Pan Macmillan publisher, Tor UK, dumps DRM
 

Publishing company Tor UK has decided to dump DRM on its e-books at the request of its authors.

Tor UK, Tor Books and Forge which are divisions of Pan Macmillan, which said it viewed the move away from DRM as an "experiment".

According to the BBC the company is in discussions with e-book store owners to implement the action within three months.

Jeremy Trevathan, Pan Macmillan's fiction publisher said authors and their readers felt strongly about it.

Writer Chiina Mieville, author of fantasy title The City and the City, and Peter F Hamilton, author of the Void trilogy have been campaigning for some time to get DRM removed.

When it happens users will not be restricted to using only one firm's technology to read purchased titles.

If you buy a DRM-encoded book via Amazon, you can only read it on a Kindle but cannot transfer the title to a Sony Reader, Kobo eReader or use it with Apple's iBooks.

However, some publishers are not sure if they should kill off DRM as it would encourage piracy.

Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the Bookseller magazine, said that some publishers think that DRM is an impediment, and has been cracked anyway so isn't necessary. But others say that it continues to restrict piracy.

The book sellers are also aware that they need to come up with better business models or they will end up like the movie and film industry.

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