Quote:
Originally Posted by PHugger
Second - I'm not sure it's fair to burden a purchaser with the responsibility of ensuring that authors and publishers are treated fairly. As I've said before, once I legally purchase your content, I have fulfilled all of my copyright, moral, and financial responsibilities. The transaction is completed. DRM is a pain in the hinder - an inconvenience for me the legal purchaser of your content. DRM attempts to halt piracy, but mostly just effects your customers - NOT the pirates. I'd like my eBooks to work the same way that pBooks do.
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I don't think it's unreasonable or immoral to expect the purchaser to respect the purchase agreement, i.e., don't distribute copies of the ebook to people who haven't paid for it. If authors/publishers can't be assured of receiving money for each individual user of an ebook, they will be dissuaded from publishing ebooks, and the movement away from paper stops in its tracks. So, DRM attempts to protect the author/publisher without angering the customer too much.
I agree that DRM is a PITA, primarily because we have two states: the ebook is freely distributable, or it is completely non-distributable including to the original purchaser.
Maybe a model where the price you pay for an ebook sets that ebook's lifetime, i.e., a low price gives you the book for days, higher for weeks or months, highest for lifetime. But I'm also sure the publishing industry knows what the 'lifetime' of a typical novel is (one, maybe two read-throughs). Reference books are different.
Yep... rights protection (by whatever means) still has to be figured out in order to move books away from paper. It's gotta work for everyone.