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Old 10-19-2010, 12:25 AM   #131
Fat Abe
Man Who Stares at Books
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: 50th State, USA. Also, PA, NY, CA, and elsewhere.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan View Post
DRM is a tool, and when used properly, it can be a very effective one... but it is easy to misuse and abuse. The question of whether it "works" is much like the question of whether cars can move you efficiently, and trying to decide the question based on how many pedestrian fatalities they cause. It's just not that simple.
You lost me on this analogy. DRM is like a Toll booth. You can legitimately pay or you can put slugs into a coin basket, and avoid paying for the use of a bridge, tunnel or road.

With DRM, you use a magic key-breaking program. If you pay for an ebook, and exploit a crack, this gives you the right to use it on multiple devices, without having to pay a toll for each subsequent use. If you don't pay for an ebook, i.e., you get it from a friend, the internet, or a lending library, you don't even have to pay the toll once.

I will venture to say that DRM does work on specific platforms, namely anything tied to iTunes and iBooks. Without a crack, all readers are forced to either legitimately buy the book, or steal it from an alternative source. Since most iPad customers are not savvy enough to figure out how to burglarize their ebooks by the second method, I would hypothesize that iBooks has the strongest rate of compliance of any ebook distribution system, thus proving the DRM can work.
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