Let's face it: DRM didn't help anyone

[Alexander Turcic]

Publishers want to know that copyright in the works they publish will be protected. For years it has been their strong belief that without sufficient technical and legal protections, digital copies of works are subject to unauthorized copying on a mass scale.

The status quo?

Today we have a plethora of non-interoperable e-book file formats (Adobe, Sony, Microsoft, Mobipocket and eReader, just to name a few), further "enhanced" by proprietary DRM systems. All attempts so far to introduce industry standards have failed. Honest users are being punished for buying e-books they cannot freely use on all e-book devices and/or sell to another person. At the same time, there are striving sophisticated underground communities who offer all the e-books you can think of - bootleg copies, free, without DRM, and of course unauthorized. The fact that people are doing this, are able to doing this despite all DRM efforts by the publishers, really does indicate that the latter has failed to prevent piracy, and that there's a whole lot of demand for e-books.

In the words of Wired blog editor Rob Beschizza (link via TeleRead):

With the masters of digital music finally relenting and offering DRM-free tracks, it's time to kill e-book rights management once and for all: give us we want, in the file format we want, and you get our money. Once.

Related: DRM, or not DRM: that is the question (poll)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Agreed. In my words to Rob's blog:

The best way to get DRM out of publishing is to show the public, and the publishers, that selling without DRM works.

I have been selling my novels on my own, without DRM, for the past 2 years. My e-books are even in multiple formats, making it easy to get one for whatever reader you use. It's not hard. And I'm making money.

Eventually, more authors are going to do the same route, and bypass publishers that demand DRM and lock them into one proprietary format. As publishers lose their control (and their authors), they'll figure out that they need to learn a few new tricks, or give up the business.

I like the "Eliminate DRM" logo. Is that available for anyone to post on their sites, or would we need permission to use it?

[Alexander Turcic]

I should have credited them. It's from defectivebydesign.org. Link to hi-res version: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/sit....preview_0.png

[Mambo]

I am currently downloading 3.35 GB of English books. Furthermore I have downloaded 10-20 GB books on physics, mathematics, business, etc.

I don't feel guilty, but I am not promoting this behaviour either. I would buy books if I could really OWN them. Also if there is good search function, good advertisement in the book store. Very often for example on Amazon there is some review, but I don't actually know what I am buying and is that book what I really need? I will not risk 150£ to figure out at the end that everything written in the book is just rubbish. But if there would be good people writing meaningful reviews, giving useful advices which books to buy and continuous support (for example subscription to update of the book content) I would definitely buy.

But I will not pay 1500£ for 10 business books (150£ per each etc.) out of which only 1 turns out to be useful.

[clabot451]

I agree with you. You are 110% right my friend!

[sic]

so the buyers should pay reviewers... otherwise they can be corrupted

interesting...

[Mambo]

In the end the buyers pay for everything. No?

Reviews ordered by the sellers often biased and only want to sell the book but don't give you hint what you will really get. (For example how deeply are certain topics discussed)

All I am saying is that it is very important part of the selling process to convey as much information as possible that what you buy is what you need (this would be the review, temporary access, trial version with expiry, etc.) OR make the book so cheap that price would basically does not matter for you in the choice. So you can accumulate a library and still spending as much or more money that you would spend anyway on books.

So basically put more efforts into the quality of service, easy 1-click buying process, affordable prices and high selection rather than trying to develop and distribute better DRM.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by Mambo

Reviews ordered by the sellers often biased and only want to sell the book but don't give you hint what you will really get. (For example how deeply are certain topics discussed)

This is one of the reasons the number of books I purchased has dropped. When I pick up a new book, I expect to see a short blurb describing what the book is about. If all I see is a bunch of opinions by "reviewers" (most of whom I've never heard of), then the book must be bad and I don't bother with it.

Originally Posted by Mambo

All I am saying is that it is very important part of the selling process to convey as much information as possible that what you buy is what you need (this would be the review, temporary access, trial version with expiry, etc.)

This is probably why books that have an eBook "presence" on the internet (like Baen) sell so well. Potential readers can, for no cost, download at least part of the book and experience it at their leisure (as opposed to reading part of it in the bookstore).

If they don't like it, they are out nothing and have a better opinion of the author than they would if they were suckered into paying $25 to get a bad book. So they are more apt to try out the author's next (and probably better) book.

Life is too short to read bad books.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

This is one of the reasons the number of books I purchased has dropped. When I pick up a new book, I expect to see a short blurb describing what the book is about. If all I see is a bunch of opinions by "reviewers" (most of whom I've never heard of), then the book must be bad and I don't bother with it.

.

Ditto. I agree.

[HeffeD]

I find it quite interesting that people are up in arms about DRM first in music, then DVDs, now E-Books.

Yet no one complains about software...

When is the last time you've ever actually 'owned' the software you purchase? (No, this isn't an open source discussion) How is DRM any different than the software you don't have issues with?? Or perhaps are people just not reading the EULA's that pop up every time they install a piece of software and don't actually realize that even though you've paid money for it, you only actually have the 'privilege' to use it from the publisher, and you are indeed constrained in your usage of said product.

The last paper book I purchased tells me that since the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, I'm unable to reproduce, transmit, distribute, store in a database, make a paper hat, use as toilet paper, etc... ANY portion of the book without permission from the publisher first. I don't remember any huge furor when that came about. Was it death to the paper book when this act was passed? Hmmm... We still have paper over 30 years later... Do ANY paper books actually come without a copyright notice? I have yet to see one.

So now why are people expecting different treatment with E-Books? It's been 'the law' for decades now. People are just now realizing what this actually means??

-Hint- Read the small print folks... We've been living with these same constraints for a long time. No need to get all excited about it all of a sudden.

[Mambo]

Software is tool for a specific purpose. Books are knowledge. I get the tools for work from the company, but I have to get knowledge myself. I don't accept the right of authorities to prevent me from owning these books and actually keep me ignorant.

I don't talk about fiction books. Most of them are pretty poor entertainment not better then soap operas in the TV. You don't have to criminalize people copying popular fiction books. Enough punishment for them is that they have wasted many hours reading them instead of earning money, taking care for their family, playing with their children.

However to prevent people from having free access at any time to scientific materials, experience and wisdom is sin. I rather break the law, but I feel we should not let anyone to keep others in mental slavery if they can not afford to buy books.

The point is however, that many people (and me too) believe and there are signs confirming these views, that DRM actually harmful to the publishers too and prevents the ebook market from growing and maturing.

[delphidb96]

I love how casually you toss off most fiction as 'poor entertainment'. Especially as so much tv programming is bastardized and mediocritized literature. I've yet to see a book that, once the tv writers get done hacking, pasting, modifying and dumbing-down, is of lower quality than the resulting script.

Originally Posted by Mambo

I don't talk about fiction books. Most of them are pretty poor entertainment not better then soap operas in the TV. You don't have to criminalize people copying popular fiction books. Enough punishment for them is that they have wasted many hours reading them instead of earning money, taking care for their family, playing with their children.

Hmmm... Not so sure I buy this argument either. Free access to knowledge? While I agree that people shouldn't be excluded from learning, for often the denial is arbitrary and not based upon valid reasons, there hasn't been 'free' access to knowledge for some time for the vast majority of the world. Or haven't you noticed that public schools and public libraries are taxpayer-funded? And even personal use of the internet costs the user or his/her family access fees? (Although, if one but wishes to hoist oneself out of a chair, one can always walk down to the nearest library and ask for an interlibrary loan of just about any work. So it's not as if - except in a truly repressive country - anyone is keeping others in 'mental slavery'.)

Originally Posted by Mambo

However to prevent people from having free access at any time to scientific materials, experience and wisdom is sin. I rather break the law, but I feel we should not let anyone to keep others in mental slavery if they can not afford to buy books.

Now here I agree 100%. For publishers to refuse to make it easy to own and use their products in ebook format and then whine that ebooks aren't a 'success' is, at best, disingenuous. And it's a stupid business practice. However, I believe that we're still in the 'innovator' stage of ebook/ebook-reader marketing and just now beginning to enter the 'early-adopter' stage. Which means, I hope, that as ebook readers become more readily available, we should see easier access to ebooks - including elimination of that pesky DRM.

Originally Posted by Mambo

The point is however, that many people (and me too) believe and there are signs confirming these views, that DRM actually harmful to the publishers too and prevents the ebook market from growing and maturing.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by HeffeD

I find it quite interesting that people are up in arms about DRM first in music, then DVDs, now E-Books.

Yet no one complains about software...

That's because software is different beast - protected by different laws.

Copyright only applies to the software's source code.
Software is mostly protected by patents.

However, you allude to a big problem today:

The last paper book I purchased tells me that since the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, I'm unable to reproduce, transmit, distribute, store in a database, make a paper hat, use as toilet paper, etc... ANY portion of the book without permission from the publisher first.

Namely, the siezing of rights. The copyright holder of this work has none of the above rights.

If I purchase a paper book, I can scan it in and create an eBook version of it for my use. I can put that paper book in the mail and transmit it to a friend. I can rip pages out of it and distribute them to people. I can store my eBook version in my database. Etc.

The ONLY thing that I am prohibited from doing is making a copy for distribution. That's it. Any other "rights" are solely the delusion of the copyright holder.

[UncleDuke]

power to the people.

at least with the classics they don't come into your apartment and rip your stuff apart or file nasty lawsuits against you.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by UncleDuke

at least with the classics they don't come into your apartment and rip your stuff apart or file nasty lawsuits against you.

Don't be too quick to assert that.

Too often "classics" (which I'll define as "works that have fallen into the public domain") are asserted by someone to be "still under copyright" and lawsuits are filed. (The "Doc Savage" problem that put Blackmask offline comes to mind.)

This goes back to certain entities asserting rights that they do not have.