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Compared to other DRM-encumbered products on the Internet....The market has set the price at $1 for disposable content.
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You must mean music. You sure can't mean books. You simply cannot compare a 5 minute song to a book. The very idea is laughable.
Other DRM content such as music or movies is OTHER DRM CONTENT and is totally and completely irrelevant to this discussion. Hmm, I bought my last car for 27K, I guess I should be able to buy an 18 wheeler for about the same price.
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Free is the fair market price for DRMed content.
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Which market? Fair market price in the legitimate market is set by that market and that has been set by the market for DRM BOOKS (mostly Sony and Amazon at this point). People are willing to pay that. People ARE paying that, by the tens of thousands they are paying that. The legitimate marketplace for DRM books is Sony and Amazon and the like. It is not Pirate Bay or peer-to peer networks any more than Bubba in the alley behind the bar is the legitimate marketplace for weapons.
There is White market and Black market. They coexist nearly everywhere there is a market.
Price in one may affect prices in the other (or may not) but they are never the SAME prices. One just has to decide which market one shops in. This a moral decision more than an economic one. So are you gonna buy or are you gonna steal? I can't speak for others but I will buy legitimate if the price is acceptable to me or not buy at all if it is not - stealing is not an option.
If you are saying that thieves are setting the market price then everything everywhere has a "correct" price of zero (or maybe 10-20 if you get caught). Just because there are lots of thieves does not make thieving right.
Now don't get me wrong, I think DRM is dumb and it is not helping the industry and they could almost certainly sell more content and make more money w/o it. That does not translate into a justification for stealing content. If one wants to change the system, the way to do it is to patronize sellers like BAEN. I have done that. I probably have 5 times more BAEN books on my readers than all the DRM content combined.