Quote:
Originally Posted by Matth79
https://defectivebydesign.org/
DRM is evil and inconveniences legitimate users far more than it does the pirates who can usually break or bypass it.
Digital Rights Management denies the user the right to consume content as they wish - would you buy a paperback with a padlock?
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{sigh}.
Unless you're really seriously dedicated, you're not going to stand at a copier and make 50,000 copies of your paperback. You can lend it out, during which you can't read it, or not. It's a single-user item. The same isn't true for ebooks.
While, 1) yes, there are probably perfectly legitimate users of books who are inconvenienced, because they use multiple reading devices (for a single book) that use multiple formats, and can't stand the thought of having to install "Kindle For..." or whatever, on a given device, and, 2) yes, DRM won't stop any real pirate, the bigger issue, by far, for most ebooks today is "casual theft."
The very same thing that caused software to develop "licenses" back in the day, in the 80's. People don't give two seconds' thought to "casual theft," e.g., making a copy of a book they like for Susie, who likes it and makes a copy for Janie, and so on and so forth. (The "Lotus 1-2-3" saga). This type of theft, by people who don't think of what they are doing as theft, is put off by DRM. Not the "pirate" who puts a book up on PirateBay, one of Dotcomm's sites, etc.--the casual thief who doesn't give two thoughts to the author who wrote it or the publisher who published it.
Whitepaper statistics show us that 3 out of 5 people will download something for free, if it's available, even if they know it's a pay-for-use item. That's not a boatload of honest people. However, most of those people THINK of themselves as "honest," and won't actively go around DRM. We're talking about the millions of Amazon buyers, Nook buyers, etc., here, not MobileRead members. That's the type of thieving (yes, yes, I know, it's "copyright infringment") that DRM prevents, and frankly, given how few honest people there are in the world today, I'm all for it. If it means that an MR'er has to spend 30 seconds so s/he can read their book on their Nook AND their Kindle AND their Droid tablet, so what? I'll never understand this whole "DRM is evil" thing. You don't like it, fine, go around it. But stop begrudging the people who want to use it the right to use it. It's THEIR product, not yours. It's THEIR money, not yours, that's being taken if the copyright is violated. And as casual theft is so rampant, I don't see why they shouldn't use DRM to at least stop the hemorrhage.
And, sorry, but no amount of argument is going to change my mind. I ran my business as "pay upon completion" for the first two years, until THEFT nearly ran me into the ground, with people just taking their completed ebooks and never--never--paying. (For some, I actually ran around to their Facebook pages and publicly posted that they were deadbeats. Amazing how money shows up if you do that.) THOUSANDS of dollars' worth, (5 digits, not 4) not just a few hundred here and there. So we had to go to pay upfront, no exceptions.
I have a far dimmer view of human honesty since those early years. (n.b.: then I went to pay upfront, but pay for revision cycles after they are done. Got ripped off thousands of dollars, in a single quarter, that way, too. Now, it's all upfront. Period.)
People attribute NO value to digital products. They think it's okay to just take it and go. I would have been one of those arguing, before I started this business, that DRM was just SILLY. Now, I know better. The whole "oh, I want to read my books on my ninety-bajillion devices, and this inconveniences me" is just complaining;
real geeky e-readers with multiple devices just get rid of DRM when they want. It's the
other 99.99% of ebook readers that need DRM as a deterrent. Sadly, the public just isn't that honest. It's been a shocking revelation to me, and
I'm sorry I know it. I
wish I could have continued to happily trip through life thinking that the average person is honest. In a horrifyingly large percentage,
they're not.
</rant>
Hitch