A serious topic

[pshrynk]

I'm going to toss in a quote from the Moderators' Forum that I made that gave me the idea for this thread:

In psychotherapy there is a pattern of behavior that we observe wherein the patient recognizes a problem and applies a solution. If this solution works, then the patient continues to use it. If it doesn't, then the solution is abandoned.

Now, here is where things go terribly wrong. The new solution will cotninue to work for as long as it is applied to the original problem or problem type. Howeve, being the good little monkeys we are descended from, we start applying the new solution to other problems, with the sometimes correct belief that problem/solutions sets are interchangeable.

When the new solution at first does not work, instead of abandoning it as a bad idea, we do it more. After all, this is the solution that works. Based on the "more is better" principle, we just ramp up the new solution over and over.

At that point, the new solution goes from being the new solution to being the new problem. It generally takes a long time for us to recognize that the solution has, in fact done this, so we just keep doing more and more. Until a newer solution to the new problem presents itself and the cycle restarts from scratch.

Example: A woman is raised in a family environment where conflict is discouraged and she feels that she is blamed for anything that goes on with her sibship. She finds that, if she perceives that she is about to be blamed, she can avert the drama by rusing in to explain herself to her mother, who will then walk away from conflict. Later in life, whenever she feels some level of threat, she rushes to make a huge explanation of the situation, being very pushy in her assertions, because no one seems to listen to her. She becomes labeled as someone who is always creating crises for no reason.

If you put the DRM and the DMCA shtuff into this framework, it all becomes exquisitely clear as to why we are living in these times. What is called for is a new solution that is not seen as the panacea, but just a solution for now, with new solutions to new problems later on down the line.

I think that the whole DRM/no DRM debate is really discussing quite the wrong thing. I feel that DRM is a solution to an antique problem and that what is needed is a newer solution. One that does not rely on the concept of "owning" something by holding it in your hands.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's called "Social DRM", Elsi. I personally see no harm in it, but there are those who assert that it violates their "right to privacy".

I'd go along with that, no problem...

no comment

[desertgrandma]

I 'm thinking $2.25 per book would be a good starting place?

Any other thoughts here?

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

I'm going to toss in a quote from the Moderators' Forum that I made that gave me the idea for this thread:


I think that the whole DRM/no DRM debate is really discussing quite the wrong thing. I feel that DRM is a solution to an antique problem and that what is needed is a newer solution. One that does not rely on the concept of "owning" something by holding it in your hands.

First of all define exactly why there is a perceived need for DRM....

...is it to stop piracy....
...is it to ensure copyright relates back to the author....
...is it a mechanism whereby a user is 'locked' in....

The first 2 I agree with, the last is my only concern and that becomes an issue of 'restriction of personal rights'.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

I 'm thinking $2.25 per book would be a good starting place?

Any other thoughts here?

Take the average pbook price, and halve it ....

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

I 'm thinking $2.25 per book would be a good starting place?

Any other thoughts here?

I think there needs to be some research done on sales of similar topic and length books at different price points to give us an idea of what the market really wants to bear.

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

First of all define exactly why there is a perceived need for DRM....

...is it to stop piracy....
...is it to ensure copyright relates back to the author....
...is it a mechanism whereby a user is 'locked' in....

The first 2 I agree with, the last is my only concern and that becomes an issue of 'restriction of personal rights'.

There will be piracy. there will be people who just want to take things because they can. I feel very strongly that that is a minute unmber of people. There is also piracy now, because people feel frustrated at therestrictions of DRM schema. Make the restrictions go away, and those people will eventually come to the light side.

Yes, copyright goes to the author. Absolutely. In fact, we are having to reassess the whole copyright schema, as we go along here. I would be all for giving The Disney Corporation eternal copyright for Micky Mouse and all direct creations of Walt Disney if they would just get out of the lobbying for every copyright to last forever. that's another discussion, however.

The point I'm trying to make is exactly what you're saying here in your third bullet. "Lock in" is ancient. You buy a pbook and you are "locked in" to that copy. ebooks are much slipprier. Copying and selling a pbook with a copy machine becomes very obious very fast that it is a violation. Smae with POD copiers that can make them look like the real thing. But a bunch of electropotentials in the aether is something entirely different.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

I think there needs to be some research done on sales of similar topic and length books at different price points to give us an idea of what the market really wants to bear.

Actually, I"m thinking I'd buy even more books at a 99cent price point.


Just has a nice ring to it.

Perhaps, after the hardback version has gone to paperback, the author wouldn't feel he was getting gypped at that price.

[Greg Anos]

Personally, I don't think it can be done. The only sucessful laws are the one that are, in essence, self-enforcing. Digital information is simply not capable of being forced into a scarcity model. It won't ever be self-enforcing. In the long haul, DRM is about as effective as King Canute ordering back the tide.

However, if you want an attempt....

1. Restrict ownership of copyright to the original human creator(s). The creator can only sell a license to anybody else. And yes, this strips ownership from all corporations.

2. Limit copyright to life of the creator. Period. He who creates gets rewarded, he who doesn't create, doesn't.

3. Explain the creator is the one who is getting stolen from, under the new methodology.

Don;t worry, this will never happen.

[GeoffC]

The Creator who offers their wares directly from their own websites may possibly be winners, so long as they don't fall into an unnecessary DRM route.

[Dr. Drib]

Here in Peru, vendors sell pirated, photocopied books for very little money - and people do indeed buy these books off the street. In fact, there are millions of poor people in Peru and a deal of educated people as well. Generally, only the educated have the leisure time to read, and it is this percentage of people who BUY the books from the economically poor vendors.

So:

It is the educated of Peru who buy the majority of books.

The same is true for the pirated films made and sold here.

On almost any given corner, I can find vendors selling movies for s./3.00 soles (almost $1.00 USD). It's so much cheaper to buy a pirated copy of a book or film than it is to buy the legitimate product. I do not advocate this; I'm merely stating a fact based upon experiential knowledge from living here.

I want to think that education is the key, because I am an educator and believe that in education lies the key to a society's salvation.

I don't know what the answer is to DRM - and I have to be honest as well and state that at this point, I don't think DRM-free eooks is the answer --; however, I think stealing digital products is endemic to our society, but more so in some cultures than in others.

I'm open to educating my views about DRM on ebooks and certainly will re-examine my views constantly on this subject.


Don

[JSWolf]

The problem is DRM and the prices. The DRM is in the way and the prices are too high to buy eBook that we do not actually own. I think they can do it one of two ways. They can remove the DRM in both cases. But they can make the price cheap if we are to not truy own the work like we do now and a slightly higher price that allows us to have the same rights we have for pBooks. It's not fair that we pay the same or more than a pBook for a work where we have less rights for the exact same content.

[Xenophon]

We have an existence proof that eBooks can be sold at lower-than-paperback prices: Baen Books and Webscriptions.net. Their standard price for an eBook is $6.00 (quantity one), with many bundles that lead to lower prices per included book. Webscriptions covers its costs, and is the main business for the gentleman who runs it. Baen makes more money from eSales than from all non-U.S. dead-tree sales combined (Canada included!). It's quite profitable, even after charging the eBooks their pro-rata share of all the fixed costs (editing, overhead, etc.). They also start that $6.00 price before the hardcovers even hit the bookstore!

Authors royalties on an eBook sale are better than for a Trade Paperback (the "fancy" hardcover sized paperbacks), but not as good as Hardcover. Of course that's way better than the royalty on a mass-market paperback (the normal kind).

My net cost per book from Baen -- after considering the effect of bundles -- is about $3.40 per book. And yes, I did remember not to count books that I wound up purchasing more than once due to bundles.

And all the books are DRM-free!
Xenophon

[RWood]

There seem to be two ancestors to the current DRM & ebook problem -- DRM & software and DRM & music.

Going back only as far as the 1980s for the software side, publishers have used serial numbers, branding, key disks (where there were physical alterations to the master disk to tell that it was not a normal disk), motherboard serial number embedding, remote verification (through call-in or Internet), and key devices (aka donagals) to name but a few. All fail. In the early wave of software for the PC it was a common practice for a user to enter their serial number and name and the software would then "brand" the program with thei name. (This was an early version of Elsi's social DRM.) I remember going to a client site one day and seeing an accounting program identified as belonging to "Morgan the Pirate."

The only ones hurt by this DRM & software are the legal users of the programs. As anyone who has been to Asia will tell you, bootlegs are sold openly and for a fraction of the cost we pay in the US for the same program. I am still waiting for responses from several publishers who seem to think I am a pirate because I wish to reinstall my wife's software after her hard disk failed. Another program goes out to the Internet to verify the serial number. The only problem is that the publisher has gone out of business and I cannot find out who (if anyone) picked up the title.

Music and DRM has an equally unseemly history. At the start all music had a built-in self destruct as the physical act of playing the records degraded the signal quality resulting in harsh sounds, pops, and crackles. (Not to mention the ever popular skip.) However, if I changed from a Dual to a JBL turntable, the record still worked. When they offered the music on tape, the tape could stretch or break over time but I could play it on my JCV or Sony deck. More recently they offered music on CDs that could also be played on many different decks. When they went to digital formats we got locked into a single deck. Even the famous "Plays for Sure" multiplatofrm music DRM from Microsoft has been left in the dust.

Since the dawn of consumer digital music there have always been (the old) Nabster-like darknet offerings for bootleg non-DRM music. Apple's iStore thrived. They dropped DRM and sold even more. Where did these extra sales come from? Their sales increase was larger than the growth of the total music market so the sales came from either people who formerly pirated their music or from people that would not buy on-line music before (but would buy the CD and create their own digital versions.)

Now on to price. A good accountant can make any outcome you want to see a reality. The cost of the outcome is directly related to how obtuse the result has to be. Therefore, let's concentrate on the marginal cost of that next book. Book number 5,001 from a press run of 5,000 hardbound copies.

For the digital book, the cost is mainly the royality fee to the writer and the license fee for the DRM. (I'm not sure which is higher.) For the hardcover it would mean sending it back for another print run so unless there is a great deal of demand, the chances are slim that it would ever happen. If it was copy 3,723, then the marginal costs of the hardcover book are lower as everything has already been paid for (there is just a small amount less that you will not chargeback against the writer's advance.)

If DRM books had represented a brand name of sorts where we were assured that they were of a higher quality (fewer typos, etc) they may have had a chance. They did not. I find more errors in DRM offerings from Sony than I do in Baen or Project Gutenberg. I find the fewest errors in the Dickens books from Harry at our own MobileRead download section.

If we go five years down the road and look back, I think we will see DRM far in the mists of the past.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

We have an existence proof that eBooks can be sold at lower-than-paperback prices: Baen Books and Webscriptions.net. Their standard price for an eBook is $6.00 (quantity one), with many bundles that lead to lower prices per included book. Webscriptions covers its costs, and is the main business for the gentleman who runs it. Baen makes more money from eSales than from all non-U.S. dead-tree sales combined (Canada included!). It's quite profitable, even after charging the eBooks their pro-rata share of all the fixed costs (editing, overhead, etc.). They also start that $6.00 price before the hardcovers even hit the bookstore!

Authors royalties on an eBook sale are better than for a Trade Paperback (the "fancy" hardcover sized paperbacks), but not as good as Hardcover. Of course that's way better than the royalty on a mass-market paperback (the normal kind).

My net cost per book from Baen -- after considering the effect of bundles -- is about $3.40 per book. And yes, I did remember not to count books that I wound up purchasing more than once due to bundles.

And all the books are DRM-free!
Xenophon

Totally agree with what's being said here. You can effectively (not completely) price the pirates out of the market if you go the Baen route. If the price of a book is low enough, and the file is unhindered by DRM you're going to get sales. I'm not a fan of most of what Baen puts out, but I've bought a few things from them in the past solely because of pricing. I'm willing to risk the couple of dollars on a book, knowing that I've not lost anything much in the process if I didn't like it. You can easily beat the pirates if you offer a good product at a reasonable price and with no silly restrictions. You don't need DRM to do that.