It is widely seen as a serious problem that European as well as international customers who have bought an ebook from one of the international ebook retailers implicitly subscribe to this retailer as their sole future ebook On the Interoperability supplier, i.e. in effect, they forego buying future ebooks from any other supplier. This is a threat to the qualified European book distribution infrastructure and hence the European book culture, since subscribers to one of these of eBook Formats ebook ecosystems cannot buy future ebooks from privately owned community-located bricks & mortar booksellers engaging in ebook retailing. This view is completely in line with the Digital Agenda of the European Commission calling in Pillar II for “an effective interoperability Prof. Christoph Bläsi between IT products and services to build a truly digital society. Europe must ensure that new IT devices, applications, data repositories and services interact seamlessly anywhere – just like the Internet.” Prof. Franz Rothlauf This report was commissioned from Johannes Gutenberg University Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz – Germany Mainz by the European and International Booksellers Federation. EIBF is very grateful to its sponsors, namely the Booksellers Association of Denmark, the Booksellers Association of the Netherlands and the Booksellers Association of the UK & Ireland, whose financial contribution made this project possible. April 2013 European and International Booksellers Federation rue de la Science 10 – 1000 Brussels – Belgium – [email protected] www.europeanbooksellers.eu – www.ibf-booksellers.org European and International Booksellers Federation On the Interoperability of eBook Formats Prof. Christoph Bläsi | Prof. Franz Rothlauf Professor of Book Studies | Professor of Information Systems Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz – Germany April 2013 European and International Booksellers Federation rue de la Science 10 – 1000 Brussels – Belgium www.europeanbooksellers.eu – www.ibf-booksellers.org [email protected] Message from Madam Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission NEELIE KROES vice-president of the european commission It is no secret that Europeans like reading. They like reading printed books, but increasingly ebooks too. And it is a well-known challenge that bookshops have to re-invent themselves for the digital world. Booksellers play an important role in our European societies. They are a little like friends recommending a good book for you and helping you discover your own taste and have a good time reading it. They also offer a nice social space where you can find inspiration and peace in your busy life schedule. My wish is that booksellers in Europe can take initiatives and benefit from the growth in the ebook markets. This is why I also welcome this study by the European Booksellers Federation. Interoperability is a major requirement to build a truly digital society. This applies to ebooks too. When you buy a printed book it’s yours to take where you like. It should be the same with an ebook. You can now open a document on different computers, so why not an ebook on different platforms and in different apps? One should be able to read one’s ebook anywhere, any time on any device. This study provides interesting insights on ways to reach true interoperability in the ebook market, through both interoperable ebook formats and interoperable DRM schemes. Now is the time for open standards regarding ebooks, just like has happened in other areas of the digital economy. Neelie Kroes Vice-President of the European Commission, in charge of the Digital Agenda RUE DE LA LOI 200 – B-1049 BRUSSELS – TEL. : (+32-2) 299.24.00 – FAX (+32-2) 296.04.09 Foreword The European Booksellers Federation has been fully supportive of the politi- cal objectives of the Digital Agenda promoted by the European Commission since its launch. Booksellers across Europe are fully engaged in developing and implement- ing the new business models that are opening up as a result of the digitiza- tion of books and reading. They are keen to meet the expectations of digital readers, as long as copyright, fair business models and independence of choice are respected. The lack of interoperability between formats and platforms has been identi- fied as one of the major obstacles hindering the Digital Agenda. On behalf of my colleagues from all Booksellers Associations in membership with EBF, I am very pleased that this study provides clear scientific evidence that interoperability is achievable. It also shows that there are alternatives to DRM’s and that content portability is feasible. Booksellers are keen to promote business models which make digital content easily accessible to the customers they are in touch with on a daily basis in their terrestrial or e-bookshops, the European readers. Equally, booksellers are keen to sell e-books across borders and make as many customers as possible happy. They strongly support an open market, without territorial restrictions, in the full respect of copyright. It is crucial to preserve a healthy book chain in Europe, as writers, publish- ers and booksellers are essential in promoting cultural diversity and high quality content. It is therefore of paramount importance to promote fair and sustainable business models and an even playing field for all book retailers in the book industry, and ultimately for the benefit of all European readers. John Mc Namee President Contents Executive Summary ............................................7 1 Introduction ...............................................9 2 Development of EPUB ......................................12 3 eBook Formats ............................................15 3.1 EPUB 3 .................................................15 3.2 Apple’s eBook Formats ....................................18 3.3 Amazon’s KF8 Format. 21 4 Feature Comparison .......................................24 4.1 Core Features ............................................24 4.2 Multimedia and Interactivity ...............................29 4.3 Globalization and Accessibility .............................34 4.4 Future Features ..........................................35 4.5 Summary of the Feature Comparison ........................36 5 Alternative Options ........................................39 5.1 Book Apps. 39 5.2 eBook Streaming .........................................40 6 Protection of Copyrighted Material ..........................42 6.1 Overview. .42 6.2 Software-based DRM Schemes for eBooks. .44 6.3 Discussion ...............................................46 7 Conclusions ...............................................48 6 Commissioned by the European & International Booksellers Federation Executive Summary It is widely seen as a serious problem that European as well as international customers who have bought an ebook from one of the international ebook retailers implicitly subscribe to this retailer as their sole future ebook sup- plier, i.e. in effect, they forego buying future ebooks from any other sup- plier. In particular, this is a threat to the tight and qualified European book distribution infrastructure and hence to the European book culture, since subscribers to one of these ebook ecosystems cannot buy future ebooks from privately owned community-located brick & mortar booksellers engag- ing in ebook retailing. This view is completely in line with the European Commission: the Digital Agenda of the European Commission calls in pillar II (interoperability and standards) for an “effective interoperability between IT products and services to build a truly digital society. Europe must ensure that new IT devices, applications, data repositories and services interact seamlessly anywhere – just like the Internet.” It is the task of this report to study whether convincing technological or functional reasons on the side of the international ebook retailers can be identified to justify non-interoperable ebook formats. Moreover, we study the digital rights management (DRM) measures employed by those retailers and question the necessity to build up additional walls between the ecosys- tems with the help of such measures. In the process, we will also address the challenge to protect intellectual property adequately across ebook eco- systems. And we evaluate the potential of the proposal for a common ebook format standard covering multimedia and interactivity features, EPUB 3 (as proposed by the IDPF in October 2011), and also dwell on interoperable options regarding the DRM protection of intellectual property. Major players in the ebook market, especially Amazon or Apple, have built up closed ebook ecosystems in the last few years. eBooks that are distributed via one of these ecosystems are formatted using ecosystem-specific ebook formats like KF8 (Amazon) or Fixed Layout EPUB/.ibooks (Apple). As well as using incompatible ebook formats, Apple and Amazon fence their eco- systems with the help of DRM measures of various kinds. These measures prohibit the export and import of files to and from other ecosystems. Some of these measures are restrictive software-based methods using encryption. Thus, ebooks can only be read on ecosystem-specific end-user devices (or reader applications) such as the Kindle readers (in the case of the Amazon ecosystem) or iPads or iBooks (for the Apple ecosystem). The transfer of ebooks from one ecosystem into another is not possible (or, at least, requires measures that are not legal). The main results of our study are the