Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
This might shock you, but they already understand that, but they're dead set on absolutely NOT allowing that in any way.
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A moot point because it is already happening, no?
It may not yet be massive but the mechanisms (the torrent sites Google spits out) and the incentives (Price Fixing, georestrictions, blood-from-a-stone pricing) are already in place.
What the article is claiming is that the dominoes have already started falling.
Being dead set on absolutely NOT allowing something that's already happening sounds very much like being totally out of touch with reality.
At this point their only real-world options are to *minimize* the damage, not "prevent" it. And the only realistic way to do this is to reduce the incentives to piracy, 'cause the mechanisms aren't going away.
Just as the music industry belatedly realize that the single biggest driver of piracy was the inability of consumers to actually *buy* the content they wanted on reasonable terms, the BPHs need to understand that, regardless of what they *think* they're doing, what they are *actually* doing is driving paying customers away with their current policies/practices.
It is no secret that the lack of consistency, the arbitrary and often irrational distribution terms and conditions are the biggest irritant to legal buyers. For all the griping from pundits and enthusiasts, consumers by and large don't mind current DRM regimes. They *do* mind not being able to legally get an ebook on reasonable terms; they do mind the whining/whinging, they do mind the double talk about print costs, and they do mind feeling like a fool for having a sense of ethics and paying for something they could easily get for free.
That is what Napsterization is about; when paying customers get tired of being jerked around. It's about irritation out-weighing ethics.
Since ebooks customers are not really much like top-40 singles, it is not inevitable that ebooks will follow music into an age of routine piracy. It is not inevitable but neither is it unlikely. On the contrary, with each passing day that the current irritants stay in place it becomes more and more likely. In fact, even if the BPHs "saw the light" and becamed instant converts, there isn't much they can do to prevent a holiday run to the torrents.
They need to wake up and realize *they* are no longer in power.
Consumers are.
Money talks. Books *are* a commodity.
And it's no longer the 19th century out there.
If they think they can "manage" the transition by ignoring 50 years of consumerism and a decade of internet lore they must be living in Wonderland.