STUDY SHOWS: Ditching DRM could reduce piracy, prices

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I clicked through to the article . The source of the link is some entity named " Torrent Freak" and there is no link to the actual study.

I know your mind is already made up on the issue, but maybe if you had slowed down a little, you'd have noticed the source link:
http://www.media.rice.edu/media/News...=VIEW&ID=16282

Their findings, which will appear in the November-December issue of Marketing Science, add to the ongoing debate about technology that limits usage of digital content.

Obviously it's not the study itself (which my added bolding shows hasn't been released yet), but it is an official release from Rice University. So the implication that it's simply propaganda by "some entity known as TorrentFreak" isn't exactly warranted.

You're slipping a little. Are your handlers still satisfied with your efforts here?

[Chi Cygni]

what do I care about DRM
on the other hand even though I am geographically restricted to buy Star Wars Timothy Zahn's books I chose not to download from torrent. That to me would be stealing. I don't even know well what a torrent really is so excuse me if I state the obvious


oh, and by the way we DO pay for sms in Europe. Always did as far as I remember back to 1998.

[cHex]

I believe many consumers choose to pay for their mp3 tunes and feel smug rather than hopping from public sharing application to public sharing application as they get shut down and spring up, searching for the tune they want at the quality they want, fixing the tags, deleting the spam and trojans, etc.

There's no reason legit eBooks couldn't also be more attractive than pirated versions. In the meantime, though, we find eBooks often selling for more than their paperback or hardcover versions, and often poorly edited and formatted.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I clicked through to the article . The source of the link is some entity named " Torrent Freak" and there is no link to the actual study.

In other news, The Russian Communist Party says there is a new study that proves Joseph Stalin wasn't all that bad.

Quit being a tool.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1007113944.htm

as provided above from a know scientific information source.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I clicked through to the article.

Then you read the first sentence, I presume?

"a new paper out of Duke and Rice University"

"You can check out the November-December issue of Marketing Science for more details."

Combine those two with google, and you can find plenty of legitimate sources.

And FWIW, TorrentFreak is "some entity" for file-sharing the way MobileRead is "some entity" for eReading.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by cHex

There's no reason legit eBooks couldn't also be more attractive than pirated versions. In the meantime, though, we find eBooks often selling for more than their paperback or hardcover versions, and often poorly edited and formatted.

Could not agree more, having been forced to pay more for wanted ebooks, then find them restricted from further download from my bookshelf at various stores.

If publishers were fair dinkum about reducing piracy then they would remove DRM, stop colluding on price to prop up hardcover prices and abolish geographic restrictive practices. Casual piracy would decrease markedly and quickly

For them (and their counterparts in the music and entertainment industry) it is far easier to bury heads in sand and cry poor when they release "woe is me" press releases based on dubious, exaggerated, misread or falsified statistics.

[OtterBooks]

If I cared more about this I would be interested in reading the actual study when it's released, because the press release pretty much said nothing more than "researchers say DRM not good."

I do find the following quote a bit odd coming from a person who is supposed to have conducted academic research..

"[The late] Steve Jobs said it best: 'Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.'" Vernik said.

Haha. Gee whiz, I wonder if the study is riddled with confirmation bias.

[crich70]

They didn't have to do a study. They could have just asked anyone here at MR and gotten the same answers.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by sabredog

If publishers were fair dinkum about reducing piracy then they would remove DRM, stop colluding on price to prop up hardcover prices and abolish geographic restrictive practices. Casual piracy would decrease markedly and quickly

For them (and their counterparts in the music and entertainment industry) it is far easier to bury heads in sand and cry poor when they release "woe is me" press releases based on dubious, exaggerated, misread or falsified statistics.

They'd rather QQ (to borrow a bit of WOW terminology) because they can't see beyond the next fiscal quarter's bottom line. Short term vs. long term thinking and all that.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Could not agree more, having been forced to pay more for wanted ebooks, then find them restricted from further download from my bookshelf at various stores.

If publishers were fair dinkum about reducing piracy then they would remove DRM, stop colluding on price to prop up hardcover prices and abolish geographic restrictive practices. Casual piracy would decrease markedly and quickly

For them (and their counterparts in the music and entertainment industry) it is far easier to bury heads in sand and cry poor when they release "woe is me" press releases based on dubious, exaggerated, misread or falsified statistics.

i'm no business major. but it seems to me that if one wants their products in as many hands as possible they'd make it as easy and as inexpensive to do so.

obviously thats a wacky idea and the suits must know more than i do lol.


all i can do is speak for myself and from where i'm standing i would buy far, far more books if they were cheaper. i also don't think that newbie authors books should cost the same as a well established authors. new writer? $5. established author? you could get away with $10. anything more than that and i start looking at other entertainment media, i'd rather go buy a $20 xbox game that i'll get a week out of than a $15 ebook i'll have finished in a night.


thats also why i havent bought any agency ebooks yet. i dont need to, theres boatloads of good indie/small press books for under $5.

[sourcejedi]

For people interested in the study, Ars Technica have an article with actual information in (gasp!). Haven't finished reading it yet.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...ing-piracy.ars

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by crich70

They didn't have to do a study. They could have just asked anyone here at MR and gotten the same answers.

I believe the exercise of soliciting answers from a group of people is one of the exercises known as a study

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by crich70

They didn't have to do a study. They could have just asked anyone here at MR and gotten the same answers.

Or simply look at history.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by teh603

They'd rather QQ (to borrow a bit of WOW terminology) because they can't see beyond the next fiscal quarter's bottom line. Short term vs. long term thinking and all that.

QQ?

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by kennyc

QQ?

On Warcraft battlenet, you could press ALT+Q+Q to immediately exit the match and program. Thus the term "QQ" was to tell people to just quit because they are unskilled. The term later developed and lost it's origin and is usually mistaken as crying eyes.

In contemporary gamer culture, QQ has become the mainstream emoticon for crying eyes, though it is still often used in it's traditional sense.
"Shut up or QQ!"
"Why don't you QQ, noob?"