Friday, March 29, 2002
Hotmail, Passports, and DRM
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 01:51 PM
I received an interesting email today from Jerry S. Justianto on the topic of Hotmail, Passport, and DRM as it relates to eBooks. I've edited together some of his major points - this scenario could potentially be messy.
"If I don't use my hotmail for a certain time, can someone take my ID? If so how about all the DRM5 ebooks that has been purchased and activated with my passport via hotmail account? Think of this scenario:
you need to buy DRM5 ebooks...then it ask you to activate your ebook reader...you go to passport.com, and it still remembers you have your hotmail account sometime ago... Your passport now activated your reader with your hotmail account... Life seems so simple, thanks Microsoft... You download your ebook, and how easily you can read it, no tech complexity... Then you change your active email because too many junk mails in hotmail... You never log in your hotmail account for more than 1 month... Your account is deleted... Someone else might taken your hotmail account? How about all those ebooks that were being activated with your hotmail account?"
Unless I'm mistaken, this could easily happen today. I have a Passport account registered to my Hotmail account, but I've since created a new Passport account linked to my main email address. Both are swimming in spam, however, so if I do want to change it at some point in the future, what effect will that have on my DRM eBooks?
Oh, wait, I don't own any DRM eBooks because I find the entire execution to be utterly asinine (why would I pay MORE for an eBook than for a hard cover book?). I haven't even activated my copy of MS Reader. :-)
"If I don't use my hotmail for a certain time, can someone take my ID? If so how about all the DRM5 ebooks that has been purchased and activated with my passport via hotmail account? Think of this scenario:
you need to buy DRM5 ebooks...then it ask you to activate your ebook reader...you go to passport.com, and it still remembers you have your hotmail account sometime ago... Your passport now activated your reader with your hotmail account... Life seems so simple, thanks Microsoft... You download your ebook, and how easily you can read it, no tech complexity... Then you change your active email because too many junk mails in hotmail... You never log in your hotmail account for more than 1 month... Your account is deleted... Someone else might taken your hotmail account? How about all those ebooks that were being activated with your hotmail account?"
Unless I'm mistaken, this could easily happen today. I have a Passport account registered to my Hotmail account, but I've since created a new Passport account linked to my main email address. Both are swimming in spam, however, so if I do want to change it at some point in the future, what effect will that have on my DRM eBooks?
Oh, wait, I don't own any DRM eBooks because I find the entire execution to be utterly asinine (why would I pay MORE for an eBook than for a hard cover book?). I haven't even activated my copy of MS Reader. :-)
