Sony's E-Book Reader Hampered by frustrating DRM

Michael Gartenberg | April 26, 2004, 06:50 AM

Great first look at the new e-book reader from Sony that went on sale in Japan. I love e-books. Back when I was in venture capital, the firm I was with invested in a little company called Peanut Press, that later became Palm Digital Media. When I travel, I rarely schlep paper any more but prefer the E-book editions (and unlike the frustrating MS Reader, PalmReader works on Palm, PocketPC, Windows and Macintosh systems so whatever I have with me I can read content on). Sine one usually carries at least one device with a good high res screen, I have never been a believer is standalone devices for e-books. The screen on my computer or PDA is always better than that of a standalone unit. The Sony device, that uses the new digital paper technology from Philips gave me pause. Could the screen be that good, the device small enough to go into my bag? Could this be the first dedicated reader worth owning? Well, it looks like Sony got hardware mostly correct but the Achilles heel seems to be content. Once again Sony is using a tightly locked down DRM that only lets you rent titles for 60 days at at time. YIKES! What on earth were they thinking. DRM is going to remain one of the most serious issues for the next several years. Where it's transparent to consumers (as in the case of PalmReader or iTunes Music store) vendors will be able to protect content but never at the expense of user portability. Where it's as onerous and frustrating to use as Sony and Microsoft have made it for their e-book products, it will actually serve to kill device innovation. Vendors are making huge mistakes with DRM, no in deciding to deploy it, but rather with the implementation. It's not hard to fix this but it needs to happen soon before these folks continue to kill their own markets.