DRM and The Pragmatic Bookshelf

David HH pointed out to me a Manning blog from November talking about DRM on their E-Books. They say:

The current technical ebook market consists of Manning with unencumbered PDF ebooks, and all the other publishers with no ebooks.(+) Several offer the online web service, Safari. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being tyrannical DRM and 10 being complete freedom, Manning PDFs are a 10, Safari is about a 3. Our competitors with no ebooks at all are about a zero.

David contacted them to point out that the Pragmatic Bookshelf e-books are 100% unencumbered. As a result, they added a wee footnote:

(+) I’ve recently been made aware that the Pragmatic Programmer does offer unencumbered PDF ebooks. The above statement is in error, but it remains that they are a rarity.

Back in the body, they go on to talk about their ideas for the future, and their switch to ThoutReader.

We’re seeking an alternative somewhere between those endpoints but still heavily favoring ebook freedom, maybe around an 8. Most realistic solutions in real life are in a gray zone between total black and total white.

Well, I guess we’re just naive old niche publishers, but we’d rather not live in the gray zone. Nor do we want our readers to have to compromise. Our PDFs are still unencumbered. I guess according to their logic, that makes us the only "10" in town.