[Hitch]

dg:

You know, a lot of the time, I concur with you, but on this occasion, I must demur. You beg the question by making the assumption that people fall into two camps: a) the dishonest, who will rape and scrape an eBook, put it on a Darknet server, and Bob's-yer-uncle, and b) the hapless and inconvenienced reader/buyer, who does nothing wrong, but is frustrated and annoyed all the same.

I posted a pretty vehement and lengthy rant on this topic--not DRM, specifically, but about/around DRM, honesty and thievery--sometime recently here on MR, and I'm not going to regurgitate the whole thing to make everyone suffer through, but some quick observations, if I may:

1. An entire third camp or group of people exists. They are those who think of themselves as honest and simultaneously don't blink at nothing wrong, whatsoever, with giving a copy of something digital to their friends, family, etc.
2. If the thing cost money in the first place, so much the better, to give it "TO THE ONE I LOVE!"
3. You can see how this works easily--Google any popular piece of software, and look for the websites about how it can be had for FREE. Those websites would NOT be at the top of the search results--as we all know--if those terms weren't entered the way they are, with the frequency and demand that they are. So: what, there are a mere 10,000 dishonest people in the world driving Google's search engine results? Uh...no.
4. We all saw this behavior, "back in the day," with Lotus 1-2-3, the epitome of illicit "file-sharing" if ever piece of software was the case study therefor. EVERYBODY (all those HONEST people) took Lotus, which was then ouchy-expensive, home from the office. All those honest people made illicit copies for their own computers. All those honest people gave disks--which they copied from one drive to the other--to their friends, family, etc. LOTUS is the reason we HAVE software licensing, for heaven's sake, and protections in place--because we learned, to our shock, that people are NOT intrinsically honest, particularly when it comes to the impalpable existence of the digital item--coupled with a COMPLETE lack of consequences and enforcement of any real nature.
5. This is called "casual theft," and this is, absolutely, the biggest issue in the industry, to my mind. Not the pirates--the well-meaning, unthinking casual abuse of a publisher's and author's rights to be PAID for their work.
6. Yes, I already know the counter-argument: well, those people wouldn't pay for the book, anyway. Oh, yeah? Well, then, they shouldn't get to ENJOY it, either. The sheer hubris of this--that somehow, because they're CHEAP and dishonest, they should get to enjoy the stolen work--just boggles me. It's like rewarding them for being crooks. What, and "someday," when they have paying jobs, they'll reverse their behavior and become honest people? Why should anyone believe that? Honesty isn't like changing your kicks (sneakers). You either are, or you aren't.
7. As someone who has been thoroughly and repeatedly ripped-off by AUTHORS (mind you), for "digital works," and was forced to implement a "no pay, no play" policy at my company, I will never--never--change my mind about DRM and readers. I just won't. I've been completely hosed by authors, with nary even a glance backwards. There are books on Amazon to which I can point you, and say: there goeth a stolen book. And I don't mean mere hundreds in a given year, in terms of $$$; I mean THOUSANDS.
8. Given that I've learned, first-hand, just how dishonest people are, I see no reason to think that, for example, Smashwording an eBook file, to make it even EASIER to give away your books, is a brilliant idea. Sure, O'Reilly does it, and sneeringly condescends about everyone else who won't, but O'Reilly charges enough for what it sells legitimately so that they can AFFORD the occasional hit. (And don't think for one second that they don't have people trolling the Darknet for pirated copies, either). Would O'Reilly blithely ignore someone backing a truck up to his office and making off with a few pallets of books he had printed? Decline to prosecute the offenders? I don't think so.

People like to think, and to say, that they are honest. My experience says otherwise. When I tell folks that I was in RE Development for decades, with builders, contractors, you-name-it, they always assume that I saw massive corruption, thievery, etc. And you know what? What little I did see (and trust me, I was always looking for it) was NOTHING compared to what perfectly "honest" people will do given the chance. NOTHING. At least people who openly admit that they are dishonest know what they are. It's the "normal" people who would be offended by the idea that they are dishonest who will steal you blind, given half a chance. It's constantly appalling to me that I could--after the kind of career I've had--become absolutely jaded about how dishonest people really are, at my age.

And those people are the massively large "set" of people that you've omitted from your post. You're not talking about 1 out of 5 people; according to the Digital Watermarking studies (surveys conducted of regular people, mind you), you're ignoring 3 out of 5--to be conservative.

Here endeth the rant. /

Hitch