Why i think the Illiad will fail (or has already).

[k2r]

There was an interesting article including figures about publishing DRM-free pdf on loud thinking in 03/2006 :
http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000580.html

"Then we spent a day building a dead-simple shop in Rails that would take $19 from your credit card and give you a PDF.

That scenario worked well for Getting Real, which was all short essays that you could print out if you liked or even read on the screen without too much distress. And in just three weeks since its release, we've sold over 5,000 copies."

[RWood]

rlauzon: Thank you for the clairifaction.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by jæd

4. Use weak encryption to so the majority don't know how to break it, but the technically literate can. See iTunes for a working example...

Which means that the technically literate remote the encryption and post it for everyone to download for free.

Technically option #2.

Originally Posted by jæd

See the history books for reasons why this doesn't tend to work...

As I said, the theory has problems.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by narve

1. Stay with the current capitalistic market - but trust your customers, dump DRM, and use Copyright law to protect the content, and lose alot to piracy/copyright law circumvention.

We don't seem to have an issue with piracy when the content isn't protected with DRM.

Also, the current copyright law is unfair to the public and the DMCA effectively gives the Content Cartel the power to change copyright law.

Most people obey laws not because of the punishment for breaking those laws. They obey laws because they believe that the law is right. When most people believe that the law is wrong, they do not obey it. Which is what we are seeing today.

Originally Posted by narve

Jæd's alternative 4 is a good one, and is widely used today

His alternative 4 is my alternative 2. It doesn't work because the "speed bump" of DRM makes people disrecpect copyright even more and feel no guilt in pirating the work. Indeed, DRM makes law-abiding people commit crimes just to exercise their fair use rights under copyright.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Which means that the technically literate remote the encryption and post it for everyone to download for free.

Then you can sue the hosting site for copyright violations... "Free" copies therefore end-up only on pirate/warez sites which non-technically literate don't usually know about.

As I said... See iTunes for a working example of this method... Breaking their DRM is quite easy but people still buy tunes from there...

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by jæd

Then you can sue the hosting site for copyright violations... "Free" copies therefore end-up only on pirate/warez sites which non-technically literate don't usually know about.

Hasn't stopped Pirate Bay. Bringing suit in another country is very difficult at best - especially if that country is hostile toward yours.

Originally Posted by jæd

As I said... See iTunes for a working example of this method... Breaking their DRM is quite easy but people still buy tunes from there...

Correction - no one "buys" music at iTunes. They pay money for a license to use that music on their iPod.

And how pirated are songs from iTunes compared to songs released under a Creative Commons license?

[jæd]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Hasn't stopped Pirate Bay. Bringing suit in another country is very difficult at best - especially if that country is hostile toward yours.

...

Correction - no one "buys" music at iTunes. They pay money for a license to use that music on their iPod.

Yep, but the iTunes store is one of the more viable business models out there... Can't see them going under anytime soon...!

[narve]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

We don't seem to have an issue with piracy when the content isn't protected with DRM.

Ehem... care to elaborate on this? Are you saying only DRM'ed content is "pirated"? Or are you defining "pirating" as only applying to DRM'ed content?

I remember snail-mailing VHS videos and copying them for friends, ditto for music, just to name an obvious example. This was a problem, but impossible to stop, for the Content Cartel. DRM makes it harder to copy this kind of content, but I don't see the principal difference between pirating DRM'ed content and copying copyrighted works. If they save enough money / hassle, people _will_ copy copyrighted works, DRM or non-DRM.

[nekokami]

I suppose anything's possible, but I would be astonished if there were ever any kind of tax to fund eBooks in the US. Every year we have more and more trouble providing a miniscule amount of funding for PBS, and that's TV, which Americans like. Additionally, getting all countries to agree to the same tax idea seems, to put it gently, highly unlikely. And if some countries do and some don't, the content will be copied and shared from those that have a tax and freely distributed content to those that don't.

More likely, in the American market, is embedded advertising. There would still be the problem that some people would create versions of the content with the advertising stripped out, but most wouldn't bother. Then it wouldn't matter if the files were passed around -- in fact, the publishers would prefer it, because they could then charge more for their ads.

I think this is consistent with Cory Doctorow's views, btw. Every book is effectively an advertisement for more books by the same author (and, to a lesser extent, the same publisher). Cory can hand out free copies of his books, electronically, and still make money, because the free samples encourage people to pay him for more content. This works because he still sells content as well as giving it away.

It would be an interesting experiment to build a website that would accept manuscripts from authors (or publishers), automatically insert the ads, track downloads, and bill advertisers and compensate authors based on the downloads. A better method would be to track views for both ad rates and author compensation while the user is reading, which would capture views by others the file is shared with, but that would require tracking software integrated with the reader sw that would report back to the server. Not impossible, though. Generally readers are connected to the internet periodically to update content. The tracking stats could be forwarded during the connection process, as long as the process was efficient. I suppose the format of the files could still be open, as the server company would then be motivated to make sure good reader sw existed for as wide a range of platforms as possible. If the server company drops support for future devices, they don't get their ad revenue, but the file is still viewable. If they want the ad revenue, they have to make their reader better than whatever alternatives someone might hack together without the ad trackers.

Then we would just have the problem that some advertisers don't know how to make effective ads and settle for ads that are merely annoying.

Oh, and this would imply a huge invasion of privacy in terms of who's reading what, and how often. But Americans don't seem to worry about that most of the time.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by narve

Ehem... care to elaborate on this? Are you saying only DRM'ed content is "pirated"? Or are you defining "pirating" as only applying to DRM'ed content?

I'm saying that, based on my unscientific research, when I see lists of pirated content available for everyone to get, what I typically DON'T see is content that is available without DRM.

Ex: I usually don't see eBooks sold by Fictionwise without DRM on the Usenet eBook groups. I usually don't see MP3s sold by AudioLunchbox (which doesn't use DRM) available for download.

My theory is that pirates see non-DRM content as being "fair" and DRMed content as "unfair". The copyright of fairly available content is more respectful, and, so, they respect it. Copyright of unfairly available content is disrespectful and, so, they do not respect it - and make it available for everyone to download.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Then we would just have the problem that some advertisers don't know how to make effective ads and settle for ads that are merely annoying.

Yes, we all know how this has impacted TV viewing and DVRs.

[NatCh]

In fairness, they are getting better about the TV adds.

I have the 30 second skip set on my Tivo, so I don't watch a lot of ads, but I generally go back and watch new ones, unless they're for some product that I have absolutely no interest in. Even some of those I do -- I don't care about Geiko, but I love their Caveman commercials -- I'll watch them multiple times. Same goes for the Jack In The Box commercials, though I rarely eat there. The Messin' with Sasquatch commercials are my current stand-out favorites -- I'll watch those things two or three times when they come on.

I think the lesson advertisers need to learn, and seem to be starting to learn, is that if they want their commercials watched they need to be good commercials. As neko pointed out, they need to be less annoying.

[nekokami]

There are a couple of magazines I subscribe to in which the ads are nearly as interesting as the regular content, and well worth looking over. But I generally ignore website ads, which are often poorly targeted as well as being annoying.

Ads in a book would need to be at the beginning, at the end, in margins, or between chapters. Between chapters would probably be the most effective, but hardest to do from a technical standpoint-- an author would need to manually break up their text, which means providing authoring tools or requiring multiple files in the submission, which I suspect many authors wouldn't bother with. Margin ads would have the potential advantage of being somewhat context-sensitive (though any ads in books should be more carefully targeted than web ads), but could be really obnoxious. At least E Ink doesn't support color, flashing text, animations, etc.

As an example of poor web targeting, Yahoo mailing lists ("groups") started displaying ads on the home page for the list a couple of years ago. A Chinese Adoption list I was on started displaying ads for dating services emphasizing Chinese women. Bad choice. Perhaps an author submitting a text could click on the advertising categories they want to be included in. The more categories they choose, the more likely they are to get paid, but if they click categories that don't match their readers' interests, they could lose some readers.

Text-only ads, e.g. Google ads, though, generally rely on a link to more info. Such a link wouldn't work on a device not currently connected to the net. Maybe the ereader could cache items the customer clicks on, and display info when the next network connection occurs.

[pdam]

This topic (DRM) is so popular (and subverts so many threads) it desrves it's own top line thread ... Alex - if you're reading - how about setting one up so we can transfer these interesting discussions and allow threads to remain pure.

[Moonraker]

Ex: I usually don't see eBooks sold by Fictionwise without DRM on the Usenet eBook groups. I usually don't see MP3s sold by AudioLunchbox (which doesn't use DRM) available for download.

My theory is that pirates see non-DRM content as being "fair" and DRMed content as "unfair". The copyright of fairly available content is more respectful, and, so, they respect it. Copyright of unfairly available content is disrespectful and, so, they do not respect it - and make it available for everyone to download

.


I totally agree with rlauzon on this. There does seem to be an unwritten code of conduct used by the book pirates to leave stuff alone that they consider to be fairly offered to consumers.

Pirates will deliberately target stuff that they consider to be "locked up".

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.