Right here’s one thing I hadn’t seen earlier than. For those who didn’t know that Kobo’s ereaders assist Adobe DRM for ebooks, you definitely wouldn’t study that reality by visiting Kobo’s web site and studying their product pages and FAQs.
This morning I seen that Kobo has redesigned the structure of the homepage on their web site (it’s again to the way it was beforehand now so I assume they’re simply testing a brand new design), and I seen one thing odd in regards to the “Often Requested Questions” part on the backside of the web page.
One of many questions asks the place you should purchase ebooks which are appropriate with Kobo’s ereaders, and that is the reply they offer:
“The simplest means to purchase a guide that’s appropriate along with your Kobo is to buy the books instantly from Kobo’s retailer. Upon getting created a Kobo account (a prerequisite for utilizing your Kobo), you possibly can login to it and browse the storefront from any machine, together with the Kobo eReader itself.
If you want to purchase books from a 3rd social gathering and skim them in your Kobo, you will want to guarantee that the guide is in a appropriate format, and is freed from DRM (Digital Rights Administration).”
I can perceive Kobo pushing their very own book retailer over others, however that second paragraph is a blatant lie. Kobo’s units assist ebooks with Adobe DRM, which the DRM that plenty of book sources use.
It doesn’t cease there. As soon as I began digging deeper, I found that Kobo doesn’t particularly state that their units assist Adobe DRM anyplace on the primary a part of their web site or on any of the product pages for his or her ereaders.
The one place you’ll discover Kobo saying their units assist Adobe DRM is buried within the assist part of their web site for articles that had been posted a few years in the past.
Contemplating most book shops apart from Amazon promote ebooks with Adobe DRM, you’d suppose Kobo would promote the actual fact their units assist these ebooks so folks would know they’ll load previous purchases onto Kobo ereaders.
Kobo simply lists EPUB as a supported format for his or her units, however they don’t say that Adobe EPUB is supported anyplace. Even with all their promoting of supporting library ebooks, they only point out OverDrive and Libby integration; they don’t say something about with the ability to load library ebooks utilizing Adobe Digital Version for books with Adobe DRM, though that’s the usual approach to get library ebooks. That looks as if an odd omission.
Is Kobo planning on dropping assist for Adobe DRM in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later? That would definitely be a horrible thought, however you by no means know what silly issues corporations are going to do today. I simply discover it odd that Kobo doesn’t promote the truth that their units assist Adobe DRM when it’s the commonest type of book DRM on the market. Why wouldn’t they need folks to know that?
