WM5 Pocket PCs Cannot Read DRMed MS Reader eBooks

[Janak Parekh]

A reader submitted the following disturbing "news" tidbit to us:<br /><div class="quote"> <span class="quote">Quote:</span> I think it's important that you make your readers aware that all secure MS-Reader ebooks are impossible to read on WM5 Phone Edition devices, due to a DRM issue. This was confirmed by me and several of my friends who purchased WM5 PPC phones... </div><br />I made a couple of inquiries, and yes, this is apparently an issue (non-phone WM5 devices as well, apparently, according to comments in the thread). Simple moral of the story? I would not buy MS Reader ebooks in the immediate future. If you've got DRMed ebooks, well, I can't offer any <i>legal</i> recourse at this time.<br /><br />:soapbox: Complex moral? Ed's ranted about this before, and I will too.<!> It seems like Microsoft Reader is an afterthought at this point. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised. Reader isn't the responsibility of the Mobile Devices team -- it's a completely separate group within Microsoft -- and with the lukewarm reception of ebooks (due to publisher reticence, DRM complications, and a number of other factors), I wouldn't be surprised if it just stops being maintained completely some day. I had high hopes for Reader -- of all the ebook tools out there I liked its typography the best -- but as soon as I saw Reader not present in 2003SE's ROM I stopped using it, and now primarily use <a href="www.mobipocket.com">MobiPocket</a> (the fact that MobiPocket has a Smartphone reader also helped my decision), and buy from <a href="www.fictionwise.com">Fictionwise</a>, which offers ebooks in multiple formats. Ed is a big fan of <a href="www.ereader.com">eReader</a>, and I can see why: very simple DRM that's not tied to the device or to an online login system. I've used eReader too, and if you don't need a Smartphone reader app, it's a great choice. All of these companies live and die by their ebook sales, so you know they're going to try their best to make ebooks work. In comparison, I would not buy .LIT files at this point even if I were reimbursed 100% of their cost -- the hassle is simply not worth it.

[crimsonsky]

It's not just Phone Edition devices. Before I removed the WM 5 upgrade from my hx2415, I had loaded MS Reader and tried to activate it (although I don' t actually have any DRM'd books). MS Activation told me I had too low a version of WM on my device and refused to activate!

Incredible that MS hasn't even made their own program WM 5 compatible.

[Ed Hansberry]

Any DRM that ties content to a device rather than a user, to quote Macbeth, "doth sucketh mightily. Forsooth, why, then, doeth thou needest to bindeth thine content with mine device, 'nere to easily transfer betwixt and between all mine electronics? A pox on thy DRM servers, thy cabling connecting thine servers, and all electrical outlets thine servers hadst mated with. May thy day be large with angst, and mine large with mirth as I seeketh content allied with mine ideas, for thou didst kill the MS Reader market and doest have 'ner a soul to blame but thineself."

Act IV, Scene 4. (The so called "lost scene.")

[disconnected]

I wish more people read ebooks, so there would be a whole lot of bad publicity about this.

There's another poll going on about how much we've spent for PPC software. I've spent a lot on software, but I've spent way more on ebooks, and that sometimes bothers me; I expect software to become obsolete at some point, but ebooks shouldn't. The concept of ebooks is great -- no physical space required to store the books or carry them around -- but the DRM is worrisome. I'm not totally opposed to some sort of DRM (ereader's, in particular, is not too cumbersome), and I don't think all books want to be free (although I think pricing could be more realistic), but the thought of losing all of my ebooks at some point infuriates me. I wish Congress would spend as much time worrying about consumer rights as they do about producer rights. Microsoft reader, Mobipocket, and/or Ereader could all stop providing software at any time, and shortly thereafter my whole library would be inaccessable. There ought to be some way of guaranteeing future access to my legally purchased ebooks, without my resorting to illegal software.

In the long run, I guess music consumers (a much larger group) will be the ones to force some change of laws.

[Janak Parekh]

It's not just Phone Edition devices. Before I removed the WM 5 upgrade from my hx2415, I had loaded MS Reader and tried to activate it (although I don' t actually have any DRM'd books). MS Activation told me I had too low a version of WM on my device and refused to activate!
Thanks. :( I'll edit my post.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

I wish more people read ebooks, so there would be a whole lot of bad publicity about this.
All good points, Disconnected. Alas, we're all in the minority. :( I bet you most average Pocket PC owners don't even realize that they can read ebooks on their device.

--janak

[BugDude10]

Incredible that MS hasn't even made their own program WM 5 compatible.

That really is ridiculous. "Left hand, meet right hand." :roll:

P.S. Ed, that was hysterical! Outstanding!

[Janak Parekh]

That really is ridiculous. "Left hand, meet right hand." :roll:
Not quite. Microsoft has something like 10 or 15 hands. "Hand #3, meet hand #8." ;)

P.S. Ed, that was hysterical! Outstanding!
Agreed. :D

--janak

[PetiteFlower]

All hail eReader :)

[crimsonsky]

All hail eReader :)

Agreed - all the paid for e-books I have are in eReader format. It's the least odious out there and I can read the same e-books on both my Pocket PCs and my Palm T5.

BUT - the point has been often raised - what happens if eReader goes out of business or changes their DRM scheme? I say a pox on all DRM.

Don

[Horus]

I wish more people read ebooks, so there would be a whole lot of bad publicity about this.
Ummm, I think if you read that sentence slowly and carefully enough you will figure out why no one bothered to port MS Reader DRM to WM5.0.

DRM solutions tend to be very closely tied to the operating system and need a team in place to maintain them from release to release.
Maybe there is no MS Reader team any more.

[Stephen Beesley]

Very sad news indeed.

Since my first Pocket PC (a Jornada 545 back in 2001), ebook reading has been a major part of my Pocket PC usage pattern - and MS Reader has been the mainstay of my reading. I have tried many of the other solutions out there and found a lot to like in some of them (uBook in particular has found a permanent place on most of my devices) but I have always liked the "look" of Reader and the simplisty of the UI.

However, DRM is a curse. So many different schemes and always the potential to loose access to your content because of a scenario like this. For that reason I have tended to stick to DRM free content - thankfully many of the "classics" are now out of copywrite and available as free txt dowloads from places like the guttenburg project. Generally I download the txt and then depending on what it is I would read it as a txt file in uBook or convert it to .lit format for use in Reader.

I really wish they could come up with some simple "standard" solution for protecting copywrite in ebooks - I know I am probably dreaming... :(

[christak]

As most folks know, you can certainly remove DRM from ebooks that you legally own (only for personal use of course).

[dbman]

I've only purchased one e-book. Until there is an industry standard e-book format that can be read by any reader, I will not purchase another one. I want each reader developer to be able to compete on features and I want the right to switch to a different reader whenever I want to.

[TheWolfen]

For me, reading eBooks is the primary way I use my X50v, but I often worry about DRM as well. While I used to use MS Reader heavily, I dropped it some time ago. I stuck with eReader for awhile, then switched to Mobipocket with Beta 5.0 and I'm quite pleased with it. I do buy a lot of DRM eBooks on Fictionwise, but I guess I'm just operating on faith that I'll be able to access them in the years to come. I read so fast and so much that buying physical books is just not really practical, and I spend at least $25 a month on eBooks, often more (although I like Fictionwise's Micropay rebates so I don't always have to spend real money).

I hope it doesn't come back to haunt me someday, but I sure like books that don't take up space on a shelf and I really like having a bright, easy to read screen!

But.. more on-topic - I guess I'm not too surprised. MS Reader used to be the best, but now I find it lacking in so many areas that I just don't think they care any more. :(

[Janak Parekh]

DRM solutions tend to be very closely tied to the operating system and need a team in place to maintain them from release to release.
As we've pointed out, it doesn't have to be. I'm not quite sure why MS does and eReader doesn't, but the latter mechanism is far superior.

--janak

[Tierran]

All hail eReader :)

Agreed - all the paid for e-books I have are in eReader format. It's the least odious out there and I can read the same e-books on both my Pocket PCs and my Palm T5.

BUT - the point has been often raised - what happens if eReader goes out of business or changes their DRM scheme? I say a pox on all DRM.

Don

Then all your books will still work.

[Gerard]

All my hundreds of ebooks are in HTML format, which I doubt will become proprietary any time soon. µBook Reader does a great job with that, inside a compressed ZIP or RAR archive yet! Pulling HTML out of LIT isn't as fun as just getting ebooks in a proper format, but it's not too difficult thanks to developers with their heads on straight. This latest fumble just demonstrates how blind Microsoft can be to their users' needs.

[pewter_tankard]

BUT - the point has been often raised - what happens if eReader goes out of business or changes their DRM scheme? I say a pox on all DRM.

Don

Then all your books will still work.

But, in a couple of years, the reader software which encapsulates that particular form of DRM will no longer be supported on the next PPC OS...

I own (paper) books dating back over 100 years. Show me a DRM system that can give a guarantee to last even a tenth of that.

[DaleReeck]

I think some of you are writing the obituary for MS Reader a little soon, no? Just because WM5 support isn't out yet doesn't mean the team has been disbanded or whatever.

If you'll remember, when it was either 2002 -> 2003 or 2003 -> 2003 SE upgrade (I forget which), the same thing happened, MS Reader activation complained about an "old" version of Reader. It appears MS Reader doesn't do greater than or less than, it does "exact" version checks. If you'll also remember, look how many months it took for MS Money for PPC to be compatible with MS Money desktop 05. I tihnk it was like four or five months before they released a compatible version. MS doesn't appear to do anything fast when it comes to their free offerings.

They may one day drop MS Money for PPC, but considering the base of installed MS Reader compatible ebooks out there, I doubt they are dropping Reader for PPC anytime soon.

[SHC]

I hope this issue is resolved before next spring because I've got till then to decide whether to upgrade my 4700 (assuming that happens at all). This is another issue that may swing me away from an upgrade.
I know I had trouble when the last 2003 upgrade happened, but it was fixed eventually........
I can understand the reasons for DRM. Why can't there be something like iTunes where you can copy a file to CD then rip it back to remove the protection? iTunes allows that so many times as does protected wma. Why not e-books? I'm probably totally off beam here but it seems reasonable to me.

[Ken Mattern]

I doubt that Microsoft Reader will go away. They are a bit slow accomplishing upgrades but they do get them done. A while back all of my eBooks suddenly would not display on the (then) newest iteration of Reader. I got a lot of complaints and a bunch of people downgraded so they could read my eBooks.

I contacted Microsoft and they actually made a fix. But it took just about forever for them to publicly post it. Since then my eBooks have been readable. In fact just yesterday I got a message from a person who could not read my eBooks. But she went to the link on my site and got the latest Reader and now all is fine.

BTW: My site is still there and there are still over 500 FREE 8O eBooks with no DRM.

http://esspc-ebooks.com

[follick]

Then all your books will still work.

In the same way that a stack of IBM cards for the IBM 360 "still work."

If I give you an e-book as a stack of IBM cards is it any good to you?

I still have a number of documents I wrote with applewriter on my old AppleII computer stored on 5.25" floppy disks (in apple's old 3.3 format).
How easy do you think it is to read those documents?

If MS stops releasing new versions of MSReader that work with current DRM for new hardware and OS's then you will be limited to reading those e-books on current hardware and OS. How long do you think you will be using your current PDA? A year? Five years? Do you think your DRM e-books will still be readable 10 years from now? Probably not.

"Buying" DRM products isn't the same as buying anything else. You can only use "your" DRM content the way the sellers feel like, using the software and hardware that they select and they can revoke your right to do so whenever they feel like it. In other words, they still own it.

I never "buy" DRM.

Fortunately for e-books there are other alternatives. Baen sells all of their e-books without DRM in a variety of formats. Fictionwise sells many current e-books in non-DRM multiformat. Project Gutenberg has a large number of classics for free in plain text. There are others as well.

[Hx4700]

I use my ppc for reading ebooks almost every day - just a few chapters usually. I have almost a hundred yet to read, most from the annual free givaways from ereader. I also mostly buy from ereader and fictionwise.
I agree with the ranking of the reader programs of some of the above comments:
1. eReader
2. MobiPocket
.
.
.
137. MS Reader :devilboy:

IMHO - Ron...

[rlobrecht]

Did anyone else see the Wired Article http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69115,00.html. Basically the Copywrite office is looking to allow cracking of media for fair use (such as cracking an eBook, so it can be read by a screen reader to a blind person, or when the software or hardware is no longer availble to use the media.)

This will be a huge strike back for consumers if it really goes through.

[Jonathan1]

Unless E-Reader doesn't work in WM5 I'm fine. Sucks to be you guys. :razzing:

[stlbud]

I wish more people read ebooks, so there would be a whole lot of bad publicity about this.

It's not just e-books. DRM of any sort faces the same problems. There has to be a way to continue sponsorship of the form once the initial provider has lost interest. As it is, every file whether video, audio or text that has some form of DRM is doomed to be a temporary resource. Paper, film and audio records have survived more than 100 years. DRM only lasts until the next software release.

I agree, I hope there is considerable outcry about this and all DRM to the point where lawmakers give us some security in our investment in digital media. DMCA prevents us from putting digital media into a durable form. Someone needs to give us a way to preserve our investment in the media and make the companies that gain from our purchases responsible.

[Webidiot]

I agree with Bill B.

For now I 'protect and preserve' my .lit purchases by immediately converting them into .html. I use Ubook for all of my ebook reading, which is extensive.

I believe I will always be able to access those .html pages, which makes me feel much better about my purchases.

I don't know what I would do if I couldn't convert them to .html. It might force me to go back to hard copy. :cry:

-Webidiot

[Janak Parekh]

Did anyone else see the Wired Article http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69115,00.html. Basically the Copywrite office is looking to allow cracking of media for fair use (such as cracking an eBook, so it can be read by a screen reader to a blind person, or when the software or hardware is no longer availble to use the media.)
Thanks for the link; I'll post on it.

--janak

[Dave Heine]

I downloaded ver 2.4 of MS Reader, activated it with NO problems. I have
several purchased books and have no problem reading them on my Axim
x51v WM5 PDA. I purchased most of these from Fictionwise.

Go figure!!!

[Janak Parekh]

I downloaded ver 2.4 of MS Reader, activated it with NO problems.
Interesting. I've heard that people who copy the DRM activation files from one Pocket PC to another have no troubles... so maybe they just fixed the activation control. Is there anyone else can report on this? (I don't have a WM5 device yet... :|)

--janak

[SHC]

I had an HTC universal for a week (o2 xda). I managed to activate it and could read non-DRM books just fine. It would not read DRM protected ebooks though. I did get a response from microsoft when I put in a help request, they said msreader does not yet support DRM in WM5 but will be upgraded soon. If some people have got to read DRM'd ebooks I would be interested to know how. It was one of the (many) reasons I sent it back.