Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
I think that Katsunami has raised an interesting point.
Certainly back around 2005/7 when Amazon were getting ready to launch Kindle, they would not have got the major publishers on board without allowing DRM, since ebooks were such a small part of the publishers' income, and Amazon wasn't a big part of that market.
But now? With ebooks being around 20% of their revenue, and Amazon being (at a guess) 80% of that revenue, would they be willing to sacrifice 16% of their income to maintain DRM on their ebooks?
Given how much they've already held back ebook sales with their pricing policy, I can't see all the the big publishers allowing DRM-free sales if Amazon forced the issue now, even if one or two might.
So I don't see Amazon going that route now. But in another five years? Who knows.
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It is interesting. If Amazon wanted to dispense altogether with DRM it may even now be in a position where the Big 5 would follow rather than lose market share. Or if not now, perhaps in 5 years time? Or 10? The question is probably moot. Because I can't think of a reason why Amazon would want to do this. What would Amazon achieve. It is a wonderful company that values its customers and usually shows it. But it is a commercial enterprise. And it would need to have a commercial reason for abandoning DRM. But it does not save money. It is not paying Adobe. It has done the work in developing its own DRM. And, of course, the vast majority of people simply don't care. It is fanciful to think that multitudes of customers are going to flock to Amazon if only they would abandon it. And there is a risk involved. Even when it is trivial to remove DRM, most people simply can't be bothered. How many people now go to copy a file, discover it is infected with DRM and simply accept it? I would suggest the vast majority. I'm not saying that files without DRM which can be simply copied would vastly increase piracy. I suspect the answer is probably not. But it would not be a surprising outcome either. I simply don't know.