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DRM: The debate onprotecting ebooksUpdate spring 2014In Germany, two major publishers, BasteiLübbe and Gmeiner, to hard DRM, and usewatermarking for their ebooks instead.Adobe has announced a new version of its DRM to be rolledout in July 2014. (The Digital Reader, 22 January 2014) It isunclear however at this point, to what extend vendors willbe obliged to migrate to the new version, and if olderreading software and devoices will be supported with updates.(The Digital Reader, 3 February 2014).Developments and debates in 2013In major non-English-language book markets such as Germany,France, or Spain, copyright-protection technologyis the norm for ebooks released by publishers. DigitalRights Management (DRM) systems are widely consideredto be a precondition for the emergence of a commerciallyviable ebook market.However, significant exceptions exist to the rule, and in2012, a number of publishers have started to experimentwith alternatives.The most surprising exception is probably Sweden, wherealmost all digitally published trade books have no DRM.eLib, by far the largest ebook distributor (owned by Bonnier,the dominant publishing group in Scandinavia), has80% of its content watermarked as an alternative to DRM,which equals 98% of all of the company’s ebook sales(communication by eLib for this report).But also in Italy, where Adobe’s DRM solution had beeninitially prvalent, “social DRM” (notably digital watermarking)had increased from a modest 15% of all ebooks in 2010to 42.4% in 2012, clearly overtaking the largely unchangedone third of ebooks carrying hard DRM. (Giornale della libreria,Background and Trends, 9 March 2012).The most widely publicised DRM-free publishing projectwas certainly the launch of Pottermore in March 2012, introducingthe Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling as ebooks.For all downloads, DRM will only be applied if the booksare pushed through a Kindle or NOOK reading device or alending system such as Overdrive. But readers can alsodownload a DRM-free EPUB copy, which only carries a watermarkallowing the publisher to track back a book to itssource. (For a detailed discussion, see the summary byPhilip Jones: Pottermore finally delivers: Harry Potter e-books land.) An assessment of sales a good month afterthe introduction of the platform documents the initiatives’scommercial success, with sales worth three millionPound Sterling in the first four weeks, coinciding with increasingprint book sales (summary in buchreport, 9 May2012).Across various markets, a number of traditional and newlyfounded publishing houses have started to roll out partsof their title list, or even an entire catalog, without DRM.In the US, the popular imprints Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape,and Tor Teen, all belonging to the German Holtzbrinckgroup’s Macmillan US, renounced DRM in mid 2012. (“TorUS abandons DRM”, The Bookseller, April 25 2012).Penguin publicly stated that it was “looking at all kind ofalternatives” (Penguin global digital director Molly Bartonat the Publishers Launch conference in New York, June 4,2012).The Global eBook Report 124