Quote:
Originally Posted by tirsales
You sure 'bout that? Because I dont think the other publishers have even tested it.
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Most of them haven't. They've taken the ostrich approach. Let me be explicit - they produce no e-book format product, under the idea if they don't create it, there'll be nothing to pirate, so they're protected from I.P. piracy. Because of the analog hole, (scanners, keying, ect.), this is blatantly false-to-fact, but that doesn't change the thought process. When they get their noses rubbed in reality, they scream "pirates!, we've been robbed!!!", totally ignoring that fact that they offered the consumer
no other option to legally obtain the e-book product. (Let me put DRM'ing to the side.)
You'd think they'd want the money. They do,
but not at the cost of giving up their "control" over their product! They want control over the product they <own> more that anything else, even money. They will cheerfully do without extra money in order to maintain that control/power. But with the widespread existence of cheap computers and even cheaper communications,
the world has changed, and that control not longer exists.
Everything you see from most publishers and many authors is trying to put humpty-dumpty back together again. I.P piracy laws that look like they came from the 16th century, draconian DRM, luddite calls to abandon technology, privacy, anything, to bring back that control again.
This is just one aspect of the change the world is going through. To get a bigger picture of some of the potential implications, read a copy of
The Rational Individual by James Davidson and Lord Rees-Moog. (No, it's
not available as an e-book.)