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Originally Posted by miguel1626
Anyway, I'm rather optimistic about the DRM issue. After a few years and a lot waste (of time and money), I think publishers will realize their anti-piracy efforts are harming their bottom-line, and we'll see a change.
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I felt more optimistic before the ibooks stab in the back. Once Apple aligned itself with publishers against Amazon, they set back drm free days by quite a lot. When Apple ended music DRM, they did so from a position of near retail monopoly. Now B&N is doing fairly well, Amazon is still doing fantastic, I don't know where sony is and Apple appears to have a very healthy ebook business. Without one rising well above the others, no one really has the incentive to end ebook DRM and risk the unified wrath of the publishers who would then side with the other retailers.
I have no doubt, as I mentioned a few posts ago, that it is just a matter of time until ebooks go the way of music -- DRM free. I just can't see what the catalyst would be, and I don't think publishers as a group have recognized their waste. If one or two majors do come to that conclusion, it would of course change everything. The rest would follow eventually. But I don't think baen is going to get big enough to buy Random House anytime soon, so...
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Originally Posted by Shaggy
Do you still believe that [copyright promotes science and art progress]?
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I do. I love vanilla copyright, wouldn't want to be a reader in world without it. Just wanted to weigh in as a DRM-hater who loves copyright. Lots of IP isn't perfectly calibrated. The patent system strikes me as completely broken right now, but I wouldn't want to get rid of patents, just re-calibrate.