Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
If DRM was more effective, perhaps Hatchette would feel comfortable licensing their eBooks to libraries.
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If DRM were *capable* of being more effective, the digital marketplace would be very, very different.
DRM does not and *cannot* do what Hatchette and several other companies want it to do: restrict readers (or listeners, or watchers) to 1 person, or 1 family, per purchase. And the stricter the DRM, the more creative the evasions will be.
This starts with the obvious "scan the book & release the scans," which is what happens with books with no legit digital version. If there's enough interest, someone runs OCR on them. More interest than that, and the OCR text gets corrected, and maybe formatted into epub or mobi.
Also: If Hatchette were worried that DRM doesn't work well enough for libraries, why does it work well enough for their books for sale? It's not like the Overdrive DRM is easier to crack. Seems that their objection to libraries is based on unpaying readers having legitimate access, rather than worries about unauthorized unpaying readers... because they get plenty of those from their books for sale. Do they really think people who borrowed a library book are more likely to crack and distribute than people who bought it?
This is nothing more than an attempt to force authors into a single business model, so they can continue to blame "piracy" for their failure to adapt to the modern market.
I do hope authors are watching out for this clause in upcoming contracts, because it's the kind of thing that can destroy an author's career. Hatchette, of course, doesn't mind at all if an author can't sell their backlist on Smashwords and can't sell the movie rights because they can't guarantee the movie will be released with DRM.