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Old 07-23-2013, 09:02 PM   #36
BWinmill
Nameless Being
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami View Post
As far as I can see, this is often exactly the wrong way around. If you focus on your consumer's needs, then your business will problably flourish.

Yes, you may loose some sales to pirates, and to people who copy, but chances are that you gain much more sales by making it easy and hassle-free to buy stuff.

Why spend all the money and (development) time to put DRM on your books if it can be stripped out automatically, seconds after downloading the book?
Like I said, that's our perspective as consumers. We could be right. We could be wrong. It's a hard truth to ascertain because it ultimately reduces to "what if".

What if Apple sold DRM free music from day one? The culture of piracy had already been established. The habit of buying music hadn't been established. Those two things means that Apple may have failed even though it was addressing consumer needs. DRM may have cut down on casual copying and established the habit of buying, because that token barrier was enough, thus creating the environment in which Apple succeeded. (Of course, Apple may have succeeded either way. We don't really know because we can't play out both scenarios in the real world.)

As for the stripping DRM bit and people pirating media, I don't think that industry cares about that stuff too much because they know that most of those people wouldn't buy anyway. Let's face it, a lot of pirates simply don't care. A lot of pirates copy more than they can use, nevermind afford. I suspect that they are more interested in preventing the average person from sharing their media with a friend or four since some of those copies may have been sales. Now how many of those average customers are going to run around stripping DRM? A few perhaps, but I doubt that many people even know it can be done.
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