Apple to use Fairplay for iBooks DRM?

DRM does affect *all* users. The only difference among people is that it affects some people immediately because, e.g. they want to read their books on a different device, or want to do something that would otherwise be considered Fair Use; while for others, it will simply come back to bite them in the future. e.g. After they've invested significant amount of money into purchasing content locked to one specific device, and find in the future that a competitor's device comes out with better features and they want to switch. Or perhaps the vendor suddenly closes down their authorisation servers (We've seen this before with some very large companies - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Wal-Mart just to name a few - so believing it just won't happen with Apple one day is just living in denial).

This creates a vendor lock in situation where you either need to hold onto the old device and hope it just keeps working long after its warranty has expired and has become obsolete, or forgo the technically superior competitor's device and upgrade to another from the same vendor.

This situation has become very apparent now with Amazon Kindle owners who may prefer to upgrade to an iPad, but at the expense of not being able to read their DRM infected Amazon eBooks.

So, please don't claim that DRM doesn't affect everyone. Some people just don't realise how it affects them until its too late.

Besides, DRM doesn't work anyway. Stripping FairPlay DRM from iTunes music and video is trivial. Sooner or later, it will be equally trivial to strip the DRM from iBooks. It won't stop piracy one little bit; in fact, it encourages it. It just keeps prices high, harms legitimate customers, and gives ignorant content creators a false sense of security.

Sorry, but this seriously falls under "so what". It is of interest primarily only to philosophers and those who like to make a big deal for the sake of making a big deal.

All the major manufacturers who have bookstores have some type of DRM and it would seem they've managed to suck up a significant portion of the market share in the process. This in spite of the fact that there is little to no interoperability between the devices. Kindle DRM doesn't work on Nook, Nook DRM doesn't work on Sony, Kindle doesn't even support ePub, so much for that.

Fact is I'm not thrilled with it myself but it's not the 5 computer or unlimited device issue, it's the tied to a single account issue. I've been through this with my wife and her Kindle. The hassle being that to accommodate the rare instance we want to share books (me reading on my mac) her Kindle is tied to my Amazon account which causes her purchases to jack up Amazon's Recommendation's system for me.

As the article said, "We don't know how..."

I've noticed that all of today's articles on the subject seem to say that FairPlay is a given, whereas the first articles said the Apple is offering it as an OPTION to publishers. Apple has shown it can offer both DRM and non-DRM content out of the same store without issue. It's likely that some publishers (ok, most) will take Apple up on the FairPlay option and others won't.

Apple is making the DRM offer to publishers to entice them to sell through their store. Without it the number of publishers that would sign up will be much more limited. This make Apple more money, as much as I hate to admit it, it is a positive decision that benefits the consumer as it offers them more choice.

And of course, you can always choose to not buy an iPad, not but FairPlay DRM content or not buy anything at all.

While it's disappointing for those of us who concern ourselves with this type of thing, the average person couldn't care less. As a result the publishers are sure to sell oodles and oodles of books via the iTunes store making lots of money in the process.

Is anybody actually surprised by this? Cause I sure ain't...

Aw cmon guys! youd think a site TUAW whom I rely on quite a bit for my breaking apple news would know what they are talking about!

Fairplay locks the DRM to 1 account.

That 1 account can have 5 iTunes softwares authorized to play and sync these protected contents.

The amount of iPod, iPhone, iPads you can sync through those 5 iTunes softwares with these purchased contents are UNLIMITED.

So my kid can have his own set of iPhones and iPads with different settings from his iTunes. I have my own, my wife has her own.
Its VERY FAIR!

True you can only use these contents with Apple devices. Uh... So? Their products are great, I havent thought of an alternative anyway.

Unlike when Apple introduced iTunes and the Appstore, they are not the only "game in town" on this platform. Between eReader.com's app [DRM], Amazon's Kindle app [DRM], Lexcycle's Stanza access to Webscriptions [no DRM] and Fictionwise [Some DRM, some not]... there already exists a great deal of competition on both sides of the DRM fence. And every app above, except for iBook, is multi-platform. With eReader, for example, I can read the same books on my iPod, my Blackberry, my Palm, and my laptop. If I upgrade to a Droid, can still read my books.

Apple may not address this issue immediately. But before a customer invests in a few dozen books, they may begin to wonder, what happens when the iPad goes the way of the Newton? Calm down fanbois, it will happen eventually. It's not like you can by a new Apple ][e anywhere right now. Even with iTunes you could burn a CD and then re-rip it to device neutral mp3s.

Maybe Apple will let us print one or two copies of a given book, purely for back-up purposes of course!

Correction: FairPlay limits iTunes content to five different *computers*, not accounts. In other words, content purchased by a unique account can be authorized to play on five different computers, and those computers can sync that content to an unlimited number of devices.

Thus, if you *did* have six users (each with their own authorized computer) in your household, you could connect a single iPad to each of their computers and manually download each user's books, music, and movies. Keep in mind that you will lose the ability to sync and eject automatically with your primary computer.

A better option would be to set up Home Sharing and have newly purchased content from up to four other computers copied to your own computer automatically. Then you could sync your iPad with only your computer. However, in a household of six computers, one would be left out :-(

If there is DRM, it will be Fairplay. There is no standardized DRM (yet) for the ePub format, just recommendations for applying vendor DRM.

I hope at least some publishers make the push for no DRM for their titles for portability. Otherwise they are going to wind up in the same boat as music companies were in - that the #1 seller of music is the only company capable of meeting your requirements and still supporting the music devices that have > 80% of the market. They had to drop DRM for Amazon's store just to bring another competitor in.

FairPlay allows authorization for use on five different _computers_ (not accounts) and an unlimited number of devices per computer.

You'd think you guys would have this down by now.

Don't defend this bullcrap.

Whatever, it will be cracked in 24 hours.

This is NOT a surprise. Apple will use its own DRM. This way Apple can lock consumers into Apple products. A real win for Apple. A real loss for the consumer since the consumer will have LESS choice.