Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnClif
In short, all of the whining about DRM ignores one crucial factor that will make or break digital publishing of ebooks: without DRM there is no incentive for the publishing industry to migrate to ebooks. We have DRM for music because millions of people were illegally transferring unprotected music (from CDs) via Napster, etc.
Instead of wanting to completely eliminate DRM, what we should want is the ability to have the same rights we have with a physical book... the right to give or sell the book, or read a single copy on any device, while protecting the publisher's right to receiving compensation for each copy that a different user can simultaneously use. I think Amazon's model is the only model that can support these features.
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With DRM there is no incentive for publishers to migrate to ebooks because sales results are so poor. DRM music is dying if not dead; here is the latest headline about the granddaddy of drm support Sony-BMG:
The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues
Link:
http://businessweek.com/technology/c...eek+exclusives
Instead of accepting crippling restrictions on e-books we should fight for drm-free e-books (and actually as it happens people do so by voting with their money and refusing to buy that many crippled e-books).
Again, and again, and again, when paper books allow you to read them pretty much anywhere and everywhere why should we accept no less from e-books?? I know that I do not, and I am sticking with drm-free e-books, convertible drm-books and paper books only.
There is no reason to accept something bad just for the sake of getting the ball rolling.
Personally I think that since the publishing industry is doing well, the incentives for them doing e-books are minimal right now, until some external pressure will come.