Can e-books be saved from the curse of DRM? Or, perhaps better said, when will book publishers realize that loading their digital products down with rights restrictions is not in their own self interest?

There are many reasons why e-books have never really taken off, starting with the fact that many of us are quite fond of paper and print. And, judging by the gripes I've been hearing from e-book devotees, there's not going to be much reason to change our minds until book publishers cease their love affair with digital rights management.

Many of the complaints have focused on the DRM and activation requirements for reading e-books with Adobe Reader 6.0. "This is ridiculous," wrote one e-book reader who got a new notebook computer for Christmas. "I have well over $100 worth of e-books that I've purchased over the last year, and now I can't activate them (on the new machine) because of Adobe's DRM. I've spent hours on the phone with (Adobe) support and I'm still getting the 'Your software cannot be activated' error messages ... Come on, Adobe. I could have bought the same books in paperback on Amazon for less than I spent on the e-books, and I wouldn't need technical support to read them."

Along with the activation problems that arise because of hardware changes, e-book readers express frustration with the usage limitations most book publishers routinely impose. Printing, copying, loaning, and text-to-voice conversion of purchased e-books, although allowable via Adobe's DRM, are often locked by the publisher. Some e-books even have an expiration date after which they can no longer be read.

Shafath Syed, Adobe product manager for electronic publishing, says the company is responding to such complaints by making the DRM more flexible. "Initially we limited the activations to one computer and one PDA device due to concerns by the publishers, but we changed that policy in the fall so you can activate up to six computers," says Syed. "We also now have an anonymous activation system, which means you are not required to get an MS Passport account if you don't need to take the content to multiple computers." A customer who originally uses the anonymous activation can, at a later date, open a Passport or Adobe ID account in order to activate the DRM on multiple computers. The only information Adobe asks for in the activation process is name and e-mail address, Syed added.

"Adobe does not determine what specific rights are granted, such as whether it can be printed, read out loud or has an expiration date," Syed points out. "That really has to be up to the publisher or the distributor. DRM enables a number of different business models for publishers, such as renting a book or seeing individual chapters. So it's up to the publishing industry and what consumers ask for."

So what are customers asking for? In an earlier discussion, a number of readers told me about one publisher that they think does understand how to use digital content: science fiction publisher Baen Books and its Free Library of e-books. "These are selected by the respective authors and vary over time," wrote one reader. "This has been operating for several years with the early joiners encouraging other Baen authors to try it also. It seems that, based on the royalty figures, every time an author puts a new book in the Free Library their sales take a distinct jump. This includes the title listed in the Library. For some reason, when people can decide whether or not to pay for something they want, a substantial number seem willing to pay for it."

Interestingly, readers say some Baen authors include a CD of their previous work with the print copy of a book. "I bought every single book that was on the CD because I liked the author's work enough to want to read the books," wrote another reader. "I read some of them on my computer first, but I can't take my computer everywhere that I want to go. Some authors and/or publishing companies are doing things the right way, and they're going to be getting my money for years to come as a result."

To me, what Baen is doing makes a lot of sense. They understand that the best marketing for any book is to be read. E-books don't have to be given away for free, but neither do they need to be "protected" from the kinds of things people (and libraries) do with regular books, like loaning them to somebody else.

E-books shouldn't be about saddling customers with usage restrictions -- the real opportunity of digital distribution for publishers is to market their content to new readers. For their own sake, they need to realize that DRM and e-books are a very bad match.