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So, what convinced Sony to go DRM-free on thousands of titles? Perhaps it was observing Booxtream's success in deterring piracy without having to resort to draconian measures.
According to Huub van der Pol, the founder of Booxtream’s parent company iContact, the official release of the Harry Potter ebooks saw a decrease in piracy of the series.
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Well they would want to point that out, suggesting it's because of watermarking no doubt.
The HP books were all available on piracy sites long before the official version. Would it be a stretch to imagine a case where usually law abiding readers having no way to legally buy the ebooks simple pirate it (along with all the pirates who will pirate it regardless). When the official version becomes available, pirates continue to pirate but the otherwise law abiding readers now buy it instead.
There's members of this forum who bought a paper copy to justify downloading the pirated versions of the ebooks, others that pirated it and said they'd buy a legal copy once that option was made available.
So, could it be that the same fall in piracy would have occurred had the official books gone on sale DRM free rather than watermarked and that it was the act of making the books legally available as ebooks that caused a reduction in piracy and nothing to do with the watermarking protection.
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make the book(s) available for sale at reasonable prices and with as few limitations as possible.
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This is much more likely
Arguments about watermarking DRM vs encryption DRM aside (see the other thread on here for that debate), it's a step towards no DRM. Considering encryption based DRM may have included watermarking to boot, we are potentially down to one layer of DRM now rather than 2 and a less restrictive layer too (concerns raised in other thread accepted).