Indie bookstores Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Fiction Addiction and Posman Books have sued major publishers and Amazon, arguing that digital rights management (DRM) locks on eBooks gives Amazon an unfair advantage in the eBook marketplace.
The bookstores would like to be able to sell “open-source and DRM-free books” that would be accessible on Kindles and other eReaders. Author Cory Doctorow points out that the complaint misunderstands the term DRM. He writes on BoingBoing: “For some reason, they’re using ‘open source’ as a synonym for ‘standardized’ or ‘interoperable.’ Which is to say, these booksellers don’t really care if the books are DRM-free, they just want them locked up using a DRM that the booksellers can also use…There is no such thing as ‘open source’ DRM.”