[Piper_]

Originally Posted by stonetools

To me, what's extraordinary is the vehement, "all or nothing": character of the MR true believer's insistence that the publishers should ONLY offer a DRM free "download and sale" model. Anything else is just verboten- a nefarious scheme of the publishers to infringe on our "property" rights.

It might be helpful to take a look at the movie market- not the least because the price points are closest to the book market . There we see, peacefully coexisting, several models of consumption, all of which include DRM
There is:
1. The sale of physical DVDS of movies-going for between$5-20.
2. The RENTAL of movie DVDS
3. The sale of digital copies of movies -think Amazon and ITunes
4.The rental of individual digital copies of movies
5. Cloud subscription services in which movies are streamed to various devices


The last model is becoming the most popular.
Now I don't see anyone going round screaming that Netflix is somehow a dastardly plot by movie studios to deprive people of their right to DRM free copies of movies, but the same accusation was made earlier in the ebook context.
" If the publishers and booksellers offer a [ Netflix type] service for books, I'll resort to piracy!"
"Only a moron would use a cloud subscription service which didn't provide for local copies of an ebook!".

Kind of weird, I think.

In the ebook business I can see room for a :

1. A download and sale service
2.A service offering individual ebooks for rent
3.A cloud subscription service offering reading access to x number of books per month


DRM would be optional for the first. Most publishers and authors will continue to insist on it, Im afraid, and you can vote with your dollars and avoid buying their products.
DRM would be necessary for the second. Again, you can opt not to rent, because of that evil DRM.
DRM would be unnecessary for the third. This is the option that publishers will most want to get behind, (for security reasons)and may likely be the version that proves most popular to the average consumer ( who remains blissfully unaware of all this stuff).

I think publishers will want to make the subscription option especially attractive. The dream would be $15 per month all you eat for the entire catalogue, but it's likely not going to be THAT good. I think Netflix type tiered subscription plans may be more likely, from a one book a month plan for the light reader up to the deluxe all you can eat plan, with maybe options to download one or more books per month. Anyway, I say, bring it on.
For those with strong control issues, you can always buy an actual pbook. That's ULTIMATE control.

Originally Posted by stonetools

Glad you agree with me. Maybe you'll think a bit more deeply and realize that most consumers don't give a d#### about your precious ideal.
What consumers care about are price, convenience, simplicity, and user experience.
Think a little bit more and you'll understand that lot of why ebooks are convenient is precisely because of the cloud. Whispernet syncing-hello?
Just about the only part of the ebook experience that is not cloud based is the reading of the file on your local drive-a file that is delivered and updated from the cloud.
The offline reading piece is just the last piece to be filled in to make ebooks a complete cloud based experience. HTML 5.0makes that last peice possible.
.

Originally Posted by stonetools

Hard to understand why they would be upset. Are they upset by Netflix? Rhapsody? Because the basic concept is the same. I kind of think that people are so invested in fighting The Good Fight Against the DRM Devil that they just are repulsed by a model that marginalizes the issue altogether. Plus there is the control thing-which is digerati inside baseball stuff to the average consumer.


That's good to know. Based on the success of Netflix and Rhapsody, lots of people prefer renting. I think the resistance here is precisely because you and others understand that the average consumer may prefer the subscriptiion model. Doesnt mean, btw, that the purchase option will not still exist. It just won't be where the main action will be.

Dancing and dodging around the fact that nobody's taking issue with the cloud idea as another option.

They're objecting to the things you say in the next breaths (made clear in other posts) about this model replacing the ability to download the file. At best, you say that we'd be charged a premium equal to a hardback to do so.

Netflix and Rhapsody didn't threaten our ability to go buy the movie at the same prices as before.

And using whispernet to defend the HTML5 use of the cloud is also disingenuous.