|
Let's leave whether or not DRM benefits the vendors out of the equation entirely. Let's just look at whether it benefits the end user -- that would be us. It is quite clear that DRM's effect on an end-user is either neutral (don't notice it) or harmful (can't use your book). There is no way, none, in which DRM is beneficial to the end user. And we're users here, not Big 6 publishers, not device manufacturers, not online superstores. So the question is whether DRM benefits us in any way, or not. Same answer: it's either neutral or harmful.
So when someone says that DRM is beneficial, and at worst neutral, we can rest fairly well assured that their interests are not the same as ours, because for us it's either neutral or harmful, never beneficial. To whose advantage is it to convince people to accept DRM, not to object to paying high prices for temporary book rentals, and to be thankful that the publishers are so generous as to let us give them money? Well ... not in a user's interest, certainly.
If the best DRM can be to a user is neutral, someone with the user's interests in mind would not be supporting it. So whose interests might such a person have in mind? Not the authors', either; device lock-in (the only effective use of DRM) doesn't benefit authors in any way, and by reducing re-reading of their books, and reducing the money buyers have available (having just had to re-buy those parts of their library they can't part with) to buy more books by those authors, it may be harmful. So such a person would not be supporting the authors' interests, either. And we can lump agents in with authors for the sake of discussion; their interests generally coincide.
So ... going back to the beginning ... this leaves us with the publishers who see profits in repeated sales of the same book, and in charging higher than paperback prices for less than paperback utility (and no returns, no physical stock, etc.), and the companies that sell both reading devices and books to be read on those devices, who benefit massively from device lock-in.
Or, in simpler terms: If you have to buy another Kindle because all your books only work on the Kindle, do you benefit? Does the author benefit? Or does Amazon benefit?
When someone's apparent entire purpose in MobileRead is to extoll the "benefits" of DRM, who is that person working for?
... not us ...
|