPod touch to AdMob's network in the U.S. increased 3.4 times from November to December.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

Enterprise

Report: Cloud-Based Email Cheapest Option for Most Companies

A new report from Forrester presents a cost analysis of cloud-based email systems in enterprises, such as Google Apps or Yahoo!'s Zimbra. In the report, Forrester argues that cloud-based email services are cheaper than running email on-premise for all companies with less than 15,000 employees. What's more, Google Apps is significantly cheaper than both on-premise solutions and other cloud-based email services - even for very large enterprises. This could spell trouble for Microsoft, as we explain in this post.

Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.

SEE MORE ENTERPRISE COVERAGE IN OUR ENTERPRISE CHANNEL

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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The Top 10 RWW Stories in September; Summaries and Follow Up

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:35:43 -0800

Do you remember what was happening one month ago in web technology? On September 1st the only story on most of our minds was the news of a Goolge browser, Chrome, which would be released the next day. Chrome was a big story last month, but it wasn't the only big news by a long shot.

Below we summarize and follow up on the 10 most-read stories on ReadWriteWeb in the month of September. These aren't necessarily the best stories, but they are the most popular. We hope you enjoy this little trip down short-term memory lane. Do these posts already feel like old news to you, our hyper savvy readers?
]]> 10. Does Google Have Rights to Everything You Send Through Chrome?

Google released its own browser at the start of this month and at launch the software had some really egregious claims in the End User License Agreement. An anonymous commenter pointed out in our previous coverage of Chrome that Google claimed to have rights to all the information you send through their browser to reuse for promotional purposes! Google quickly backed down and removed the clause, though we questioned in a later post (It's Time for a New Terms of Service Regime) why such conditions were a part of the default "boilerplate" licenses for all Google services.

This post was discovered by readers from a wide variety of sources, including the Official Google Blog, which called us eagle eyed for catching the section of the license in question. In truth, it wasn't us that caught it, it was one of our anonymous readers, and we weren't the first blog to write about it either - we later noticed that Ina Fried at CNet found it first.

9. Five Ways to Use Social Media to Reach People Who Don't Use Social Media

I wrote this post myself, after giving a presentation to the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network where several people in the audience said that they were concerned their target constituencies weren't using social networks, microblogging and blogs. Could those technologies be useful anyway? We listed five techniques we've found to be effective.

More than 100 other blogs linked to this post in posts of their own, including particularly active conversations at Brazen Careerist (Social Media Is Difficult, Like Intimacy) and StreamXy (The Success System that Never Fails).

8. Top Digg User Zaibatsu Banned - Reactions from Both Zaibatsu and Digg Management

Digg cleaned house this month, closing the accounts of scores of people it accused of cheating the system. Founding editor Richard MacManus covered this story for RWW. One of those users kicked off the site was the popular user Reg Saddler, or Zaibatsu, the person with the 3rd most submissions to hit the front page of all time. Digg said the last straw was Zaibatsu's submission of a page that claimed to have lascivious pictures of a female Digg user on it and actually was a sales page for some product - both of which are violations of the Digg Terms of Service. Zaibatsu offered his own defense but in the end said in comments that he's since decided to "cash in" after all and do the types of things he's been wrongly accused of doing.

For an in depth look at the charming characters like Zaibatsu that make up and surround many top Digg users see our earlier post MrBabyMan: Digg Users Revolt, Against the One Pure Man at the Top. Our coverage of Zaibatsu's expulsion got a whole lot of readers from Digg.

7. Google to Offer its Own Browser: Chrome

On the first of September, we wrote about Google's new browser that would be released the next day. The company mailed out some fantastic comic book style explanations of their plans and we linked to a slide show of those books in my post. There were a lot of questions that came up that day: what about Google's relationship with Firefox? Would Chrome ever go mainstream? Would another browser make web development more difficult?

The idea behind Chrome was to build a browser that was mean for running applications, not just viewing web pages. We think that's a great idea and apparently a substantial percentage of our readers do as well. 6.5% of you visited ReadWriteWeb using Chrome in the first week it was available, in the past 3 weeks that number hasn't grown but it's only fell to 6.2%. We expect that percentage to grow substantially when a Mac version of Chrome is available.

6. Walmart Gives Consumers Number 1 Reason Why DRM is Not The Answer

This weekend Corvida wrote about Walmart's decision to shut down its DRM server and either eat or tie to a single computer the music it sold its own customers. The post was huge on Digg, where conversation was heated in comments. We put the comments people left on that story at Digg in a Wordle.net tag cloud below, just to give you a taste of what that community thought about the post and news.

5. Cartoon: Anything You Tweet Can and Will Be Used Against You

Rob Cottingham's weekly cartoon midmonth was very popular with readers - we'll let you click through for yourself to see it.

According to YackTrack, 30 people Twittered a link to the cartoon out to their circle of friends. Among that group was Spanish poet and political blogger Jaun de Bravo, who said "No todo es tuiteable." We didn't know that was the Spanish word for Twitter!

4. Podcaster Developer Uses Little-Known "Ad Hoc" Mode To Distribute Banned iPhone App

Sarah Perez dove into the mid-month debate about development on the iPhone platform with an in-depth post about a renegade app that used a back door to distribute an app outside the official App store. It was an app that let phone users listen to podcasts without subscribing to them in iTunes, which Apple wasn't very excited about.

The post was submitted to Digg by a Washington state high school student named Zak M. Zak's been on Digg for more than a year now and has had 40 submissions hit the front page. Almost 40% of his front page submissions have been in the past 2 weeks, since sending up Sarah's post on this iPhone app! All we're saying is that Zak's on fire and maybe his success with Sarah's awesome post has something to do with that. Only joking! We offer our most humble thanks to anyone who summarizes and submits our posts well to Digg.

Jason Ankeny at FierceDeveloper wrote just yesterday that Apple has now closed the loophole and the app that Sarah wrote about has been kicked off the platform. The developer, Alex Sokirynsky, says he's headed for Google's Android platform.

3. Rumor: EBay Trying to Sell StumbleUpon

In the middle of the month TechCrunch did the kind of investigative work that, let's face it, no one in the tech blogosphere does better. They unearthed efforts by eBay to sell off social discovery site StumbleUpon. Our own Frederic Lardinois wrote up the rumor and speculated, as did Silicon Alley Insider, that selling off Skype would be an even better idea.

Our post was a huge hit on StumbleUpon, as we presume most other posts were on this topic.

2. Top 10 Apps Worth Jailbreaking Your iPhone to Get

On the first weekend of the month, Corvida wrote a monster post arguing that there were iPhone apps outside of the thousands of approved ones that were so good they were worth nullifying your phone's warranty for.

Think the iPhone is just for Mac lovers? This was the 2nd most read story on ReadWriteWeb for the whole month and almost 80% of our site visitors use Windows. People love the iPhone, almost everyone does. (60% of the RWW writing staff, however, do not own an iPhone.)

And the #1 most-read story on RWW for the month of September was...

1. Serious Security Flaw in Google Chrome

On the day that Chrome came out, September 2nd, Frederic Lardinois wrote about a big security hole in the new Google browser. Tens of thousands of people wanted to know what it the security flaw was - perhaps for their protection and perhaps to gawk at the shortcomings in software from the otherwise triumphant Google.

To be honest, it seems in retrospect like an odd story to be the hottest story here for the whole month. That's the facts, though.

Ryan Narraine, a security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab, wrote the first report on the flaw at ZDNet but after a fairly extensive hunt we can't see any follow up from ZDNet or anyone else about whether the flaw has been fixed. A fair number of people argued that it wasn't even a flaw as it required a user to choose to run an executable. As Frederic pointed out in his point, the "flaw" depends on a lot of social engineering. Many commenters all around the web responded simply that it was too early to trust a brand new browser on its first day online.

Conclusion:

Last month was a big one for the web. As is often the case, the topics our readers came for the most were ones concerning control. That's one way to interpret them, at least. Could Chrome wrestle control over the browsing experience away from IE and Firefox? Could it put users more in control as a more appropriate tool to use in an era of applications, beyond web pages? DRM and the closed Apple iPhone store were the subject of multiple control control stories as well.

Some of our favorite posts from last month that didn't make the top 10 list but that we wish had include User Experience, Learning from the Pros, Sarah Perez's 3 part Scannable World series and Richard MacManus's write up of a report finding that 70% of businesses now allow social media use at work.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by ReadWriteWeb in the past month to read these stories. We appreciate your ongoing support and engagement in discussion.

Image credit on water photo above, Seventh Sense by Flickr user woodleywonderworks.
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Wal-Mart Gives Consumers Number 1 Reason DRM is Not the Answer

Corvida — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:41:24 -0800

The music industry is struggling to gain a foot-hold in the battle with online piracy. The options available for music lovers to grow their music collection digitally is tremendous and free. So much so that music companies and publishers have struck up agreements with some of biggest names offering digital music: iTunes, Last.FM., Amazon, Myspace, and Wal-Mart.

While the options are appreciated, a certain restriction that comes with the music files is not. To help music labels combat piracy, digital music providers such as iTunes and Yahoo introduced DRM restricted music files to consumers. Today, Wal-Mart has given consumers the number 1 reason as to why DRM was the worst thing ever.
]]> FAIL!
Customers of Wal-Mart's digital music service will be in for a big shock very soon, just as Yahoo Music customers were. Wal-Mart has announced that they will shut down their DRM servers on October 9th. What does this mean for Wal-Mart digital music buyers?

If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer.

Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.

DRM restrictions ties all of your songs to your computer. To sum things up, customers will now have to back-up all of their downloads or risk losing them all. Because of the DRM restrictions on these files, you won't be able to transfer their music anywhere else. If you were to reinstall your operating system or simply purchase a new computer, Wal-Mart's shutdown of their DRM server would prevent you from taking your music somewhere else.

Talk About a Waste of Money

We're hoping Wal-Mart will do the right thing and refund customers a portion of the money spent, as Yahoo did when Yahoo Music shutdown. While the gaming community has been able to teach gaming publishers a lesson about DRM, we don't think anyone can provide a solution for the situation that Wal-Mart customers are going through.Will DRM-free music matter to consumers now?
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Electronic Arts Evolves: Slightly Relaxes Spore DRM

Frederic Lardinois — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:38:44 -0800

Spore was one of the most anticipated PC games of the year and launched to great hype. While most reviewers weren't too ecstatic about the game itself, it was Electronic Arts' attempt to stop piracy with an overly restrictive DRM scheme that got Spore a lot of its post-launch coverage. Shortly after its release, irate users started to flood Spore's Amazon page with negative reviews. Most of these users complained about the DRM scheme that only allowed the game to be registered on three computers and only allowed for one user account per license. Now, according to the BBC, Electronic Arts has given in and extended the number of possible installations and users to five.
]]> According to Electronic Arts, less than half of one percent of users ever tried to run the game on more than three machines, so being able to play on five different machines should alleviate the DRM problem for virtually all users.

Pirates Still Don't Care

While this is probably a smart move by Electronic Arts, it is important to realize that these protests were not just triggered by the details of the DRM scheme, but by the fact that the game was DRMed to begin with. If you downloaded a pirated version of the game, you never had to think about the DRM anyway because your cracked copy was always DRM free. In the end, schemes like this do nothing to deter piracy and only punish legitimate buyers. Pirates will always find a way around these schemes anyway.
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DRM Helps Spore Make History as The Most Pirated Game Ever

Corvida — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 10:41:25 -0800

Spore, a Sim-like game about the evolution of creatures, was recently released as one of the most anticipated games of the year. Our initial impressions were high with the release of SporeCreator. However, Spore itself failed to meet our expectations. In the end, we found the game to be too simple for our tastes.

A major problem that plagued the release of Spore was the inclusion of a DRM system. This has caused multiple reviews of Spore to be disappointing for Electronic Arts (EA), the developing and publishing company of Spore. If EA hoped the problem would go away, it hasn't. Fans and "pirates" have taken things one step further to make Spore one of the most pirated games ever.
]]> We Told You So
The DRM system included in Spore has caused an outrage in the gaming community. We stated in our review of the game that the DRM system would have to go if Spore wanted to succeed. Apparently, consumers of the game seem to feel the same way. As of today, Spore has been downloaded over 500,000 times on various bittorrent sites and doesn't look to be slowing down. The first 300,000 downloads of Spore happened after just one day of the game being released. These pirated versions of Spore remove the DRM system that users encounter when installing the game. While it's not uncommon for popular games to hit those type of numbers on P2P sites, it's unusual for it to happen so quickly. Currently, the game has been the most popular download all week on The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular and controversial bittorrent sites around.

DRM is Not the Answer

The Sims 2 currently holds the record for the most pirated game. Pirates and disappointed fans are looking to change that. According to the TorrentFreak blog,

[Spore's] download rate exceeds that of any other pirated game in history, and in a week or two from now it will be the most pirated game ever on BitTorrent.

Spore is still one of the worst rated games on Amazon. Since its release it has been given a rating of only 1 star by more than 50% of its reviewers. The majority of these ratings address problems with the DRM system. DRM is not the answer and continues to provoke "pirates" to release what publishers should have given to customers from the beginning.

There's no doubt that Spore would've been pirated regardless of the DRM system. However, users of P2P networks are now encouraging others to pirate the game in order to teach EA a lesson. A commenter on the Pirate Bay known as "deathkitten" stated,

"You have the power to make this the most pirated game ever, to give corporate bastards a virtual punch in the face."
Unfortunately for EA, this is exactly what they're doing. We hope that EA will learn from this experience and the feedback of their customers.
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