My history with ebooks is easy to recount, I happily used eReader for years because I think they have the best DRM scheme around. If you have to put up with DRM then at least make it trouble-free for the consumer, and eReader does that just fine. Recently I got the BlackBerry 8830 and was sad to discover there is no eReader version for the BlackBerry. Not one to go without ebooks on my phone I jumped all over MobiPocket and happily used it on my BlackBerry until their site went down for over a week and my troubles began.
I couldn’t get to ebooks that I had paid for but not yet downloaded to my phone while the MobiPocket site was down. After a week and a half they got their site back up but sent an email to customers warning them that their DRM server had been hacked and everyone had to change their password. This sounded funny but I did my duty and changed my password. I could then access my ebooks online but my BlackBerry started getting Java errors every time it would go online. It got so bad I couldn’t use the program at all. I uninstalled it and then couldn’t install it over-the-air as their web page returned a 404 error.
I tried to install it manually as per their instructions but I couldn’t access my library. Finally after a couple of additional days the over-the-air web page came back up and I was able to download and install the MobiPocket Reader once again. It went flawlessly and when I ran the program the first time I could see ebooks in my local library and I was thrilled. Until I tried to open a new ebook in the library and it informed me that this device was not in my list of authorized devices for MobiPocket. Okay, now to go online.
Back on the desktop I went to the MobiPocket site to access my authorized device list. The MobiPocket DRM only allows four devices to be authorized at any one time and my list was full, even though I have no idea what one of the devices in the list is. No problem, there’s a link to request that the device list be reset so I clicked that. Unlike other DRM systems like iTunes, there’s no way to remove or add single devices. MobiPocket requires you to reset the entire device list and then add them back one by one. Until your device is on the list you cannot download or even open your ebooks so you’re locked out of your paid-for content. This is an all-too-common side effect of DRM that is not very well implemented.
I requested that MobiPocket reset my device list and got this response:
ONE WEEK! That was three days ago and they weren’t kidding as I’m still waiting. I hate poor DRM! Meanwhile I am waiting and NOT BUYING EBOOKS FROM MOBIPOCKET because my device can’t use them and MobiPocket won’t even let me download them to the "unauthorized" device. Did you hear that, MobiPocket/ Amazon? Because I am dead in the water I can’t buy more content from you. Great business plan to protect the content.

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