[frahse]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

I'm not. If that's how my posts read, then obviously I will need to rephrase my arguments a bit.

I'm not saying we should make piracy legal. I'm not a writer, musician, game developer or movie maker, so my entire interest in the DRM debate is as a consumer. And as a consumer, I want the people who spend their time developing my entertainment to be compensated for their work. If you didn't get paid for what you write you would lose a great incentive to keep writing and make what you write available to the public, and that would suck. Hard. I don't want that to happen, I want new entertainment to keep coming my way, so I can stay sane, and I want the ones who provide it to be able to pay their mortgage. Also, I genuinely believe that creative talent deserves to be rewarded.

So as a consumer, I am entirely against the kind of piracy that is all about obtaining free entertainment without the creator's permission.

Now, that out of the way, here's the point I wanted to make, a bit rephrased:

Unlicensed distribution of copyrighted material happens whether we want it to or not. That has always been the case, long before ebooks were invented, in the form of a buyer giving the book to someone. Heck, library books get stolen all the time. One can even argue that libraries are a form of "piracy" since the author gets royalties only when the library purchases the book, but not every time someone borrows it.

So piracy exists, that's an established fact. It's also an established fact that DRM can do nothing to stop it. Ask the video game developers about this one, they'll tell you that the more "ingenius" their DRM, the quicker it gets broken. Mass Effect has already been mentioned, the Spore fiasco is another good example.

So since DRM can do nothing to prevent piracy, it makes no sense to spend money on adding it to a product. It makes even less sense to include it if it's the kind of DRM that actually inconveniences the paying customer. (See the Mass Effect example again.) From my consumer-centric point of view, DRM-free is the only logical alternative. I'm all for making that mandatory. Until that pipe-dream of mine becomes reality, I buy DRM-free whenever I can, strip the DRM when that's not an option, and when all else fails, I get a pirated copy of the digital content I have purchased. I am, as I said before, an honest pirate. Everything on my computer has been paid for, one way or another.

So my argument is not that we should "legalize bad things", not only because I'm not sure how we'd make pirating content legal, but rather that we stop inconveniencing a paying customer with something that doesn't stop the pirates anyway.

As my sarcastic post earlier in this thread tried to point out, the DRM is only necessary if we assume that all paying customers are dishonest and plan to distribute what they paid for to as many people as they can, as quickly as possible. I find that assumption a bit insulting. After all, the fact I was willing to pay for the book says otherwise, doesn't it? Doesn't it? *listens to crickets and sees blank stares from the music industry and book publishers*

You can always recognize a writer, particularly a book author. They always write a lot. It is hard to stop them once they get going. I am that way, and I think you might be a writer also, or you at least have that nature.

Scaly (wish you had a more endearing name) besides being a writer (of non fiction as well as fiction) I am also an engineer by education and practice. We set up control systems for processes, and machines and a part of designing a good control system is observing how it works, and adjusting the mechanisms by "feedback."

Now the book industry isn't an engineering or industrial platform but it uses defacto engineering principles as all life does.

If I analyze DRM, its use, its effect, its acceptance by all the groups, I would say that it is a damper (or a partial brake). It stops piracy by the general public, slows it by people that might, say, be on this forum, makes (what do we say here) the suits up in corporate feel good. It also has the effect of presenting a tantalizing target and goal for a few people whose whole life is organized around getting things for free or doing things that glorify their prowess as rule breakers. [This last group are the ones who break the codes, and distribute the methods.]
DRM also causes a lot of consternation for honest people and that is being constantly worked on by the eReader people. For example allowing lending, allowing use at the library, these kinds of things.

And finally for we always summarize and wax a bit if we are doing our thing, DRM is another imperfect system in an imperfect world.