Our Products & Customers
Taylor & Francis' eBookstore
The way in which Informa’s customers are accessing information is constantly shifting. As a business, we want to be able to respond to current demands but also evolve ahead of the market so we are in a position to offer our customers new content in new formats and new technologies.
What we are doing:
Digital Rights Management (DRM)
DRM has long been a source of tension between content providers and customers who generally see it as a restriction on their ability to access content flexibly. In order to resolve this, one of Informa’s businesses, Taylor & Francis, is exploring social DRM, a less intrusive form of DRM that plays on a customer’s inherent honesty.
Social DRM allows customers to manipulate content much more easily than hard DRM, making it easier to browse but essentially also much more open to piracy. It protects against this through watermarking, so that if a book is leaked onto the internet, it can be traced back to the customer who bought it.
The increased functionality that social DRM allows also has another important advantage in terms of accessibility. Visually impaired readers often struggle with DRM as it often suppresses some of the functionality they need to be able to access content, something that social DRM may be able to resolve.
T&F is already committed to the issue of accessibility and has recently voluntarily agreed to an accessibility audit by the Shaw Trust, a national charity which supports disabled and disadvantaged people to prepare for work, find jobs and live more independently, and hopes that the results of this will enable it to improve access for disabled readers.