Quote:
Originally Posted by Bro Pete
I agree with David_E and Hal2814. The problem is not DRM but format. I do not like being told where I must buy my books because of the brand ereader I own. Would you like being told where you must buy your music because of the brand of player you owned? (Apple does but I refuse to purchase anything form them for that very reason.) When formats are equal the competition is focused on content, marketing, and availabllity, not security measures.
It is hard for me to understand the strong animosity toward DRM. An author of an ebook deserves the same copyright protection as any other created work. Music artists admit that record sales are no longer their primary income but concert tickets bring in the bulk of their money. Unrestricted copying discourages the distribution of their work in permanent format. So I would say that the current multiple format and format specific DRM protection are what holds back ebooks. Let me read an ebook from any source but restrict me from copying the file and I will be happy. It does keep me from lending out books to friends, but I have to admit that of the books I've lent out, I get back about 2/3 of them.
As far as DRM being costly...really? The rights management of a treebook includes the paper, binding, distribution and warehouse costs....
|
DRM in any form, for any product, is useless. The only thing it does is hamper paying customers and encourage piracy. In this case it also drives prices up because they have to pay for every ADE ebook sold. I dream of a world where all publisher's realize this, and DRM is gone, but I doubt it'll happen in my lifetime.