Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
I NEVER forget that most people would rather be honest people (usually, it's the path of least resistance, which makes it easy). However, as someone else put it, it only takes one dishonest person to spoil it for everyone else... especially with ebooks, as it takes just one dishonest person to make an ebook available to every net user on the planet, with potentially disastrous consequences. Compared to the old paradigm (one person steals one item), the ebook theft paradigm is simply too significant to be ignored by creators.
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When I was at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year I heard several publishers voice the opinion that "as soon as I publish something in digital format it will be available for download somewhere". Well, DRM or no DRM, published as ebook or not, provided the book is of some interest for people it will be available for download rather sooner than later anyway. I would like to present the example of Natascha Kampusch's book "3,096 Days" to support my claim. In German the book is currently available as hardcover only. For some reason the publisher hasn't published an ebook version. Yet it literally takes less than 20 seconds to find at least two illegal high quality epub versions of the book for download. DRM is a hassle for the honest customers only. It does not protect the book from being made available for illegal downloads at all.