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Originally Posted by Piper_
Indeed, but the same goes for respecting the reality of what a person actually says rather than an "adjusting" it in an effort to prove something else. 
He, like most others here, are saying the equivalent of, "You could lose most of that fat you bemoan if you cut out your daily burgers, fries, and milkshakes."
The truth and value of that advice is not disproved, nor is continued indulgence justified, by the existence of some people with extra pounds who don't eat those things.
As noted last weekend, every time we present a better way to protect ( include the purchaser's receipt information in the ebook's metadata/jacket), all we get is crickets. ...until days or weeks later, when we see you on another thread repeating the accusations that we "digirati" don't care about authors and have no better ideas than DRM.
Why is that? Can you at least tell us why our idea meets with such silence? I've posted my suspicions a couple of times, but to be fair, I would like to hear your explanation.  |
I didn't respond because Elfmark did it as well or better than I could. I'll just quote her again:
Quote:
There are ways to discourage widespread sharing, which may-or-may-not be considered DRM. Placing the buyer's name & account number in the ebook might be considered DRM, but these days, we mostly think DRM means "software that prevents an unauthorized person from opening it," not "any measure designed to protect IP rights."
Anything that doesn't prevent opening or editing the file could be changed. Name, email & account # can be stripped out of ebooks for widespread sharing--however, since most people aren't interested in uploading their purchases to the torrents, most people wouldn't bother stripping out that info before giving a copy to a relative. Casual sharing would almost certainly increase if the current DRM schemes were dropped for something less invasive. (Stonetools thinks this would expand to "send a copy to my 500 facebook friends;" the rest of us think that the lack of this practice for Baen and similar ebooks means it's not likely.
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In other words, your DRM scheme would be less effective than the current scheme for publishers. Authors and publishers are interested in a DRM scheme that prevents casual sharers from easily violating an author's copyright: your scheme would do nothing to prevent this. Someone who got their free copy of an ebook forwarded from your relative would just look at the info and say " Wow, Piper originally bought this. Good to know" and just continue reading their free book. And do publishers want the liability hassle of including a book buyer's bank account number on a file that can be passed around the Internet? I think they'll stick with the present scheme, thank you.