I wanted to start a new thread about the format of the books. I would like to strongly advocate that the books be in a format that is more friendly for usage with programs like pdf annotator and the 3rd party screen readers. You have said that this possible, but that it would strain your servers and does pose a risk to the possibility of the encryption being broken by someone who was determined or bored and had enough time.

My question is are the enough people who would benefit from the change to outweigh the possible downsides. Another question would be what other downsides are there for the end user? Will it change the way we get to use the books in terms of how we and were we can use them. Will have to be connected to the internet every time we open a book, will be limited to just one computer for using a book on, are just a few questions.

Thanks for all of your time and efforts. I'm sure that you have give this a lot of thought and I am hoping as a community we can come to a concencous(sp?) as to what will work best for the most people.

Are you chosing to not respond to this thread?

This topic is set for discussion during the next Board Meeting for 121Books.org. At this time, I cannot state if or when we will modify our current policy.

Unofficially; the staff are split on this issue. Many of us feel it would be ideal to offer unencrypted versions of our 121Files on an “as-needed” basis (we sometimes do this, but it is not our official policy to do so). Some feel we should simply adopt a “No-Support for Third Party Applications” policy. We would still allow their use, as we currently do, but we would officially recommend against them and it would be the responsibility of the individual to test this functionality with the application of their choice during the free trial period.

Re downsides:
Some of these are legal and ethical issues and I expect the final decision will have more to do with our corporate obligations in respect to authors and publishers, than to the services 121Books.org would like to offer in an ideal world. Providing a list of possible “downsides” would only be guessing on my part. But whatever our ultimate decision is, it is safe to bet there will always be Pros & Cons to consider.

Re PDF Annotator:
Most of these functions are available with Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat has a higher cost than Annotator, and you may feel Annotator is easier to use. We feel this issue is part of the broader question relating to our encryption policy(s) and non-Adobe applications opening 121Files. The use of Annotator and other PDF applications is part of the overall discussion scheduled with our Board of Directors.

We tried to put notes in with Acrobat, it was awful (from my experience). I simply found Annotator to be a much easier way (as well as cheaper) way to accomplish this. The call out boxes that Acrobat uses are confusing and need to be opened each time you go to the page.

All of that said, I guess from your response I'm left with one big question lingering in my mind. Which is more important... The usability of the documents for the end users with print disabilities or keeping the publishers REALLY happy?

We all understand that there needs to be a balance, but if in the end documents can't be read by appropriate screen readers or used by mark up programs that actually usable by the end user (and this is by no means a universal set of programs for all users) then the encryption serves the publisher more than it does the end user.

I'm going to take a hard stance here. Your party line so far has been, this functionality is built into Adobe use it. The responses have been, but the functionality that is built into Adobe doesn't meet our needs (for varied reasons). I think it is important that when you meet that you acknowledge that Adobe is not the one stop solution to all of these needs. That there are better 3rd party solutions, for many users.