Adobe Digital Editions (abbreviated ADE) is an

e-book reader An e-reader, also called an e-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals. Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an e-read ...

software program from

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

, built initially (1.x version) using

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...

. It is used for acquiring, managing, and reading

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...

digital newspaper A digital newspaper is a digital version of a printed newspaper. Newspapers can be digitally published online or as a digital copy on a digital device, such as a mobile phone or an E Ink reader. Online Web Many organisations that publish a prin ...

s, and other digital publications. The software supports

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...

and

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

(nonproprietary file format for reflowable text, or fixed layout e-books; respectively). It implements a proprietary scheme of

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...

(DRM) which, since the version 1.5 release in May 2008, allows document sharing among multiple devices and user authentication via an Adobe ID. Digital Editions is a successor to the Acrobat eBook Reader application.

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

versions of Adobe Digital Editions were released on 19 June 2007. The current

Apple iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

version of the app has a one star and two star rating. Previous versions of the software required version 9.0 of

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is Software, computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming media, streaming audio and vide ...

. Starting with version 2.0, however, which relies on

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

3.5 on Windows, Flash Player is no longer supported. Adobe initiated development of a

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

version of ADE in 2007; however, this has not had any

beta release A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

or any formal updates.

Digital rights management

Adobe Digital Editions uses the proprietary ADEPT (Adobe Digital Experience Protection Technology)

scheme, which is also implemented on some

s, including

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

s and many Android devices, but not Kindles. The software locks content to up to six machines and allows the user to view the content on each of them.

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...

(B&N) e-books are protected with a variant of ADEPT. In March 2009, the author of the

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

blog ''i♥cabbages'' announced that they had broken the scheme. When viewing an e-book, Adobe Digital Editions by default stores the e-book locally as

files on Windows machines. These files can be copied and handled like other files, but they cannot be opened except with Adobe Digital Editions. Adobe's website has virtually no information on ADEPT except on its trademark page and a statement that

OverDrive Overdrive may refer to: Organizations * OverDrive, Inc., a digital distributor of entertainment media ** OverDrive Media Console, a media player developed by OverDrive, Inc. * Overdrive PC, a subsidiary of Velocity Micro Technology * Overdrive ...

is compatible.

Data collection concern

On 6 October 2014, Nate Hoffelder reported in ''The Digital Reader'' that Adobe Digital Editions version 4 ("ADE4") was sending extensive information about e-books back to Adobe, including e-books read by a user as well as e-books stored on the same machine but not opened in ADE4. This was confirmed by Sean Gallagher, writing in ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' and by others. However, no one else has confirmed the report that books never opened in ADE nor in the ADE library are logged. Hoffelder reported that the information collected included "

hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...

ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and in what order... including the title, publisher, and other metadata for the book". He also reported that all this data was sent in clear text—that is, not protected by any form of encryption. This would make it easy for a third party to read this information. This data was collected for borrowed library books and for books NOT protected by any form of DRM. Hoffelder suggested that such a practice might violate various privacy laws. The

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

(EFF) made a similar suggestion. Adobe responded that their practice was justified by their license agreement and denied collecting data on any book not currently opened for reading. Specifically, they stated:

"All information collected from the user is collected solely for purposes such as license validation and to facilitate the implementation of different licensing models by publishers. Additionally, this information is solely collected for the eBook currently being read by the user and not for any other eBook in the user’s library or read/available in any other reader. User privacy is very important to Adobe, and all data collection in Adobe Digital Editions is in line with the end user license agreement and the Adobe Privacy Policy."

Gary Price, writing in ''

INFOdocket ''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional prac ...

'' (an online publication sponsored by ''

Library Journal ''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional prac ...

''), views the matter as of serious concern, but sees it as another instance of concerns that have been present but largely unaddressed for years. The article also posts Adobe's response to the issue. In October 2014, Adobe released version 4.0.1 of the software, which sends data to Adobe in a secure transmission (using

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is enc ...

References

External links

* {{Ebooks PDF readers Digital Editions EPUB readers Digital rights management systems

Digital rights management

Data collection concern

See also

References

External links