Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
When I encounter someone who thinks DRM is a good idea to prevent piracy, I always want to ask "Why? Do you think everyone will cheerfully copy and give out the book to everyone, depriving the writer of sales, because it's what you would do, and you think everyone else is just like you?"
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Dennis
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I can't say I'm particularly fond of DRM, but at the same time I can understand that publishers - having paid someone for a manuscript and invested in that manuscript to make it into a book - feel a need to protect that investment. With P-books the prolification of copiers initially had them just as scarred. It never took off because it was too much of a hassle. I believe the publishing industry is viewing DRM in the same light. They just want to make it into too much of a hassle for people to just give away a copy of an E-book.
Say you meet a friend while holding your Kindle/Nook/Sony and are asked what you are reading. "Ohh, it is this great book by Jeffrey Carver", you say. "Yeah, can I borrow it", you are asked. Being a friendly person you agree and out comes the laptop and USB cable. Now you can't actually lend the book to the recipient, you can only giver her a copy of it. A few weeks later you talk to someone else about the book and are again asked about borrowing a copy, and having entered middle-age your short term memory isn't what it used to be, you simply forget that you have already "lent" it someone else. Hence, another copy is on the run. No malicious intent, just a V6 memory.
The publishing industry is smart enough to know that they can never stop the hard core hackers, every new DRM scheme is just another intellectual challenge. We, let's call us ardent readers - a smart enough to know that unless authors are paid for their efforts, the publishing industry is going down the same creativity stifling path of the music industry, cover albums and rap. It is that large silent majority that carelessly listen to mind numbing covers and rap they are worried about. Just as an MP3 player was a key to free downloaded music, Kindle/Nook/Sony is - from the publishing industry's vantage point - the key to a Pandora's Box they are desperately trying to close.