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Originally Posted by stonetools
you can have no DRM with little increase in casual sharing and piracy and point to the music industry as an examnple of a successful No DRM regime. You cite a few indie writers and and some minor publishing houses offering no DRM content and say, " See? That can work for everyone". Well, the publishing industry is not convinced and I can't say as I blame 'em. I know that if I was betting my company on such evidence, I'd want more-a lot more.
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We have cited several publishing house that release books without DRM and said, "It's working for them. As far as we can figure out, switching from DRM to no-DRM hasn't hurt anyone's sales." One of the "Minor publishing houses" has watched its profits increase over the last decade, while most of the industry is shrinking. The other has noted that its print sales have declined, like most publishers--but that its ebook sales have more than made up the difference.
Do you have any evidence that DRM has improved business--has removing DRM hurt sales, or has adding DRM increased sales?
Ignore the "casual sharing/piracy" junk. Those numbers don't matter. What matters is how many people are buying. Is there any evidence that DRM'd products sell better than non-DRM'd ones? Because we've got a whole swarm of evidence that says no, non-DRM'd stuff sells faster and more than DRM'd stuff.
The claim that DRM protects authors' rights and incomes is bogus. There's no evidence to support it. There's wild speculation about how removing DRM *could* result in mass file-sharing that kills incomes--but that's not how DRM removal has worked in any other part of the industry, or other industries, that have tried it.
Why should we believe that Agency 6 ebooks are different from every other digital industry?