Détaillants de livres, mais grossistes en DRMs

La semaine dernière, je posais la question "Qui demande les DRMs". Je n'ai pas vraiment eu de réponse, mais elle était plus rhétorique qu'autre chose. Je constatais surtout que ceux qui ne voulaient pas de DRMs s'en trouvaient affublés, malgré eux, et supposait qu'il s'agissait de la volonté de quelques uns qui s'imposait aux autres.

Mais en fait, ce n'est pas forcément le cas... Cette après-midi, un éditeur (Au Diable Vauvert), passant par un distributeur, a eu la mauvaise surprise de trouver ses livres (sans DRMs normalement) diffusés chez Kobo/Fnac, avec.
Après discussion, j'ai compris les choses suivantes :
Chez Kobo/Fnac, (et pareil chez Amazon et Apple je crois), l'activation des DRMs sur un livre est fixée au moment de l'inscription de celui-ci en fonction d'une configuration "distributeur". Donc si le distributeur dit "DRMs", tous les nouveaux livres ajoutés par celui-ci seront inscrits en "DRMs". Le distributeur aura beau mettre individuellement sur chaque livre un marqueur métadonnées spécifiant la demande, c'est la configuration "distributeur" qui fait foi.

Et pourquoi le distributeur aurait-il mis sa configuration à DRMs ? Sans doute parce qu'une grosse partie de son catalogue est soit Watermark, soit DRMs, et qu'il leur est plus facile (et sûr) de diminuer la protection d'un nombre minoritaire de livres que de faire l'inverse. Plus facile étant bien entendu relatif...

Seule parade ? Que le distributeur découpe son flux en deux : avec, ou sans DRMs, et inscrive ces deux flux auprès du revendeur. Je suppose que ça a des conséquences techniques non négligeables chez lui, aussi bien pour découper dans un sens, que pour fusionner dans le sens retour.

Si Amazon a les mêmes contraintes (tout ou rien par distributeur), on peut tout de même "féliciter" Kobo/FNAC pour au moins afficher clairement la présence des DRMs.


On peut noter que si le distributeur disait "Marquage/watermarks", on lui répondrait "Comment ? Tu dis quoi ? J'entends rien !"... Et du coup il se trouve dans l'obligation de passer à "DRMs..." pour les livres concernés.

Bref, pour des raisons techniques (et non de choix des uns ou des autres), des livres censés être sans DRMs en sont bardés.

A qui la faute ? C'est sans doute partagé.

Kobo de ne pas mettre à disposition des moyens simples (par exemple métadonnées) de paramétrer au titre par titre les DRMs.
Au distributeur de ne pas s'assurer (ce qui est d'ailleurs de sa responsabilité) d'un bout à l'autre de la chaîne que pour chacun des livres la cohérence entre le choix DRM et ce qui est effectivement vendu...

Mais à vrai dire, je m'en fous.
En tant que client, ce ne sont pas mes affaires qui a mélangé les OGM avec les légumes bios. Ce qui m'importe c'est le résultat.

Alors comme je le disais, Auteurs, Editeurs, Distributeurs, Diffuseurs, E-libraires, on se bouge, on fait ce qu'il faut, et on arrête de piétiner les droits des uns et des autres...

Et pendant ce temps là, y'a Adobe qui continue de rire dans son coin...

Who's asking for DRMs ?

I reported a few days ago about the hurdles the Chief Editor of a Webzine had to jump over before reading an ebook the way he wanted (in fact, he can't, except by bypassing the DRMs). Someone commented that the DRMs were often asked by the authors or their agents. That's right, I've sometimes seen author specifically choose DRMs, but it's not (by far) the majority. It probably comes from a distinct sampling, mine being more self/indie published centered.

However, it is easy for everyone to point at authors, even when communication comes from top-management (Arnaud Noury, CEO of Hachette Books). One could say that by having this posture, Arnaud Noury is protecting his authors by taking responsibility of their wishes. But in that case, how can you explain the kind of strong-arming which Cory Doctorow reported a few weeks ago, in which the Publisher forces authors to use DRMs even against their wishes ?

Sure, if publishers explain authors how DRMs are better (billy club in hand), no wonder they agree to ask for them.
And when I write about publishers, editors, agents, authors, I don't speak of individuals, who in their majority are against DRMs, but as the resulting outcome : majority is outvoted by the fewer DRM proponents, with a clear result of having DRMs on most of the ebooks. That's not only too bad, but also counterproductive, hinders cultural progress (short, and long term), but also (I think) creates copyright infringement habits.

But all the onus is not on publishers, agents or authors... ebooksellers have their part too.  They could for example put some pressure on publishers, or reach a little bit midway by implementing Watermarking solutions as an additional option, alternative to full-scale DRMs. Publishers, if you're against DRMs, but don't feel like cutting all copyright protection, why don't you ask for it, like J.K.Rowling (among others) did ?
Watermarks are not perfect, sure, but it is way more customers respectful, and will have less backlash and long term negative effect.

DRM failure again ? (Prix FNAC 2012)

It's been a long time since my last English post, so this one is long overdue. Luckily, yesterday has been great for my inspiration.

Before going into the events, you need some background :
"la FNAC" is a chain selling books, CDs, game consoles and electronic products. After a disastrous beginning with ebooks on it's own (the infamous FNACbook e-reader and lack of content being major culprits), la FNAC found in Kobo at the end of 2011 a good partner to compete against Amazon's arrival. This partnership gives a solid offering, more or less equivalent to the Kobo one in Canada. Each year, during the "rentrée littéraire" period, the FNAC organizes its own reward for a litterary novel, the "Fnac prize". It is customary that a copy of the recipient book is gifted to all the attendants of the ceremony. This year, however, there was a subtle twist to the event : the copy was not given as a paper book, but as an ebook coupon. One of the guests was Nicolas Gary, chief editor of ActuaLitté, an independent web-zine dedicated to books (and ebooks) related news. The rest is history ...

On receiving the ebook, his first test was to install the Kobo application on his Mac. However, due to a bad "digital signing" of the application, the installation failed, and Nicolas, lacking the technical knowledge to disable the check,  reverted to install (and configure) successfully ADE.

This time it worked correctly, and he was able to read the book. Similarly, he also was able to install and the Kobo/Fnac application on his iPhone, with the same success.

However, the story doesn't finish here... Used to the Apple environment, what he wanted was to read the ebook on the software he is used to read on : iBooks. I guess you know where it leads ? iBooks not being able to read Adobe DRMized ebooks, dear Nicolas is of course unable to read the ebook the way he wants. Instead of being happy with the book, he feels trapped in an ecosystem that he doesn't want to stay in !

After so many technical hurdles, and instead of having an happy audience taking pleasure in reading the prize winner, you have a bunch (Nicolas was not the only one having troubles with it) of guests frustrated by the whole experience... I take that as a win against DRMs and closed ecosystems, but as a loss for ebooks generally and also for the Prize winner, clearly not the Fnac's goal for the evening.

Source:
Prix du Roman Fnac : Patrick Deville, ou la bataille numérique
and
Verdict : le prix du Roman Fnac, écueil numérique bien verrouillé

Lectures : Rivegauchez-vous par Natacha Braque

J'ai découvert Natacha Braque aujourd'hui via twitter dans une interview au Nouvel Obs qui m'a tout de suite intéressée. Quel personnage que cette "autrice", quel cri d'alarme que son appel à sauvegarder la littérature parisienne à la seule place qu'elle puisse occuper : au centre de tout.

Très intéressé donc, j'ai voulu acheter le livre et me suis tourné vers le site de l'éditeur à la recherche d'une version numérique. Cette version numérique existe chez son éditeur(les Editions de l'Opportun) et dans toutes les bonnes crèmeries, au prix de 2,99€. Mais faites attention, suite à une erreur technique, elle est diffusée partout ailleurs que chez son éditeur avec des DRMs. J'ai contacté l'éditeur qui m'a confirmé le problème, m'a signalé qu'ils ne font aucuns DRMs, et que cette erreur technique sera réparée.
Dialogue rapide, sympa et décontracté, pas de DRMs ? Un éditeur ajouté sur ma Whitelist perso...

Sous la même forme que l'Indignez-vous de Stéphane Hessel (un "essai" d'une trentaine de pages environ), l'auteur (pastiche) décrit d'une plume élégante et vaniteuse toute la mesquinerie, les coups bas, l'égocentrisme, les conflits d'intérêts, les relations quasi-incestueuses et finalement le vide d'une communauté littéraire de la rive gauche parisienne que l'on ne peut qu'espérer éloignée de la réalité.

La caricature est dans l'ensemble bien construite, bien tournée et plutôt fine. J'ai juste eu un passage à vide au début du deuxième tiers dans une succession d'anecdotes sans intérêt, mais clairement postées là pour justement  dénoncer la vacuité de la réflexion et la démarche pseudo-littéraire de "l'autrice".

Moi qui adore le Roi des Editeurs (surtout dans sa version Twitter), il faut bien dire que j'ai bien aimé ce "Rivegauchez-Vous", auquel je mets direct 3 bonnes étoiles et demi.

(Water)Markings ? the "French" alternative ?

In one of my precedent blog post (In French) http://readingandraytracing.blogspot.com/2011/12/drm-lexception-culturelle-francaise.html , I evocated about marking as an alternative to DRMs, but didn't say much more than that, so here are some details about what this term covers when I talk about it. Please note that some call these "Social DRMs".

For me, and in THIS precise context, "Marking" is a technical mean allowing, through modification of a digital ebook, to add non-intrusive data, relative to the selling circuit, up-to (and including) the final "sell" to the customer, this information beeing non-trivial to delete. The goal for the retailer and the publisher to deter "piracy" and illegal redistribution.

A few points of interest :

Visibility:

Marking can be made visible, or invisible. The solution used by Immateriel (the most used in France) is to at least show parts of the marks, which has at least one benefit : it clearly shows the customer that the "copy" that he received was given to him personally, and not to an indeterminate community. However, this choice can have detrimental effects on the reading experience, as is the case when the visible indications appear at the start/end of each chapter, especially if they create incorrect formatting.

I would personaly be in favor of a smaller visibility, restricted to the start/end of the book. This would not, of course, go against invisible markis inside of the text. In all cases, the visible part would have the "dissuasive" effect, while the invisible part allows "tracking" a leak's source if necessary.

Technical : 
First point : DRM are in fact already watermarks, as they already closely tie the content with personal data. 
And the "most available tools" that get rid of DRMs, clean the files from the encryption only, not necessarily the entirety of the personal linkings. So if you're happy with DRMs, why whine with Watermarks ?

As all DRMs, marking is fallible, which is why I stated the goal was not necessarily for it to be tamper resistant, but non trivial to suppress. One can note though that since they are less intrusive than DRMs, hackers will have less motivation to crack them, and they should stand better the test of time.

An other more technical point is that while DRMs are defectuous by design (as you need to give at the same time the product and the key to read it), the reseller can keep slightly more data secret, which is slightly better.

Unintentional divulgation :
Here is for me the sticking point : in the case where the work is distributed, either inadvertently, or badly ckecked,  the reader could have problems for things that are not of his fault. For example if he looses his ereader, he won't necessarily think about going to the police with a list of the works that were on it whereas this would be the only "good faith" proof if the works where distributed...

Once again, Watermarks are DRM-lite, and while not widely known, this would already be the case with standard DRMed books.

Not available at big distributors:
This intermediary level protection measure is not widely used (and not among the "big" resellers"). So if you prefer them to full size DRMs, please ask for them in replacement ! Also, since the big-resellers don't DO watermarks, they almost always "upgrade" them to full-scale DRMs... Not really the best for readers, is it ?

Edit 2012/07/06 : I think the "watermark" version of protection is gaining traction, for example J.K.Rowling uses it for her Harry Potter books at Pottermore. But until the major resellers (Amazon/Apple) don't support them...