Quote:
Originally Posted by AMacD
Many people think that a stolen copy is a lost sale, when many pirates are just collectors and would not have purchased the copy under any circumstance. I know someone who downloaded 300 CDs worth of MP3 music. He not only would not have bought them, he COULD not have bought them. I am sure he has not listened to them all either. I don't know how anyone would calculate the "lost revenue" from something that wouldn't have generated any revenue in the first place because no one knows which copies were a lost opportunity. Even if we adopt "Social DRM", that part will be stripped out and on the net before the ink in dry. I also think we need to refuse to buy any book that doesn't absolutely state up front whether is is crippled with DRM or not. Sort of like marking our food as non-GMO, no?
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I totally agree. Folks get so concerned with keeping these people from having the content for free (even though they likely never use it) that they punish all the people who are happy to pay a reasonable price and do a reasonable amount of work for it. With books they seem to be trying to either recoup imaginary losses or possibly just discourage ebooks altogether with exorbitant prices. The more they charge, the more likely customers that are ethically malleable about the whole thing will just download and use the price gouging as an excuse. Look at Baen's. They have a geeky client base who know full well how to get stuff off the darknets yet they manage to sell books at a reasonable price, DRM-free without theft being a big issue. If they think charging too much will keep ebooks from becoming common, they've got their heads in the sand. It will happen whether they want it to or not. The only question is where their publishing house will be.