Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
{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.
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.
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There is a difference between sharing a book to 50 000 people or with friends. Especially since you can do it with paper books. Since books can be bought in physical and digital form, discrepancies are obvious for me. And what I see as a customer is that I have far fewer rights if I go digital. Paper books are very often read by more than one person. They can be given away etc. There was a day, when it was accepted that a book is readby 1-4 people on average. Now that would be argued as a "loss" by publishers. Who would buy a book a second time, so that another family member could read it?
I understand why some people want drm. What I do not accept is the way it is done. It seems to just take rights away from customers.