Quote:
Originally Posted by moz
I hope that the book publishers look at the long, losing battle being fought by the music industry against recorded music, and radio stations, and cassette tapes, and mp3 players, and the internet, and decide not to play that game.
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Actually, the industries could have controlled "the game" if they'd wanted to, simply by forcing the middleman--the ISP--to pay a "tax" for transmitted music, much like the "tax" we paid per blank cassette tape to cover their expected losses, and let the ISP pass the cost on to us. In fact, if they did it that way, the added cost per person would have been so small as to be negligible (most of us pay more through inflation every year). This plan would have been so painless as to render the whole MP3 issue a non-starter.
As far as the "long, losing battle" is concerned, think about the fact that the longer illegal file sharing continues, the longer that battle will last. The battle isn't just being fought by them... it's being fought because of consumers storming their walls with illegal content. The sooner publishers are convinced that consumers are willing to legally buy content, the sooner they will stop bothering with unworkable DRM schemes, and concentrate on getting us that content.