[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

I like detailed criticism :-)

And I like detailed discussions like this one, which remain civil despite disagreement. Much of this thread could serve as an example of how to have sensible disagreements on the internet.

Now, I'm pulling some quotes out of order to tie together related ideas, but hopefully I won't pull them out of context in the process. Feel free to point it out if I do so unintentionally.

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

So be it. There's nothing strange or heretic in granting limited publishing rights, if that's what the things I'm proposing must be called. We already have legal mechanisms like that in place today.

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

This is easy to address. I didn't talk of families. According to my proposal, you can give copies of the files you purchase to how many people you want, but YOU are (jointly) responsible for the things that happen to your files afterwards.

That's not quite "limited publishing rights" in my mind. I used "families" as an example because that's the sort of sharing people often wish to do. How many people I want? There have to be limits of some sort. Surely it would not be okay to share with all 342 people I go to church with, even if not a single one posts it on the internet for the public. (Just an example of large groups a person might feel close to. I don't go to church.)

Which brings me to something else (doesn't it always? ) Right now the system is (some feel) unfavorably skewed toward the publishers and content providers. However, "give copies to how many people you want" can easily slant things sharply in the other direction because - again - of how ebooks are different from paper books. Right now passing a book on to my mom would require postage cost and some hassle. An ebook? No problem! It's legitimized small-scale file sharing, which would actually likely have a larger impact on sales than piracy currently does. I don't normally side with the publishers on much of anything, but even I have to cringe at how the numbers could add up.

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

Current license-based DRM systems are clearly not working (neither for publishers -who suffer piracy- nor for users -who get very limited rights). Moreover, these systems are doing a lot of damage to culture in general and to people's attitude towards legality (Average Joe and -apparently- Average Politician will probably realize that only in 15 or 20 years).

So now the publishers' losses are transferred from large-scale piracy to small-scale sharing, which is actually more likely to cut into sales because it's targeted sharing, while users get to do the sharing but could potentially be on the hook for something they didn't actually do. It's like telling them "share with people you trust, but trust no one". This goes back to not knowing who is or is not a potential pirate. They simply won't know until it is too late and they are on the hook for a fine, at which point they will stop sharing with anyone for fear of it happening again, which should make the publishers happy but nullifies one of the advantages of the system.

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

In my opinion this is not sufficient. The only failsafe fallback plan is making consumers able to do their own backing up of their media, legally. Moreover, what happens if the media publisher folds is only part of the problem I wanted to address. The other part is that consumers are now suffering an extremely uneven balance of power against publishers, which the latter justify with a "fight against piracy" that is not even working.

I did say it would be "a start". It wouldn't solve everything, but it would cover one of the reasons often cited by people who don't want DRM'd ebooks.

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

Why can't you? In my opinion, provided that users are prepared to "pay" for such freedom with an assumption of responsibility (so they need to care about what happens to their media files) there are no technical reason nor unreasonable risks for the publisher in letting us "have it both ways".

Because you're taking away one of their motivations for doing so - more sales. The reason they offer the features they do is because a solid ecosystem is attractive to buyers. Without vendor lock-in, many of those features don't work. So if you decide I'm trustworthy enough to give me some of your books, I won't be able to use the features I bought my Kindle for in the first place. Give people the option of either using the cool features or getting free books from their friends... How many do you think will choose the cool features? I honestly don't know, as I don't use those features, so I'd actually be interested in finding out what most people would choose.

I've been interrupted so many times in the past hour as I've tried to write this, I'll just wrap it up here. It's so frustrating when work gets in the way of a good discussion. Also, if there are replies in between that covered any of this, forgive me, it just took me so long to get this typed.