Apple to offer publishers FairPlay DRM for iPad books - report

2

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    I'm not being snappish, I was being sincere.



    Perhaps I misunderstood your use of "remain physical" as meaning excluding electronic books. No harm, no foul.
  • Reply 22 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    I never said they won't have the digital option. I just mean books aren't going anywhere anytime soon.



    I misunderstood. I read your remark and took it to be they wouldn't offer digital options.



    While I prefer digital products, for some things I prefer a physical version. I think it would be a sad, and scary, day if libraries went digital only.
  • Reply 23 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    $10 at 70% (Apple split) give the publisher $7 per book in sales. The credit card fees come out of the Apple side. Give the writer ?2.50, the publisher take ?4 and ?0.50c on unseen expenses. I think that's fair.



    I agree. I think Apple's model is much more fair than Amazon's has been with the kindle for two years. I take it one step further, however - I think the publishers should be able to negotiate and set their own price-point. Amazon shouldn't have the power to set an artificial price cap, and neither should Apple. Let the market decide what these books are worth to consumers. I don't think asking for $14.99 for a digital copy of a book that normally sells for $27.99 is a bad deal.
  • Reply 24 of 50
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    Without DRM you'd still be tied to the iPad, right?



    Apple uses ePub, which was a pretty slick move, it's a pretty reputable eBook standard. Project Gutenberg seems to have settled on it. The only problem now is that Apple has not announced an iBookstore app for Mac or Windows. If they encrypt their books, then I doubt they're going to let anyone else make a legal book reader app for a more conventional computer for books bought from Apple.



    Quote:

    Anyway, besides, if you expected no DRM on books your living in a world very different from this one. The main issues with iBooks won't be the DRM, but the cost of the books. $9.99 should be the maximum, not more-like the minimum. This will change hopefully, but expect it to take a few years at least. The right price and the reading bug would make these guys way more money.



    This is something that we'll have to see how it settles out. The difference is that publishers cover multiple market segments, when they offer a hardbound book at a higher price (often $25+ list price), then later release an $8 softcover. That way, they get the people that are willing to pay the high price, and later get the people that aren't.
  • Reply 25 of 50
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    Apple uses ePub, which was a pretty slick move, it's a pretty reputable eBook standard.



    Yeah I heard that, I just wasn't sure as I don't have much knowledge of eBooks. The DRM is unavoidable if you ask me. The reason they approach electronic book files different to books is in one foul swoop the world can download that eBook, but you can't with a book.
  • Reply 26 of 50
    normmnormm Posts: 653member
    [QUOTE=avatar1632;1572959]Here's a non-comprehensive list of some of the costs associated with producing anything digitally, including ebooks, but (hopefully) excluding the overlap with dead-tree versions of books (remember, this is not comprehensive or perfect):



    1. You need data center space. [...]

    2. You need electricity. [...]

    ...

    12. Costs associated with disposing of that outdated gear.

    13. Periodic costs for software upgrades [...]



    Data storage may cost next to nothing for you, the average end-user/consumer, but it is far from cheap for publishing businesses of the size we're discussing with respect to the iPad.[/QUOTE



    Apple is providing all of this, along with the necessary storefront and payment infrastructure, accounting, etc., for 30% of the book price, set by the publisher. Apple has relegated IT to a minor part of the cost equation.
  • Reply 27 of 50
    Brilliant post on the costs for digital. The costs in the real world are just as numerous.



    As an author and publisher (RossdalePress.com), we've been printing our books, audio cd's, etc. and it is expensive. THAT IS NOT THE ISSUE THOUGH.



    The real issue is TWO PARTS: first is how many copies are sold. Second, and more importantly, is how many people read your work and rave about it.



    High quality, self-published authors stand to do very well in this model.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by avatar1632 View Post


    Original article posted here, but I copied the content (it's mine) to here because it seemed awkward to provide only a link to a post on another Apple rumors site.



    ---



    I see you don't work with technology for a living, specifically IT. Let me illuminate you a bit, if possible.



    Here's a non-comprehensive list of some of the costs associated with producing anything digitally, including ebooks, but (hopefully) excluding the overlap with dead-tree versions of books (remember, this is not comprehensive or perfect):



    1. You need data center space. You either lease space in an existing facility or you own your own building, whichever is appropriate for your company's needs. Neither option is cheap. Owning your own building comes with extra expenses, such as property tax, zoning and inspection issues, facilities maintenance, insurance, and more.



    2. You need electricity. To run the servers, storage devices, air conditioning, lights (so the admins can see what they're fixing), network equipment inside the data center, network equipment connecting the data center to your ISP(s). For a large publishing house such as Macmillan, the yearly bill for electricity in their data centers (they probably have more than one) is likely somewhere between 6 digits and 7 digits long (in front of the decimal), assuming US dollars.



    3. You need people to keep the data center running for you. You're paying for them whether you're renting space or own it.



    4a. You need system administrators to keep the computers, namely the servers and storage devices, running.



    4b. You need network administrators to keep the networking gear running. In some cases, the system admin and network admin may be the same person or people but this doesn't scale terribly far so it won't last long.



    5. The servers. Servers needed to mediate access to the network-based storage devices (think Netapp or Hitachi SAN). Even if the storage devices are inside the servers, rather than network (ethernet) or SAN (fiberchannel) based. Enterprise servers are not cheap; even for the low-end servers, you may spend a small fortune on enterprise server-class RAM, especially if you need the new 8GB 1266MHz stuff.



    6a. The storage backend. This equipment, in the case of a large company such as Macmillan, will not come from any place like Newegg or Fry's. It's very likely that it's purchased from Netapp, Sun (nee, Oracle), HP, Dell, Hitachi, etc; basically, companies that sell stuff you can run a large business on 24x7 for years on end. This sort of storage is never cheap for anything you'd want to rely on, even for SATA drives; usually, it's based on SCSI or SAS disks. Although, the drives are really the cheap part compared with the infrastructure required to make them useful.



    6b. You will need someone (or several someones) to administer the storage backend, both logically and physically. This may be the same person as the system or network admin, or it may not be because it can get extremely complex and consume a lot of time to manage it.



    7a. You will be paying for throughput used between your servers and your ISP, definitely upstream and possibly downstream, generally by the megabit. Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 and $30 per megabit, depending on too many variables to list here. Note: This is megabits, not megabytes. This includes data transferred between your data centers that doesn't go over a private WAN link. Some of the non-WAN costs can be mitigated by using content distribution networks, such as Akamai, but then of course you're also paying Akamai for their services.



    7b. The cost of private WAN links between data centers, if you have them. These are, however, almost always cheaper than paying by the megabit for traffic that transits the public Internet, but they're still a non-trivial cost.



    8. Support contracts for the hardware.



    9. Support contracts for the storage management, and other, software you will almost certainly be using for the petabytes or exabytes of storage space you're managing across all of your data centers.



    10. Backups for all that data. You don't think these guys sit around with one copy of everything, do you? They don't. Granted, backups may be worked into the storage systems linked across data centers but there's still whatever software is being used to manage those backups.



    11. Annual or bi-annual hardware upgrades to at least some gear; annual or bi-annual hardware replacement of outdated gear.



    12. Costs associated with disposing of that outdated gear.



    13. Periodic costs for software upgrades that fall outside the support contract. Also, costs for acquiring new software as becomes necessary.



    Data storage may cost next to nothing for you, the average end-user/consumer, but it is far from cheap for publishing businesses of the size we're discussing with respect to the iPad.



  • Reply 28 of 50
    Appreciate your concise summary. Thank you.



    I am not directly exposed to such complexities of IT, could you please confirm what you have written about the price "$10 and $30 per megabit". It is very hard to believe (impossible). I used around 100GB-500GB (GigaByte) download bandwidth (and could go to 1TB if I had more space and time) per month and paid for it $50. I mean, I already feel blessed with such access and I knew that I probably in those 5%-10% of home users who you call "heavy" users. But I have never realized that it produces so much cost to my ISP.

    Starting new download, before they cap all this fun...



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by avatar1632 View Post


    Original article posted here, but I copied the content (it's mine) to here because it seemed awkward to provide only a link to a post on another Apple rumors site.



    ---



    I see you don't work with technology for a living, specifically IT. Let me illuminate you a bit, if possible.



    Here's a non-comprehensive list of some of the costs associated with producing anything digitally, including ebooks, but (hopefully) excluding the overlap with dead-tree versions of books (remember, this is not comprehensive or perfect):



    1. You need data center space. You either lease space in an existing facility or you own your own building, whichever is appropriate for your company's needs. Neither option is cheap. Owning your own building comes with extra expenses, such as property tax, zoning and inspection issues, facilities maintenance, insurance, and more.



    2. You need electricity. To run the servers, storage devices, air conditioning, lights (so the admins can see what they're fixing), network equipment inside the data center, network equipment connecting the data center to your ISP(s). For a large publishing house such as Macmillan, the yearly bill for electricity in their data centers (they probably have more than one) is likely somewhere between 6 digits and 7 digits long (in front of the decimal), assuming US dollars.



    3. You need people to keep the data center running for you. You're paying for them whether you're renting space or own it.



    4a. You need system administrators to keep the computers, namely the servers and storage devices, running.



    4b. You need network administrators to keep the networking gear running. In some cases, the system admin and network admin may be the same person or people but this doesn't scale terribly far so it won't last long.



    5. The servers. Servers needed to mediate access to the network-based storage devices (think Netapp or Hitachi SAN). Even if the storage devices are inside the servers, rather than network (ethernet) or SAN (fiberchannel) based. Enterprise servers are not cheap; even for the low-end servers, you may spend a small fortune on enterprise server-class RAM, especially if you need the new 8GB 1266MHz stuff.



    6a. The storage backend. This equipment, in the case of a large company such as Macmillan, will not come from any place like Newegg or Fry's. It's very likely that it's purchased from Netapp, Sun (nee, Oracle), HP, Dell, Hitachi, etc; basically, companies that sell stuff you can run a large business on 24x7 for years on end. This sort of storage is never cheap for anything you'd want to rely on, even for SATA drives; usually, it's based on SCSI or SAS disks. Although, the drives are really the cheap part compared with the infrastructure required to make them useful.



    6b. You will need someone (or several someones) to administer the storage backend, both logically and physically. This may be the same person as the system or network admin, or it may not be because it can get extremely complex and consume a lot of time to manage it.



    7a. You will be paying for throughput used between your servers and your ISP, definitely upstream and possibly downstream, generally by the megabit. Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 and $30 per megabit, depending on too many variables to list here. Note: This is megabits, not megabytes. This includes data transferred between your data centers that doesn't go over a private WAN link. Some of the non-WAN costs can be mitigated by using content distribution networks, such as Akamai, but then of course you're also paying Akamai for their services.



    7b. The cost of private WAN links between data centers, if you have them. These are, however, almost always cheaper than paying by the megabit for traffic that transits the public Internet, but they're still a non-trivial cost.



    8. Support contracts for the hardware.



    9. Support contracts for the storage management, and other, software you will almost certainly be using for the petabytes or exabytes of storage space you're managing across all of your data centers.



    10. Backups for all that data. You don't think these guys sit around with one copy of everything, do you? They don't. Granted, backups may be worked into the storage systems linked across data centers but there's still whatever software is being used to manage those backups.



    11. Annual or bi-annual hardware upgrades to at least some gear; annual or bi-annual hardware replacement of outdated gear.



    12. Costs associated with disposing of that outdated gear.



    13. Periodic costs for software upgrades that fall outside the support contract. Also, costs for acquiring new software as becomes necessary.



    Data storage may cost next to nothing for you, the average end-user/consumer, but it is far from cheap for publishing businesses of the size we're discussing with respect to the iPad.



  • Reply 29 of 50
    [QUOTE=NormM;1573061]
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by avatar1632 View Post


    Here's a non-comprehensive list of some of the costs associated with producing anything digitally, including ebooks, but (hopefully) excluding the overlap with dead-tree versions of books (remember, this is not comprehensive or perfect):



    1. You need data center space. [...]

    2. You need electricity. [...]

    ...

    12. Costs associated with disposing of that outdated gear.

    13. Periodic costs for software upgrades [...]



    Data storage may cost next to nothing for you, the average end-user/consumer, but it is far from cheap for publishing businesses of the size we're discussing with respect to the iPad.[/QUOTE



    Apple is providing all of this, along with the necessary storefront and payment infrastructure, accounting, etc., for 30% of the book price, set by the publisher. Apple has relegated IT to a minor part of the cost equation.



    Only if you assume that Apple is a publisher's sole outlet for their products. In the far more likely case that Apple is only one of several outlets for ebooks, all of that is still necessary.



    I didn't mention accounting/storefront/payment infrastructure at all because that is a small fraction of the infrastructure required. Granted, the costs of dealing with automated clearing houses and credit/debit card transaction fees are non-negligible.



    It all still figures into the cost of goods sold, regardless of who's providing the hardware/services.
  • Reply 30 of 50
    If it can be displayed on a screen, it can be copied, and no amount of digital rights management is going to change that!
  • Reply 31 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    Apple uses ePub, which was a pretty slick move, it's a pretty reputable eBook standard. Project Gutenberg seems to have settled on it. The only problem now is that Apple has not announced an iBookstore app for Mac or Windows. If they encrypt their books, then I doubt they're going to let anyone else make a legal book reader app for a more conventional computer for books bought from Apple.



    They'll probably have their own iBooks software for Mac and Windows. They did it with the regular iTMS, and they have even more reason to do so here, because there is no way the iPad will sell as well as iPods (simply because there is more demand for the latter). Unlike the App Store, there won't be tens of thousands of free books hosted (I don't think. Will they have out of copyright books?), so the overall store will have higher margins.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Robin Huber View Post


    I keep wondering how libraries are going to employ eBook technology? If they purchase one "copy" can any number of patrons download and read it at the same time?



    The way libraries do it now is a mix between online movie rentals and Netflix. Books can only be borrowed by a certain number of patrons at a time. They are DRM'ed, and get removed from your device after the regular lending period passes. They do the same for audiobooks, etc.
  • Reply 32 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Doorman. View Post


    Appreciate your concise summary. Thank you.



    I am not directly exposed to such complexities of IT, could you please confirm what you have written about the price "$10 and $30 per megabit". It is very hard to believe (impossible). I used around 100GB-500GB (GigaByte) download bandwidth (and could go to 1TB if I had more space and time) per month and paid for it $50. I mean, I already feel blessed with such access and I knew that I probably in those 5%-10% of home users who you call "heavy" users. But I have never realized that it produces so much cost to my ISP.

    Starting new download, before they cap all this fun...



    The cost per megabit isn't really relevant in the case of, for example, a Comcast residential (non-business) customer. This is because Comcast is a very large ISP and has the clout to make what are referred to as "transit" agreements with other ISPs. In these agreements, the ISPs have a reciprocal agreement to let each other's traffic cross their networks as long as it's a roughly equal deal with respect to the amount of data that goes each way.



    That's a highly simplified description but captures the gist of it. See this page for a decent description of how your packets get where they're going and the costs associated with doing so. There's a much longer, and much more comprehensive, description here.



    There's also a lovely little thing called oversubscription that every ISP relies on heavily, except in cases of customers that negotiate otherwise. This page describes oversubscription fairly well. Basically, other customers of your ISP that use very little throughput are subsidizing users like you that use a lot more, as the ISP is averaging their service costs across the entire subscriber base.
  • Reply 33 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post


    OK, I get it. Publishers want to protect their works. But proprietary DRM solutions like FairPlay only benefit Apple. They lock you into their platform. That means you can only read iBooks-purchased ebooks on Apple devices. Amazon is at least a little better - but not much. You can read Amazon-purchased ebooks on Kindle or on any other device to which Amazon has ported the Kindle reader application. I cannot read an Amazon purchased ebook with Apple's own ebook reader. Or vice-versa. This madness has to stop. We need an open DRM standard. We need publishers to insist that only that DRM solution is used.



    LOL, if DRM was an open standard, then that would completely defeat the purpose. What we need is for DRM to f**k off and die.



    ...and the DRM doesn't protect the books because it only takes one guy to put a copy up on bittorrent and its free for everyone.
  • Reply 34 of 50
    "Without DRM you'd still be tied to the iPad, right?"



    I don't believe so. Apple has chosen a standard book format - ePub. That's readable on other eReaders, including Sony's eReaders and B&N's nook. I don't believe the Kindle supports ePub at this time.
  • Reply 35 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BDBLACK View Post


    LOL, if DRM was an open standard, then that would completely defeat the purpose.



    Sorry, I don't follow. Why would that defeat the purpose? Could you please elaborate? The book could still be tied to me in some manner. I assume nobody else would know my password, or whatever else is used to tie the book to me.
  • Reply 36 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post


    Sorry, I don't follow. Why would that defeat the purpose? Could you please elaborate? The book could still be tied to me in some manner. I assume nobody else would know my password, or whatever else is used to tie the book to me.



    Jobs spoke about open standards here: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/.
  • Reply 37 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bartfat View Post


    At least the DRM is optional. So you can't really blame Apple, it's the book publishers that will be locking their own titles to the iPad. And an open DRM solution is like a public key to a lock... it's useless. There might as well be no lock there at all to prevent you from reading it on any device.



    So will Apple support some other form of DRM except their own? Is it FairPlay or nothing? If so, then the publishers simply won't have a choice. If they want to sell books for the iPad (and want to protect them), they'll have to use FairPlay. For that, you can indeed blame Apple.



    Then again, I don't believe there is an open DRM solution at this point in time. So there's really no other choice.



    Sorry, but I don't understand your notion that an open DRM would be a "public key to a lock". Could you elaborate? Thanks.
  • Reply 38 of 50
    icyfogicyfog Posts: 338member
    DRM sucks.
  • Reply 39 of 50
    chris_cachris_ca Posts: 2,543member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by simonsharks View Post


    Jobs: "Apple will embrace [DRM-free music] wholeheartedly."



    What a shame this doesn't appear to apply to books or video.



    Why do you say this?

    Apple would (likely) embrace DRM-free books and video wholeheartedly if the publishers would allow it.

    The only reason they did not offer DRM free music (in the beginning) was to appease the labels. It did not contain DRM because Apple thought it would be a good thing or because Apple wanted it.
  • Reply 40 of 50
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post


    Sorry, but I don't understand your notion that an open DRM would be a "public key to a lock". Could you elaborate? Thanks.



    Before the Content stands a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who seeks to gain access to the Content. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” The gate to the Content stands open, so the man bends over in order to see through it, but his view is blocked by the towering figure of the gatekeeper. When the gatekeeper notices this, he laughs and says, “If it tempts you so much, I will stand aside and let you look at the Content. But if you try to go inside despite my prohibition, take note. I am powerful. And I am only a lowly gatekeeper. If you try to access the Content without my permission, you will be met with foes far more powerful than I.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the Content should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at the heavy wrought iron key hanging off his leather belt, and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down in front of the gate, and there he sits and watches the Content from afar. He sits for days and years in front of the gate. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and other things, but they are indifferent questions, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has brought many things along for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud; later, as he grows old, he only mumbles to himself. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether the Content is becoming dimmer or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers all his strength to ask one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. “What do you still want to know now?” asks the gatekeeper as he bends down to the man. “Why do you carry a key,” asks the man, “when the gate you guard has been open this entire time?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “There’s another door to the content, and you had only to ask me for the key to unlock it and go inside. I will now throw away this key.”
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