Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
Can we assure that writers and publishers can make a good living in a post DRM world?
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That's not the right question.
The question is this:
Does DRM induce authors to produce works that they would not produce without DRM?
Given that money has been substituted in modern society for honor, status, achievements, and pretty much everything else that might be considered a reward, we can convert that to "Does DRM enable authors to earn more money than they would without DRM?"
And the answer is no, it doesn't, because DRM doesn't stop the people who want to make copies of ebooks. It doesn't stop the people who want to turn pbooks into ebooks. It is impossible for DRM to prevent people from making DRM-free ebooks because, by definition, an ebook always needs to be displayed; if nothing else, someone can photograph their computer screen and OCR the resulting pictures. Remember, it only takes
one person per book, and the genie is out of the bottle and on the torrents.
There are ways to discourage the sharing of ebooks. Education is one option ... of course, any publisher can tell customers "hey, don't give that book away, Joe Smith's groceries depend on it" while DRM is making money for its providers, giving them a tremendous incentive to encourage its use. The fact that there are people like me -- and we're all over MobileRead -- who are entirely capable of getting any book we want without paying for it, but nonetheless choose to pay for our books, shows that many people
will be honest, and I suspect many of those who are on the border would be if they recognized the people involved (i.e., the authors) and not BigSuperCo Inc.
The standard response by the pro-DRM people is "anyone who opposes DRM is just one of those 'entitled' people who wants everything for free." They're missing something critical: we can already
get it for free. That's not the issue at all. If that's all we wanted, we'd nod our heads and smile and say yes, DRM works fine, it's blocking my natural inclination to steal everything that isn't nailed down ... and then sneak off to the darknets and download every book in sight. An end to DRM will not make it
any easier for the people like me who argue against it to obtain
any ebook we want, because it's
already easier to get an illicit copy than it is to buy the real thing. And it's free. So whatever someone may dream up to explain our reasoning, wanting ebooks for free isn't it -- it
can't be it -- because
we already have that. It would actually be better for ebook sharing if everyone pretended that DRM worked just fine, rather than continually arguing against it, and just quietly ignored it.
But anyway, back to the Apple rep's original question: DRM has no effect, unless that might be a negative one (people like me not buying their books at all) on whether or not authors and/or publishers can make a living. If they can make a living with DRM they can make a living without it. DRM doesn't change whether or not they can make a living.
By the way, there are a number of reasons why DRM works on video games but not on ebooks.
One simple one is chronological: How many games do you play that are 10 years old? How many are even more than a year old? A lot of people play a game through, beat it, maybe play it one more time, then toss it on the shelf. Even a totally replayable game, like a multi-player FPS, will be superseded by a new version and most players will migrate to that one. If it's unplayable a year from now, let alone ten years from now, they will most likely neither know nor care, because it's been replaced by newer and better games.
The lifespan of the game is shorter than the lifespan of the device (PC, console, whatever) it's used on.
Another is the target market. By and large, people who buy video games are technologically at least competent. They know what they're buying and how they can use it in advance. If they have a Wii, they're not going to go buy games for an Xbox 360 instead. Downloadable games are generally downloaded on and through the device they will be used on. Physical games come in boxes with distinctive heraldry for each platform.
There are very few equivalents to the would-be ebook readers who buy books from Amazon and can't read them on their Kobo.
Then there's the matter of circumvention. It's certainly possible to get a cracked version of pretty much any game you want. But just using the game you brought home from GameStop is generally easy and seamless, while there is a fair bit of effort required to get the cracked one to work properly. In other words, it's easier to be legit. In the case of DRM, it's the other way around:
it can be harder to be a legitimate customer than just to go grab the darn thing off the darknet and avoid all the hassles. That's why it's hurting the wrong people.
Out of all of those, I think the time issue is the biggest. I have hundred-year-old pbooks; I doubt if anyone a hundred years from now is going to want to play any of today's computer games.