cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38033968

Apparently many libraries, including the ones in my country, are moving over to a system where you’re not allowed to digitally download the epub file anymore. You’re only allowed to borrow the book, and read it, in a closed ecosystem: an app. This per definition then excludes the majority of e-ink readers that don’t run Android. This is due to Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services (Text with EEA relevance) (source) entering into force June 28 this year.

As the Adobe DRM solution hasn’t been updated for years, it isn’t capable of fulfilling all the requirements that this law lays out without endangering the DRM solution. Text-to-speech is one function that isn’t fully supported by Adobe for example. This means that there are apparently two directions to go for full compliance, Readium DRM which is barely supported as well or a closed app ecosystem.

This is frustrating on so many levels, especially if I would like to borrow an ebook in my native language that isn’t available elsewhere on the web, which is often the situation for books in my language (and I’m guessing most languages outside of English). The alternatives left is borrowing a physical copy, or buying it.

The enshittification of everything continues…

  • Sirence@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    Using Onleihe is already a horrid experience even now. There is only one ‘copy’ of each book and this copy is not only for my city, but the whole region, meaning all slightly popular books are reserved for years in advance.

    I can borrow books from the website but the only way to return them before the allocated time is via an app. You can only return the book from the phone app after downloading it again onto the phone (which is a really weird design choice).

    Since the allocated time per book can be very long (21 days) and returning books early is incredibly cumbersome, this makes the one copy per region bottleneck even worse since most people can not be bothered to ‘return’ their eBooks once they are done and just wait out the timer.

    There are a lot of books in my language that are not (yet) on the shadow libraries and this DRM change probably means I won’t have any way in the future to change this anymore.