[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by stonetools

If that were the standard, then we should just give up on enforcing any laws against theft.

No, just the ones that encourage theft and hamper the people who don't want to steal.

DRM does not stop people from pirating ebooks. It doesn't even slow them down. That's why I keep using Harry Potter as an example: it was never released as an ebook. But it's available as an illicit ebook to anyone who wants it anyway.

If laws will stop people from stealing, laws will stop people from copying ebooks. Nobody has said that laws are unnecessary, and only someone who was looking for ways to justify certain marketers' existing arrangements, rather than looking at the situation and saying "how is this working, exactly?" would claim that they did. Whether or not laws will be effective is not a part of this discussion.

What we're discussing is technical measures that purportedly prevent people from illicitly copying ebooks. I maintain that they are not effective in the way claimed because a) they do not prevent the illicit copying of ebooks, nor the exchange of such ebooks, and b) they do interfere with the normal and legitimate use of ebooks by their purchasers, inducing those purchasers to step closer to, or over, their actions from those in part 1.

It doesn't stop the bad guys -- they don't even slow them down. Vendor's rep or not, you can look at the darknet the same as we can, and see for yourself. Legal action to prevent this might be effective, but DRM has clearly totally, completely, and utterly failed in that department. DRM will always fail if there is any visible version of a book -- paper, screen-shottable, whatever. It might work if we get books fed directly into our neural implants, but we can worry about that when the time comes. DRM does nothing whatsoever to stop someone who wants to copy a book from copying it, nor does it stop someone who wants to obtain such a copy from obtaining it. Other measures -- ranging from draconian laws to reliance on the honesty of well-treated customers -- might do so, but DRM does not.

It hurts the good guys. Most people just want to be able to buy a book and read it. They don't want to have to understand about file formats, or incompatible devices, or the fact that they've worn out/obsoleted/squashed six Kindles over the years and they can't read their books any more on the seventh. They just want to be able to do with their ebooks what I did with a pbook last night: buy it, take it home, and read it. Or take it off the shelf again, a decade later, and read it again. DRM interferes with that. How many ebook newbies have posted here not understanding why an ebook they bought at Amazon won't work on their Sony, or an ebook from B&N won't work on their Kindle? They don't want to have to register their readers, jump through hoops for their books, and be S.O.L. when the bookstore shuts down (it's happened, and will undoubtedly happen again) or changes formats or whatever. Look at how many people are worried about the Kobo because Borders, which sold it, is circling the drain. Extend to the whole ebook world. People just want to buy a book and read it, and DRM gets in the way of that. DRM hurts the good people -- that supposed 90%.

It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. It doesn't "protect" authors from their customers. It doesn't protect anything, actually, except device lock-in. And only that in the case of people who don't know how to strip DRM from their books, or how to find illicit copies in places we can't post about. Further, it teaches people who just want to read the bloody book how to strip DRM, and where to find "free" books, and some percentage of those will permanently join the ranks of the pirates, losing even more customers for the publishers, when they originally would have been happy to just be able to use the books they bought. It's hurting the wrong people.

So are booksellers too stupid to realize they're hurting the people they want to help, and helping the people they want to hurt? Or do booksellers have some other end in view (device lock-in is the first thing that comes to mind) and are cynically using the "we need DRM to protect the authors" line to encourage customer acceptance of a technology that benefits the sellers, and the sellers only ... if even them?

By the way, I don't have a dog in this fight. I bought my PRS-505 so I could read Project Gutenberg in bed. I do, along with other free PD archives. I also buy DRM-free ebooks from Baen, O'Reilly, Smashwords, and so on. This is not because I have a device I couldn't buy or use DRM-locked ebooks on (I could use the Sony store if I wanted to), nor because I couldn't strip DRM if I needed to (I write programs for fun; I think I could manage a DRM-removal app). It's because I have put my money where my keyboard is, and I refuse to buy DRM-locked ebooks. And no, I don't pirate them, either. I've lived all my life with pbooks, and while space issues have made me far more selective, they're still a very viable option. So I'm not arguing against DRM because it inconveniences me (it doesn't; at worst, I'm still in the same place I was before I bought my ebook reader) nor because I'm afraid of someday being unable to remove it (I don't buy DRM-locked ebooks anyway). It's purely practical -- an outsider's viewpoint, in fact: "Hey, guys, that's not working the way you say it is." What and How are enough for me; I'll leave Why for someone else.

Maybe a publisher's rep?