Terms and Conditions
Our Policy on e-book/digital format book Security or, Why we avoid Digital Rights Management (DRM) Encryption
We eschew Digital Rights Management (DRM) Encryption opting instead for our chosen policy of relying on the honour system. Honesty, trust, honour and integrity are the bedrock of this unsupervised system, devoid of surveillance or intrusive regulation, depending instead on persons' voluntary adherence to the honour code of conduct.
Digital books—e-books—may be shared infinitely using today’s technology and the worldwide web.
Unlike their 1439 Gutenberg-inspired static forerunner of fixed text and images e-books enable multiple presentation formats of information. Readers benefit immensely from this medium’s capacity for multimedia representations of the information we convey: text, images, sound, moving pictures, video/film. Not to mention its availability on multiple platforms. This facility renders your “book” ubiquitous! This is a powerful medium for conveying or presenting information.
With these advances, the task of securing rights—copyright—if you wish, is fraught with complexity. We do however, have ‘solutions’ to this problem. US Government strength encryption (AES 256 bit) and DRM controls provide various mechanisms to control or restrict sharing, copying, printing etc. of your e-book. The book you purchased, the book you own!
Problem is, all these mechanisms actually restrict your capacity to enjoy the benefits the technology offers you: reading your book at your computer, laptop, tablet, smart phone etc. as owner, DRM encryption is truly limiting and downright annoying!
We might add, for author and publisher these controls are expensive—book costs increase. For the complexity involved see for instance: https://www.locklizard.com/drm/ Additionally, check this: just google DRM. Your hits provide a plethora of advice on how to defeat these mechanisms. Clearly the community prefers ‘freedom’.
We’ve concluded that use of DRM controls and encryption in our e-books defeats the tremendous benefits for the ‘commons’. The honour system respects intellectual work/property; we prefer to let it prevail!