Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
The second, (first chronologically, you'd think they'd be listed in proper order) article had even less semantic content. Let me give it a go.
1. How well does it stop casual sharing? Unknown. Unknown because we don't have any meaningful numbers of casual sharing, attempts foiled by DRM, and sharing done successfully with stripped DRM.
Example. Aunt Mamie wants to pass Lust in the Locomotive to Cousin Joan. Cousin Joan can't read it, and tells Auntie Mamie she can't. Did it stop there. Maybe, maybe not. Auntie Mamie may ask little Joey, "Why can't I pass this to Cousin Joan?" Little Joey says "Gimme your reader for a few minutes", cracks the DRM and give Auntie Mamie a clear copy and tells her to send that one to Cousin Joan. Little Joey may even teach her how to run the DRM crack software herself, not wanting to be involved with titles like Lust in the Locomotive. How do you measure it? Because....
2. Google DRM breaking programs. They're out there in abundance, and not on servers within US jurisdiction. Little Joey may have been breaking DRM for years...After all...
3. Not everybody is a complete idiot (Congress excluded). Most of them haven't been burned by DRM losses - yet. Once they are seriously inconvenienced a time or two, they'll learn. And they won't be saying thank you...
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Whatever, dude. You have no statistical evidence whatsover that going without DRM would NOT result in lost sales through large scale casual sharing. Given the example of the music industry, there is every reason to believe that it WOULD result in a collapse in revenue. Based on those facts, for the publishing industry to go without DRM would be a leap of faith- a leap of faith based on the digerati's unsupported belief that "this won't the hurt the publishing industry-honest injun. And did you know that DRM is really annoying? "
I find the digerati's willingness to gamble the livelihood of authors and publishers on an unsupported theory just because it 's inconvenient to them quite callous and self centered, to be honest.
But then that's me . Apparently the digerati are quite willing to gamble on the livelihood of others.