Monthly Archives: August 2010
Ebooks in South America
My wife and I are staying in Bolivia for a year, in the city of Cochabamba. In order not to have to drag along suitcases full of books we both have an ereader. But for the rest the theme of ‘ebooks’ is something that isn’t alive here in Bolivia. On the Mobileread forum I have seen someone from Bolivia and a couple of people from Argentina but that’s it about. But last Saturday I was surprised to read an article about ebooks in one of the local newspapers.
DRM frustration stories
DRM (Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictions Management) is a system to restrict the use of digital media (DVD’s, music, ebooks etc.), usually using encryption technology. This is mainly used by publishers of these media to prevent unauthorized copying and printing of these media. Its purpose is to restrict usage of the media to those people that legally obtained them and to restrict the usage to those actions that the publisher allows and sometimes to a set time period, e.g. when it is borrowed from a library. That looks like an acceptable purpose; however, there are several circumstances when things go wrong and the stuff can no longer be used by the person that legally acquired it. In this post I will collect links to reported cases of these kind of problems. Originally published on Jan 9, 2010. Latest update: Aug. 21, 2010.
