According to a New York Times article, major publishers like Random House have started removing the copy-protection mechanism from downloadable audio books in order to enable easy transfer to different digital devices, among other things. Other major publishers like Simon & Schuster and Penguin, (as confirmed in the Guardian), look set to follow suit, while still others like HarperCollins remain content to watch from the sidelines for the time being. Now where have we seen this before?
Reactions from the likes of Gartner's blog have hailed this development as a smart reaction to the way the world actually works. Now it remains to be seen if the publishing industry will do the same with ebooks and set it DRM-free, or better still, just plain free as we speculated in an earlier post.
