Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
Or, could Apple step in and pressure the publishing industry to go completely DRM-free, the same way they did when renegotiating deals with the big music labels? Kirk McElhearn of Macworld thinks there is a chance, also for Apple: |
Not a chance.
Sales of music are managed by the RIAA, which has nice equivalent-terms contracts with studios, which have nice equivalent-terms (horrifically exploitative, but we don't need to go into that here) contracts with the creators of the music. The RIAA can decide "we will sell music without DRM because sales will be awesome that way," and the studios and, more relevant, bands will have to cope with that decision.
There is no equivalent organization in publishing. Every author, sometimes every
book, has a separate contract. Publishers offer standard terms to beginning and mid-list authors, but even in today's "take it or leave it" setting, there's room for a bit of negotiation. And older contracts have drastically varied terms about ebooks; there's no standard set of rights ceded to the publisher.
If an author decides that her books are not selling because they're being pirated, because the publisher has released them without DRM, she may have grounds to sue. She may have grounds to insist that's a breach of contract, depending on the terms of her contract.
Is it likely to hold up? Hell, no. If three hundred authors sue in separate courts over similar lines of logic, is one of them likely to hold up? Maybe. And one would set the precedent for others. (Most likely, IMHNALO: author sues for lost wages, not hoping to get any wages, but hoping to get the contract nullified so she can take back control of her book(s) and sell them on her own.)
Publishers don't want to do anything that opens them up for hundreds of individual lawsuits from authors. They *really* don't want to do anything that authors might use as a wedge to regain control of their works.