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Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
No, it doesn't, any more than a lock on a door treats every person as a criminal. Security is designed to deter real criminals. It's an extra burden on the honest (you think I like carrying around a pocketful of keys, and keeping track of over 50 individual passwords for various websites and accounts?), but it's the price honest people have to accept when they live in a world that has criminals.
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DRM automatically presumes people are going to share, pirate. Maybe locks presume people are going to want to break in, but then I sleep happily with my window open and the only thing likely to try to break in is one of my cats.
Treating a whole populace like convicts because of a minor group who pirate is dubious practice. Especially when the DRM can make it far more irritating than finding an illegal copy. I buy my books, but I choose not to buy books I would otherwise read because of the DRM hassle (and Geographical Restrictions, which is another PITA) and not wanting to let them think it's a good idea to put it on in the first place. Plenty of people don't share their stuff, and yes some people do - but I say it again. Not everyone who reads a book would have ever brought it - library users don't, nor do people who borrow amongst friends or family or any of that. Simply putting a book out there were more than one person can lay eyes on it is "a lost sale". One of my Aunts can't stand used books, so maybe if everyone was like her it'd be a lost sale... but most readers just want to read.
I'm not saying you think everyone is a crook, but do you honestly think that the big houses who love DRM aren't thinking that somewhere in their logic? That they don't want to crimialise Sally giving a copy of an ebook she loves to her best friend, despite that Sally's friend may well go on to buy the whole series thereafter? Word of mouth is one of the few things that get knowledge of books around these days. It's a good thing. Sharing is part of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bhartman36
How is it not? You can make a reasonable argument that a person who downloads one song wouldn't necessarily have bought the album, but you can't make that argument with an ebook, because they're not sold by chapter. Someone who downloads a book wants it for all the content.
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Libraries, used book stores, borrowing from friends and family, finding a book on the side of the road, at a yard sale, etc... None of these things generates profit for the publishers so far as I am aware. They all exist, in abundance. I sincerely doubt there has ever been a case where
one sale = one reader across the entire publication of the book. Digital files are a bit different in that they can be copied infinitely with little issue, but it still doesn't mean the person who downloads it would have ever bought it new if it weren't available online. If they really wanted to read it
maybe but they'd probably try the library or ask their friends or look up second hand copies on Ebay first. Or something like BetterWorldBooks. People share books. One way or the other.