Quote:
Originally Posted by speedlever
This DRM thing just doesn't apply to the physical world of tree books, does it?
If I buy a tree book, I own it and can legally:
read it, loan it, give it, sell it...
do anything except make and sell copies, right?
But if I buy an ebook, all heck breaks loose.
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Well... it's vastly easier to copy and distribute pirate copies of an electronic file than it is to produce and distribute pirate copies of a physical, printed-on-paper book. And it's that ease of production, plus the demonstrated willingness of many to do so, that alarms some publishers and authors. As a reader, I don't much care for DRM, since it prevents me from easily transferring a book from one device to another for my own personal use. However I've seen many authors post on forums like this that they won't publish without DRM, because they don't see why they should make it easier for thieves to steal their work and distribute it for free. I can understand that concern, even if I don't entirely agree with the solution.
Something else to bear in mind is that when you buy an ebook with DRM, you're not, strictly speaking, buying the book in the same way you buy a physical thing that you own when you buy a paper book - in the case of DRM'd ebooks you're buying a licence to read the work in the provided electronic format on one or more specified devices and/or applications.
However, the music industry has been through all of this, and is finally adapting to the "digital age" in all sorts of ways, and I expect the same thing will eventually happen with ebooks. We're just in that uncomfortable transition phase and sadly the publishing world appears to be repeating many of the mistakes the music industry already made. One can only hope they won't take
years to find an acceptable "middle way".
And just a quick note re Amazon and DRM - it's not Amazon who decide whether to add DRM to an ebook - it's the publisher. For indie authors self-publishing via Amazon's Digital Text Platform website, the choice of whether or not to add DRM to each title is simply an option they select during the publication process. Amazon doesn't require DRM as a condition of publishing/selling an ebook in their Kindle store. I've even seen some people say (though I have no way of knowing how true this is) that Amazon only introduced DRM for Kindle ebooks because some of the major publishers refused to publish and sell ebooks with Amazon if they
didn't provide DRM.
- Donna