Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
I am not alone on MobileRead in thinking that illegal torrent sites are the standard recourse of the casual copier.
I am not alone in thinking that the people who don't know how to do that, also don't know what a "file" is.
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I certainly know people who know what a file is but don't know how to use an illegal (or legal) torrent site. My parents for instance. And, although I'm sure we could figure it out, my wife and I.
One reason I wouldn't want to figure it out is a moderate, but real, fear that I would make a mistake and wind up with adware on my PC.
Now, when Mobileread's eBook collection was based on Canadian copyright, I did know how to get those books in violation of US law. But, of course, torrents were not involved.
There are a couple reasons why DRM makes more sense with eBooks than music or even movies.
One is that readers are, on average, older than people who like current music. The age at which people are most likely to be torrent-literate is younger than the age when people are most likely to read books.
Another is that most readers do not reread, whereas the vast majority of listeners hear the same song many times. Personally, as soon as I am done an eBook, I delete it, so being able to move the book to another device is irrelevant.
A third is that many eBook readers borrow from public libraries. Even DRM opponents often realize that DRM for library books makes sense. This means that the publisher already is using DRM for one big group of customers, and so it is easy to do so for everyone.