[JohnClif]

Originally Posted by micomicon

Sorry to be blunt, but this definition of fairness is becoming obsolete. This is exactly what is so painful about this transition: it shifts power to consumers in previously unimaginable ways.

Fairness can never become obsolete. What's fair is fair, regardless. It's not about power, it's about rights. If you can strip DRM and resell multiple copies of my work that are now unprotected, you have the power, but you do not have the right. The ebook model will not work unless authors/publishers can rest assured that they will not be ripped off.

The flipside: the author's choice is to publish or not to publish. It will be a long time before anyone is forced to make this choice vis-a-vis DRM, but I think it will eventually happen. I also believe the current players in the industry (authors, editors, publishers, etc.) will have to choose between adapting to the new conditions or facing irrelevance.

Yes, that is the choice. If there is no financial incentive to publish ebooks, if ebooks aren't at least as protected from piracy as pbooks, then the ebook world will die, at least for copyright-protected books. That hurts both consumer and producer.

BTW, I'm not saying that any of this is either good or bad, nor do I purport to have answers to your questions. I'm just pointing out the facts...

1. We are dealing with a new medium.
2. The new medium upends many of the pricing/control/ownership structures that support its predecessor.
3. The parties that have a vested interest in the old medium are throttling the new medium in order to preserve their interests.
4. The historical record is not on the side of parties that have attempted this sort of throttling in other industries.

It's not about throttling the new medium, it's about ensuring that authors get paid at least as much under the new system as they did the old system. What the new medium does is remove the barriers to entry for smaller or less-well-known authors and publishers. What it also may do is remove the incentive for those people. What makes capitalism work over pure socialism/communism is the ability for people to be compensated in proportion to the quality and quantity of work they produce as judged by the market. If that won't hold true for ebooks then no one will write ebooks.

For the record, I've always payed for my books, music, films, etc., and plan to keep doing so even if I were able to download them for free. It is the honorable thing to do, and as a creator myself I know the hard work that is required to produce cultural artifacts. Do I think everyone will act honorably? No. Do I think most people will? Given a choice, yes.

Many people are indeed honest. But, not everyone. When Microsoft put the ability to have their software (Windows, Office, etc.) actually talk to Microsoft Internet servers when running on a connected computer, they discovered that two-thirds of the Microsoft software that was running was pirated. Can you imagine that? Microsoft was losing tens of billions of dollars a year due to piracy. It's easy to understand why they implemented a very robust DRM strategy for their products.