Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Maybe DRM makes things "harder" for the consumer... on the other hand, if the consumers were honest about paying for things they took, DRM wouldn't be necessary. So it's pirates themselves who are responsible for DRM, which they fight against, causing the creation of stronger DRM... a vicious circle that the pirates themselves caused and that they cause to escalate.
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Question here- is it "the consumers" who are dishonest, or "the pirates."
Here is what Merrill Chapman (author of "In Search of Stupidity" has to say about software piracy, and it probably applies to ebook piracy:
"And finally0, despite the theoretical losses software companies were
suffering from piracy, it was hard to see in reality how piracy was
hurting the companies. As the decade progressed, many software companies
did indeed stumble and fall, but in no case was it possible to pin
the blame on piracy. Also, it started to become apparent to software
firms that piracy had a definite upside, as Microsoft had discovered
years ago with the Altair. When the number of people using your software
increased, your perception as the market leader increased as well.
And pirated software functioned as a sort of marketing kudzu, tending
to choke out the competition as use of your product spread throughout
the computing populace. Once you had displaced the competition, it
was possible to convert X percent of the pirates to paid users via various
inducements and offers. ....."