Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I realize no one likes DRM or other forms of security. But unfortunately, in a world where people must make a living, and other people are fond of taking things without paying, security of some kind is needed to make the system work (to allow the best producers to willingly produce). Wishing for a security-free world is as impractical as expecting people to just stop stealing.
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The only problem with that is that DRM only affects people who pay for their ebooks, it doesn't affect people who don't pay for them in any way at all. People who "steal" them are free to use them on any reader they want to read them on, and will still be able to long after their current reader falls to bits through age, or the publisher goes out of business.
Something for you to think about
: (should be in the Pirate Bay thread, but would fit here too)
Before unauthorised downloading became a mainstream activity, a lot of people used to buy pirate content on CDR / DVDR, typically about £3 for a copy of a new release film/movie that they were only likely to watch once. Those are all people who were prepared to pay for their digital copies, but unfortunately for the content producers they were not prepared to pay the amount the producers wanted for that content. So they turned to a cheaper alternative.
During the period that unauthorised downloading has been mainstream, those same content producers have reported an increase in the sale of digital content. I believe that these things are interelated, and the money they used to spend on pirate copies, and are now saving by downloading their own unauthorised content instead, is now being spent on legitimate content.
They don't pay for everything they consume, fair enough, but if unauthorised downloading was forced back underground they would just go back to spending that money on pirate copies.