Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
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.
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Of course, studies have shown that because of network effects, piracy actually results in
more sales, statistically. Want to know why it has been so hard to rid ourselves of Microsoft Word? It isn't because the app is great; it's because everybody has it, and therefore everybody needs it in order to work with files that anybody else sends them.
So if, as most studies suggest, very few of those people would have bought Lotus 1-2-3 if they could not have gotten a copy for free, then the company turns out to be much better off if those people pirate it! In much the same way, in study after study, music and movie piracy has been shown to
increase total revenue, not decrease it.
But even if all of those studies are wrong, even if the answer is that those people would have bought a copy, and even if those are all lost sales, you still couldn't really make the same assumption about books. People don't install books and then use them to complete tasks on a daily basis (for most books, anyway). They read them, put them aside for several years, then read them again.
If I buy a physical book, during that interim period, I can loan it to someone, give it to a library, or tear it up and use it as kindling. Once it leaves the publisher's hands, it's my choice what I do with it, with the exception of outright copying. Thus, dozens of people could legally read that single copy of the book. In a library, it could be hundreds. Ostensibly, there's a very small chance that a person who borrows a book might love it so much that he or she buys a copy, but that chance is vanishingly small when expressed as a percentage of readers.
So in practice, the harm caused by people casually sharing books electronically with a few of their friends is not significantly greater than the harm caused by passing around a copy of a physical book or putting it in a library. And this isn't just my opinion. Study after study on music and movie sharing have all come to the same conclusion. Yes, it is wrong to do so, as a matter of principle, but when you take an honest look at the actual numbers involved, casual piracy isn't the bogeyman that folks make it out to be—not by a long shot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
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.
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The problem is that there's no way for you to actually prevent it. It only takes one person in that bad category who breaks the DRM "for the lulz" and posts it to a torrent site, and after that, anybody in your middle category who wants a copy can trivially and effortlessly download it illegally, just by going to one of those sites you mentioned. So the net effect on casual theft is zero.
Unfortunately, depending on the DRM scheme, the net effect on your actual paying customers can be considerable. With DRM, your customers have to break the law if they want to read your books with a reader that uses an incompatible DRM scheme. And when the company that runs your DRM scheme goes out of business or abandons it, your paying customers get ripped off. If you want to hear swearing, go talk to anyone who bought music under Microsoft PlaysForSure™ scheme:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...34401923.shtml
Or talk to the folks who got harmed by Sony's DRM rootkit. Or the folks who dealt with Ubisoft's "always-on" DRM. Or any number of other atrocities that have been perpetrated in the name of (unsuccessfully) protecting content from piracy.
That's why I don't believe in DRM. You can feel free to disagree with me, but that's how I feel about it, and that's why.