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Originally Posted by Barcey
Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
Can$ 18.80 for the e-book at Amazon
Can$ 7.89 for a new paperback copy
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LOL!
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Originally Posted by thrawn_aj
I agree with your specific example (that pricing is not what the ebook industry is doing wrong - for the most part at least). I disagree with your opening sentence that "they have *not* made the mistakes that music publishers made".
The DRM fiasco is the single greatest mistake the music industry made. Wonder of wonders, they actually fixed it. Yes, they had to be dragged to it kicking and screaming and they only did it because it was pretty much provide unDRM'd mp3s and make money or let Napster do it for them. Still, they fixed it, which is no mean feat for an industry with all the grace and inertia of a minor star cluster. THIS is the mistake that the ebook industry has adopted. Customers flock to Baen primarily because they don't infect their books with DRM and make several formats available and you can download all the formats if you so wish (at no extra cost). The low book prices is an added bonus and a show of faith on the part of Baen that they are actually taking advantage of all that this medium has to offer and passing on some of the savings to the customer.
I like Amazon's pricing (and B&N, since they both seem to have observers matching each others' prices  ) just fine, but to me, it was once the epitome of retailing. Prior to the release of Kindle, Amazon was the source of everything you'd ever want to buy. They still are, but with the notable exception of ebooks. As far as ebooks are concerned, most of the big names are device shills. Baen isn't - it's as simple as that.
The ebook industry has fallen for the marketing hacks' insistence on calling ebooks "content" to be "managed" and "licensed". That's their major mistake. Georestriction (this time, an MPAA blunder) is yet another mistake adopted from the RIAA/MPAA cabal. |
Yes. Sure, I admit, as someone said above, people don't notice the DRM (at least, not for now). But they'll come running to their family techie (if they have one) as soon as they try to switch devices, or the DRM malfunctions. Heck I can't use the Kindle app on my ipod touch because the wife used Kindle on it before...I'm supposed to "call customer service". :S
Even when it is supposed to work, eventually it fails. This is computers we're talking about. Google "kindle won't work register or registered" or some variant thereof. Plenty of people have issues, even with 'good' or 'transparent' DRM. DRM does nothing to stop piracy, and only hurts legitimate buyers. And it goes against free-market concepts of open markets and competition - locking people into certain stores with certain devices is anti- free markets.
I'm enjoying the article someone posted above from Cory Doctorow:
http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html
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Anticircumvention is a powerful tool for people who want to exclude competitors. If you claim that your car engine firmware is a "copyrighted work," you can sue anyone who makes a tool for interfacing with it. That's not just bad news for mechanics -- think of the hotrodders who want to chip their cars to tweak the performance settings. We have companies like Lexmark claiming that their printer cartridges contain copyrighted works -- software that trips an "I am empty" flag when the toner runs out, and have sued a competitor who made a remanufactured cartridge that reset the flag. Even garage-door opener companies have gotten in on the act, claiming that their receivers' firmware are copyrighted works. Copyrighted cars, print carts and garage-door openers: what's next, copyrighted light-fixtures?
Even in the context of legitimate -- excuse me, "traditional" -- copyrighted works like movies on DVDs, anticircumvention is bad news. Copyright is a delicate balance. It gives creators and their assignees some rights, but it also reserves some rights to the public. For example, an author has no right to prohibit anyone from transcoding his books into assistive formats for the blind. More importantly, though, a creator has a very limited say over what you can do once you lawfully acquire her works. If I buy your book, your painting, or your DVD, it belongs to me. It's my property. Not my "intellectual property" -- a whacky kind of pseudo-property that's swiss-cheesed with exceptions, easements and limitations -- but real, no-fooling, actual tangible *property* -- the kind of thing that courts have been managing through tort law for centuries.
But anticirumvention lets rightsholders invent new and exciting copyrights for themselves -- to write private laws without accountability or deliberation -- that expropriate your interest in your physical property to their favor. Region-coded DVDs are an example of this: there's no copyright here or in anywhere I know of that says that an author should be able to control where you enjoy her creative works, once you've paid for them. I can buy a book and throw it in my bag and take it anywhere from Toronto to Timbuktu, and read it wherever I am: I can even buy books in America and bring them to the UK, where the author may have an exclusive distribution deal with a local publisher who sells them for double the US shelf-price. When I'm done with it, I can sell it on or give it away in the UK. Copyright lawyers call this "First Sale," but it may be simpler to think of it as "Capitalism."
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This is the kind of ridiculousness that I hate the most about DRM. Right here. Being able to buy and sell things is PART OF CAPITALISM. It's part of what drives free markets. Not an enemy. What they are selling instead is pro-corporate capitalism - not free-market capitalism.