It seems that newer Penguine books might not be available at your local library via Overdrive because of fears of piracy. One decrypted ebook could mean thousands of downloads on torrent and other sharing sites, and loss of revenue. And rightfully so: one should not steal. Penguin Worries About E-Book Piracy, Halts Sales to Libraries
Here then is my beef:
“The Thief”, the newest Isaac Bell Adventure, by Clive Cussler (March 6, 2012 Release), and his previous book “Devil’s Gate” from Amazon and B&N are available for sale, but as epubs are, or will likely not be, available at my local library with Overdrive. Nor is Tom Clancy’s “Locked on”, also from Penguine, available (I have a Kobo to use for borrowing from my library).
This is difficult to understand. You would think libraries could supply you with almost anything published, especially new releases. Even though there is pirating of epub and Kindle books, overall ebook sales are climbing faster than traditional book format sales. In early 2011, Amazon announced that it was selling more Kindle digital books than paperbacks, yet people were/are pirating books available from their site. E-book piracy may have unexpected benefits for publishers
So what is Penguine, and possibly others as well, really doing. Sounds like the proverbial p*****g contest to me at the expense of legitimate ebook borrowers. DRM has failed to protect to way the publishers hoped it would (hasn’t worked for music either). One thing needs to be understood: if an encrypted book can be read on a devise, its encryption can be removed. It’s as simple as that. No matter how much the encryption changes, someone will break it. For some people it’s as simple as, “If it’s there, then let’s get rid of it.”
Does that mean Penguine is waiting for the perfect encryption for their books? If so, that would likely last a week and then the whole would start again. Again at the expense of the reader.
