Quote:
Originally Posted by rlauzon
You mean just like physical books are shared today?
One person (like a library) buys one book, but many people read it for free.
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I think it's the scale that changes things. One person may lend a book to a few people. The library (which pays more for their books) may lend a book to a few dozen people. The physical book is typically only going to be read by one person at a time so that slows it down a bit. Many people won't be patient enough to wait to borrow a book they really want to read now. They'll pay the money as will the folks that want their own copy permanently. I think the rest is factored into the price the publishers charge for books. Right now they can get enough for a book to make the profit they want to make with the number of books sold despite the folks borrowing and buying used. Their big fear is if people start being able to share thousands of copies simultaneously with no inconvenience that there'll be no pricing structure with which they can still make their profit even when their costs are much less.
As someone who hates DRM and feels I should be able to read my books where and how I want I would really like to find a way for authors to make good money for their work (and I do think some of the services publishers provide still have a little value, too). I'm sure some sharing will always happen in any scenario but I think that we can't really treat casual sharing and mass sharing the same if we want to find a viable alternative to restrictive DRM.