Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
NOw everyone else on this thread thinks the anti DRM argument is a slam dunk. I think its 50/50 at best. A lot depends on where you put the burden of proof. If you think DRM is morally wrong, then you want 100 per cent proof that it would hurt the book industry-evidence that's not available beforehand. The publishers, of course, want 100 per cent proof that it WON'T cost 10/50 per cent losses. Of course, there is no certainty in the business world. But the authors and publishers, who are betting their livelihoods on this, would say (correctly) in my view, that they would need clear and convincing evidence that going no DRM would not cause the kind of big losses we saw in the music industry. Put it this way, if the publishing industry goes no DRM and revenue falls 50 per cent, the folks here will just say , "Oops! Guess I was wrong" and go on with their lives. Folks in the publishing biz won't have that luxury.
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You are, once again, conflating two different things.
(1) Availability of free unauthorised copies of ebooks
(2) Presence of DRM on ebooks that are sold
If the availability of free unauthorised copies of ebooks is going to cause the same problems for the publishing industry as it seems to have done to for the music industry (10%-50% decrease in revenues over a decade), then it will do so
even if publishers apply DRM to the ebooks they sell. The music industry applied DRM to the music they sold from 2003-2008 and it did them no good at all
We can't say whether the music publishers would have done better to sell DRM-free music from 2000 onwards, instead of DRM-encumbered music from 2003.
We can say that if the big book publishers take the same approach that the big music publishers took, we can expect a similar outcome.
Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is not a sensible strategy.