Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
Is the music business the same as the ebook business? Frankly, I don't know . I'd like to have lots more discussion on that. I do not that the music business has gone down a lot in revenue over the past decade, ITunes notwithstanding. I would not use the music business as an example of success in going DRM free.
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We are
not discussing whether ebooks in general are good or bad for the publishing industry. That's irrelevant. Ebooks are going to become the dominant form of book no matter what the publishing industry does.
We are discussing whether having DRM on ebooks will be better or worse for the publishing industry. In other words, will having DRM on ebooks cause more ebooks to be sold or fewer ebooks to be sold.
In this context, looking at electronic music sales is very relevant. Not overall music sales, or how the music industry as a whole is coping, but just electronic music sales.
We have some good data for this. We have figures from the dominant electronic music retailer for the past eight years. For six of those years, they sold only DRMed music. For the past two years, they've sold only DRM free music.
If the DRM on the music files increased sales, and removing DRM from the music files reduced sales, we'd expect to see this in the chart. I don't say we'd expect to see a drop in sales, because electronic music sales are still at an early stage of growth. But we'd expect to see some effect.
The only obvious check in the growth is actually in the year before iTunes went DRM-free. This is the year that the DRM music in the iTunes Music store was competing against the DRM-free music from Amazon.
I think it's clear that the figures show that removing DRM from the music in the iTunes Music Store did not adversely affect music sales.
I don't see any reason that selling ebooks without DRM would have any negative effect on sales of ebooks either.
I have now provided a detailed explanation, with verifiable data, for why I don't think that selling ebooks without DRM will harm publishers or authors.
Please explain why you persist in your belief that DRM is essential.