Is Sony guilty of format bait-and-switch in the e-book area? Bragging about PDF capabilities, but not at first sharing the fine print with readers? Could The Sony Reader‘s PDF-related feature, as touted in BusinessWeek, really be just a Trojan horse for the company’s oddball BBeB format? Use BW to get people to buy your machine, then limit ’em to BBeB if they want to read DRMed best-sellers?
BusinessWeek certainly left people with the impression that the Sony Reader could natively handle PDF files of all kinds, including DRM ones. BW didn’t mention any exception. But now, studying Sony’s spec sheet very carefully, I hold the opposite view. It isn’t just Footnote 7, which says: “These formats require file conversion to BBeB using supplied software” (not the easiest thing to do if DRM is also involved). Why, the Adobe mention on the spec page even appears under the subhead “More than books.” I now think that Sony’s Adobe capabilty is only for nonDRMed books and other nonencrypted documents. Consumer con? If not, it certainly illustrates the confusion that arises in this era of the Tower of eBabel–when proprietary formats and Draconian, company-specific DRM are wreaking havoc with e-book sales.
In addition to querying Adobe, I’ve emailed a Sony contact for the facts here. Just how can one reconcile Footnote 7 with BusinesssWeek’s statement–paraphrased from an anonymous source, perhaps a Sony PR staffer–that “Users will be able to load any .pdf file onto the reader”? If a BusinessWeek tech writer or a Sony PR person can get confused, just what does this say about proprietary formats? Even people familiar with high-tech products, it would appear, cannot find their places within the Tower of eBabel. And if that didn’t happen and if Sony deliberately confused BusinessWeek or even lied to it, is the company risking legal consequences from the Federal Trade Commission–right in the wake of the DRM/rootkit scandal? Sony would do well to clean up its act and come out for a nonproprietary e-book standard without sneaky gotchas.
It was confirmed to me that the Sony Reader supports PDF without requiring prior conversion into BBeB.
I don’t know if it supports any of the DRM that PDF offers.
Thanks, Sven. The confusion meanwhile is deepening. A Sony tech support type has told me he thinks the reader can do DRMed PDF–and yet we’re hearng nothing from Adobe. Furthermore, he’s assuming this because, he says, the Sony converts from other list formats. To me that doesn’t quite seem on the money. So the mystery remains. I have a call in to Biz Week and will also be trying the source of the Sony news release. I’ll welcome whatever you can do to pin down the DRM issue. Better two sources than one. Thanks again! David