Quote:
Originally Posted by hidari
NB: I can let my friend borrow a p-book and I do not hear any screams form authors or the publishing industry, yet an Ebook causes riots. Perhaps the afore mentioned are afraid of ending up in the dustbin with the rest of us.
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Actually, the publishing industry was/is quite angry about libraries. I read an article (that I've just spent many minutes trying to google; perhaps someone else will have more luck) in which the head of the publisher's trade association talks about their feelings on libraries, and how it's hard to try to fight them because of the PR nightmare.
This was all before the Google digitization project, though - I think they may have bigger fish to fry now.
I think this points at why most of us are leery of DRM, though - in the publishers' perfect world, readers would pay each time they read a copy of a book. There are also the arguments that many others are making, about DRM being no barrier to pirates, and being a hassle to legitimate fans.
I point everyone interested in the argument to
this thread, where we discussed this at length. I still believe DRM and the business model it represents is doomed in the long term.