Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
... or they don't give a damn about it - which I strongly suspect, based on my interactions with "normal" eBook owners, is the case for the typical user, who buys books in the store that's linked to his reader, and has never even heard of "DRM".
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Until they get an email that they're about to lose support for their books. Which they don't have backed up anywhere because they're not allowed to make copies. Or until they get an ereader that won't read that DRM. But they can't convert the file. Then they care.
I won't say most people I know who use ebooks know about DRM because most people I know don't use ebooks. But most people I know DO know about DRM on music, movies, and/or games. The only reason that's not as true for ebooks is because they're not as ubiquitous yet. Compare the percentage of the population who uses digital music vs. the percentage who use digital books. and how long those respective technologies have been mainstream, and you've accounted for most of the difference.
Why do you think people care in the first place? If DRM were such an inert thing, no one would care, even here, but the geekiest of geeks who like the play around with things for the sake of it. People know because they've gotten burned by it.
Watermarks were mentioned above. How many people care about that? How much coverage do watermarks get vs. DRM? Hardly any, because you're far less likely to notice a watermark, and a watermark doesn't stop you from doing reasonable things with your own content.
I don't think watermarks are a perfect solution and I have some issues with it. But I'm far less bothered by it than I am by DRM. There's at least a discussion to be had about watermarks and how to implement them. DRM is just a bad solution any way you look at it.