Quote:
Originally Posted by Lazer
I predict this will all be a mute point down the road. In five years, or so, there will one eBook format and it'll have one extra-nasty DRM. That's what I foresee, like it or not.
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1) Moot point, not
mute point.
2) What, in five years, they'll have destroyed all scanners currently in existence and put sensors on word-processing programs so they can tell if you're typing something copyrighted without permission?
Companies have been attempting to find The Perfect DRM for over 10 years; the end result is that anything that's on the market more than a year gets cracked.
"Extra-nasty" DRM is irrelevant to me; I don't buy--nor download--ebooks that require registration to open. If all commercial ebooks switch to ADE, I won't buy ebooks anymore... I'll buy used print books, chop & scan them.
However, I suspect that authors like Konrath will be active in seeking customers who don't buy DRM. Sites like DriveThruRPG (which is where I bought my last pay-for-it novel to read) aren't likely to add device-registration DRM because most of their business is PDFs and their customers expect to be able to print the charts & tables from the RPG books they buy.
Some customers only want non-DRM'd books, and some authors and publishing companies are happy to seek their business. If nothing else, it gives them a feature that the larger publishers aren't offering.