[gmw]

I've seen it written on another thread that if I "buy" something then I "own" that something. This statement may be true by definition, perhaps even a tautology, but what is less clear in the case of books is exactly what you have purchased. What did you buy? What do you own?

If you buy a paper book you buy, in effect, a lump of paper with ink spilled over it. That lump of paper is now yours to do with as you want - or so you may think, but that's not entirely true, more below. If your dog chews it up, tough luck, it's gone and if you want it again you'll have to buy another (your insurance may not cover acts of dog (thank you to The Simpsons)).

But here's the kicker: even your paper book comes with a whole lot of rules you didn't explicitly sign up for. The ink spilled on your lump of paper represents some intellectual property: the novel (or whatever, trying to use a term that distinguishes this abstract thing from the lump of paper that is the book). Many (most?) countries have copyright laws and are party to international agreements. I don't, usually, have the right to photocopy a book (duplicate the novel) just because I think my dog may eat the original.

Similar things happen with a lot of things you "buy". You have purchased the physical object but various patent and trademark laws applicable in your country do truly limit what you are permitted to do with what you have purchased. What makes these laws a bit less apparent to your normal person-on-the-street, is that their applicability is rather specialised. To photocopy a book is often not easy and certainly not cheap and the result is generally poor. To set-up to manufacture some patented widget is hugely expensive so patent law is not (or has not been) particularly interesting to the people who buy the widgets.

In case you need it: I remind you that copyright and patent laws were introduced for a reason. These laws are intended to encourage enterprise. By protecting the intellectual property rights of people that invent things (be they widgets or stories) you allow them to make money from their endeavours and thereby encourage people to be inventive. (Please, lets not get into if/whether/how this applies to computer software - that is another, really smelly, kettle of fish.)

So, back to your lump of paper, the book you purchased. Besides the possibly obvious restriction of not being permitted to photocopy it, there are other "rights" associated with intellectual property of which the book is one representation. Another right you will not have is the right to produce a play or movie from the work. You are not permitted to translate it into another language. And more. And many of these rights pertain to some less than perfectly defined "part" of the work. If, however, you are a publisher, you will have signed an agreement with the author or copyright owner of the intellectual property that gives you specific rights to do specific things with that specific property. As a publisher you will understand that you have purchased rights, licence, and not the intellectual property itself - this distinction is (or has been) less obvious to your average reader, but - up to now - it has been less important that they do understand.


Enter the computer. Now that computers (or some variation on the theme) are in the hands of millions, and so now we have millions of people that can set-up to manufacture products based on other people's intellectual property. They can do it quickly and at almost no cost - and often with little thought or understanding: how often have friends sent you huge emails of photos, many of which may well be copyrighted, or links to YouTube videos of the same. Now everyone of us can easily publish books, music, images, videos, blue-prints and more. No longer is intellectual property inherently protected by the difficulty and cost of manufacture. No longer are copyright and patent law the province of the strange fraternity of IP lawyers. The world has changed.


Enter DRM. In its most innocent form, Digital Rights Management is nothing more than an attempt to reinstate the protections that existed before computers; to once again make it sufficiently difficult to duplicate intellectual property so that it is easier and less effort for most people to purchase legitimate copies. I am not going to try and discuss less innocent implementations of DRM, that is not the purpose of this essay.

I think that many people would agree that the objectives (if not the results) of (innocent) DRM are fair enough. I suspect that most of us understand that many people will not buy access to books and music if they can get it for free. Of course the equation is not a simple "100 people downloaded this for free therefore those same 100 people would have purchased had it not been free", but there is almost certainly some proportion of lost sales in there somewhere. Conversely, there may be some validity in the argument that freely available copies can effect sales in a positive way: would Microsoft have gained such a monopoly if the earlier versions of their software had not been so easy to copy? How do all those effects coalesce? So far I've read only anecdotal reports either way, so currently it seems to be anyone's guess ... although harking back to the Microsoft example, and assuming they have tried to limit copying for good financial reasons, it seems likely that popular works, at least, may feel detrimental effects from illegitimate copying.

Is there a way of implementing DRM to have the desired effect without the apparently unfair consequences of many current implementations? Well, smarter people than I have worked (and are working) on this and so far it doesn't look good. But here are some thoughts to consider.

When you purchased your last paper book, you did not purchase a life-time right to read that novel (or whatever). You purchased a lump of paper with ink on it, along with many legal limitations on what you can do with it. If the dog eats it, or when you wear it out, you must purchase another copy. So ask yourself: When I purchase an ebook, do I have any right to expect a life-time right to read the novel regardless of events?

If your answer was "Yes" then I think you should be prepared to pay a premium, because that is not what you used to purchase when you bought a paper book.

If your answer was "No" then you may care to reconsider your opinions on whether certain DRM situations are that unfair after all. Consider that for some period of time you may actually be protected in ways you never were with a paper book (theft, acts-of-dog, breakage). A price of $15 for the guaranteed loan of a well-produced book for some period of time may not really be such a bad deal (especially when we remember that some portion of this goes to the author that we would dearly like to encourage to write more). What I would like to see is reputable sellers to make certain time guarantees as part of their licensing - so that you know more precisely what you are purchasing.

I've read here that many people love their ebooks over paper books because of their portability, the ability to carry a virtual library with them wherever they go. Perhaps DRM should concentrate on this aspect and effectively make the purchase price a sort of "stocking fee" for which they agree to carry that book for you for 5 years ... or whatever. I'm not really suggesting that they should limit the maximum time, only that they should guarantee some minimum if they really expect you to pay such prices for ebooks. It makes you wonder whether they could consider offering discounted books with lower guarantees. Such discounts could not be large, the biggest cost is in the initial production, but it still seems like a possibility.


Back when you purchased a paper book you had a physical, tangible, object that you owned. It was very reassuring and quality products did indeed have excellent lasting properties - not easily damaged to the extent of being unreadable. A paper book was a fairly easy thing to understand, at least, as far as most people needed to understand it. No one really expected to be able to just walk into any book-shop and pick up another copy because they left their other one at home.

But now you are purchasing an ebook and suddenly all those things that seemed irrelevant before: the ability to have multiple copies; intellectual property rights; the need for backup copies; the desire to read from multiple devices, have come to the fore. Whether you like it or not, you are now in a position to become a manufacturer, a publisher, and that has imposed on you the need to understand some of what is involved.

So what did you buy? The hope is that you got much the same as before: a representation of a novel (or similar intellectual property) with certain limitations. However it is necessarily true that your "digital rights" are potentially complex and it may well prove that some specific instances of DRM are potentially unfair (read your agreements) - but exactly how unfair has to be weighed against what rights you actually had before and what benefits you are gaining now. Remember that DRM is not being forced on you, you can - for now at least - still go out and buy a paper book if you don't like what is being offered online.


This essay is not intended to specifically support one form of DRM or another, or even DRM in general. I got my reader mostly to read classics that are readily available without DRM, and I am very curious to see how those pioneers trying DRM-free publication work out. What I hope the essay does is provide a bit more balanced perspective than I have seen so far on other threads. If you don't like DRM the solution is to not purchase books that contain it. To strip DRM (without the actual and specific justification of site shutdown) is to admit to being a person that signs an agreement with the full intention of breaking it - and that's hardly a reputation I'd like to acquire.