Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Unless you can publish pairs similar and popular books, with similar marketing strategies and audiences, at the same time, one with DRM and one without, I don't know a sure way to prove this. I question studies that depend on asking people to volunteer to admit that they break copyright law.[...]
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I doubt if there are useful ways to prove it absolutely, either way. Even parallel releases won't tell you, the public can be fickle, with the reasons for success or failure not easily guessed in advance (I could cite examples but that could start another debate
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
If the publishers decide tomorrow to stop using DRM (like the music biz did) does that mean they have been right to use DRM all this time, and they astutely and swiftly decided that now was the exact best time to change to maximize profit? Or were they wrong for a long while, and they were too stodgy and stubborn to see it until it got so bad and obvious they finally had to do something?[...]
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Yes, there is always a lot of inertia behind any large organisation, it could be that they will eventually decide DRM in its current form is no longer cost-effective. But even if removal of DRM proved a success at this point, that wouldn't prove its failure at the start. The market has changed dramatically over the few years of its existence. DRM has been a necessary part of getting ebooks to the point they are now (the larger publishers would have been much slower coming forward without it). What shape such rights management takes in the future remains to be seen, but I think it's safe to say that it will always be there in one form or another.