War of Words

From: LikeCool

"As new, pirated ebooks of Stephen King's print-only new novel Joyland begin to circulate online, researchers in Germany are investigating a new piracy prevention method which could alter a story's text to deter illegal copying. Joyland, the coming-of-age story of a college student who works at a fun fair where a murder has been committed, was released earlier this month through small press Hard Case Crime. King said last year that he 'loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we're going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being,' a move which attracted predictable criticism from readers online, who have given the well-reviewed novel one-star write-ups on Amazon.com without having read it. And despite King's wishes to focus on the paperback, pirated ebook copies are already available online….
     At Germany's Fraunhofer Institut, meanwhile, researchers are looking into new protection measures for ebooks. The new ebook digital rights management (DRM) system would, reported PaidContent, change certain words in the text of a pirated ebook – 'invisible' could become 'not visible,' for example, and 'unhealthy' become 'not healthy' – so that an individualized copy could be traced."
— Alison Flood, The Guardian
Read more...

See a related post here...

Buy all of Stephen King's books made of paper here...