Imagine bringing home a music CD from Best Buy and discovering that it will only play on some of your stereo equipment. Moreover, you're limited in the number of times you can switch the CD from one stereo to another.
That is the kind of restriction and hassle that ebook enthusiasts face today, say critics, due to the widespread use -- misuse, they would argue -- of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.
"I don't have to put on special glasses when I read a book published by Random House, so why should I need a special software reader from Adobe or someone else?" asked David Rothman, co-editor of the TeleRead e-book blog and an author of six non-fiction books. "It's a bizarre notion." DRM is nearly dead in the music industry, after Apple's January decision to stop protecting songs sold through iTunes.
But DRM's use as an anti-piracy tool continues in software and DVD publishing, as well as ebooks.
The difference is that the ebook market remains nascent and fragile. According to the International Digital Publishing Forum, wholesale revenue from US ebook sales last year totaled just US$52.4 million. (IDPF's figures only include a dozen leading publishers, and should be doubled to arrive at a more realistic retail dollar sales total.)
Sales of dedicated e-book readers such as Amazon.com's Kindle or Sony's Sony Reader were slightly better. Last year, just 538,000 e-book readers worth US$154 million were shipped, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
Critics say two of the biggest champions of ebooks, Amazon.com and Adobe Systems, are potentially stunting the industry's long-term growth with their strong support for DRM. They also criticize the two vendors' lukewarm support -- at best -- for the emerging open ebook publishing standard known as .epub, in favor of their own proprietary ones.
For instance, Amazon's Kindle favored format is its own, DRM-restricted AZW ebook format. Those who purchase an ebook on their Kindle cannot transfer it to read on their PC or iPhone, though Amazon hinted earlier this month that it might allow that in the future.
Amazon has also negotiated exclusive rights for Kindle ebooks from author Stephen King and biographies of First Lady Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, the wife of last year's Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain.