Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
If that is their only goal, you are likely correct.
But if their goal is a continuing ability to do well not just by book-buying readers, but by all their stakeholders (executives, stockholders, librarians, editors, authors), I think DRM-free is short-term thinking.
Even with today's weak DRM, the majority of book buyers and library borrowers do not strip it. What happens if five or ten years from now, the book buyer wants to re-read? Without DRM, they won't buy or borrow the book again. I know this feels unfair to some people, but its no more fair or unfair than having to buy a new copy of Windows when you get a new PC.
DRM elimination also indicates short-term thinking on the part of publishers who do it because, when more effective means of DRM are invented, book-buying readers would already have gotten used to being DRM-free. There would be a lot more resistance to starting up DRM from scratch than there will be to switching to a more effective system.
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That's why my original comment said remove DRM and/or require all ebooks to be sold as a non-proprietary format. If they don't want Amazon to have a natural monopoly on ebook sales, they need to make it trivial for Amazon customers to buy from some other retailer, including be able to switch to another company's ebook reader and still be able to read all of their previously purchased Amazon books. Until that happens, most Kindle users will never buy a non-Amazon ereader, and never buy books from the publishers who require DRM on their books from anywhere but Amazon, because there's no way to sideload DRMd Kindle content from other sources onto the Kindle (except maybe via Overdrive who is not an Amazon competitor).