Quote:
Originally Posted by karunaji
On the contrary. The companies who try to invent more restrictive DRM are losing sales. Games might be slightly different issue because they require a lot of interactivity. But since they started to sell DRM-free music the sales are doing fine. Books are even simpler than music and movies and it's impossible to make hard to break DRM system without seriously inconveniencing the reader.
|
That's not quite true. I'm glad you agree on games, but DRM doesn't stop there. Take one of the most popular software companies out there: Adobe. All of their software requires this complicated activation process, in which you must connect to the internet, run your serial by Adobe's licensing server, and then register your product. I'm not going to claim that this stops the software from being cracked, but it does in fact deter crackers. From the user's standpoint, it's little more than a one-time hassle, where they need to wait a couple seconds for the process to complete.
As for music, it's because one competitor began to offer DRM free, that other competitors were forced to follow suit. Plus, they've caught/sued so many people downloading music (and scared others into stopping), that much of the sales have been recovered.
Quote:
|
I am betting that 99% of cases when DRM is removed from Kindle books it is to read them on other devices (Sony, Kobo, Pocketbook etc.). Most people don't bother putting them on internet. They occasionally might give them to friends to read if they are interested.
|
Maybe that statistic is true. However, that 1% of cases get uploaded to the internet, and that's what matters; only one copy of a book needs to be uploaded to the internet. When I wrote my post yesterday, I ran a search, and I found plenty of 'retail copy' torrents.
Quote:
|
If Amazon would drop DRM altogether it would not change anything. Implementing a stronger (unbreakable for a general layperson) protection and making it impossible to read on other devices would decrease popularity of this platform.
|
I disagree; dropping DRM altogether would make it easy for the average person to easily share books with each other. Many people feel guilty about breaking DRM, or feel (rightly) worried about downloading books from online. However, if the process is as simple as emailing a file, people would be much more inclined to share. In turn, fewer people would buy their own books, and as such, Amazon would lose sales.