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Originally Posted by stonetools
I do think that the publishers shot themselves in the foot by banging on about piracy, when large scale casual sharing is the real danger. Maybe there is no diplomatic way to talk about large scale casual sharing is the real danger, but they lost credibility among the digerati by not being upfront about it.
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I think we may have a difference of terminology here. What do you think the difference between "piracy" and "casual sharing" is? Both are cases of "give a copy to someone who didn't pay for it."
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It's one thing if its available on Darknet, where only the congnoscenti can get at it. Its a whole order of magnitude different when you can have it emailed it to you by your Facebook BFF.
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Wherein "cognoscenti" is defined as "anyone who can put [book title] [ebook] into a Google search box."
Lack of DRM doesn't mean it'll be legal for people to post ebooks to Facebook and say "hey friends! Download this!" The same laws that protect DRM'd ebooks, protect the non-DRM'd ones; making additional copies is still only permitted under consent of the copyright owner. It's just that non-DRM companies commonly have a policy of "it's okay to give a copy to a friend, just don't be so much of a jerk about it that we can't stay in business." And so far, that approach is working.
If the DRM approach is working, why are the publishers panicking? How do they think they'll succeed in the future--do they think that the fanatic anti-DRM crowd (defined as "people like me who refuse to deal with the stuff at all") is going to start buying their books if they make enough noise about how important it is?
As the ebook industry stands right now: If no new ebooks *ever* get posted to the web, I could find enough content--enough high-quality free content, even--to keep me in reading entertainment for the rest of my natural life.
I don't want no-new-ebooks. I want new stuff by my favorite authors; I want new stuff on topics that don't yet exist. I want new fanfic. But if I had to settle for "what's available now, or DRM'd stuff in the future," I can deal with "what's available now."
How is DRM in any way better for me than that? Why should I support an industry that wants to limit my use of my purchases, and insult me in the process?
I don't shop at stores that insist on searching me. I don't care how many other people are willing to put up with it, or what kind of history they've had with thieves in the past. A store that thinks I'm a likely thief doesn't want my business. A publisher that thinks I'm not willing to respect their need for income & future sales doesn't want my business, either. I shop from publishers & authors who think readers are important, not the ones who think they're nuisances standing between the author and access to someone else's bank account.