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Originally Posted by rlauzon
Which is why I use the term "The stated purpose of DRM". People more knowledgeable than I have proven that DRM cannot fulfull its stated purpose.
So the "real purpose of DRM" must be something else. The only purpose we can see is to lock honest users into a closed, proprietary system.
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Yes, I entirely agree. Control of the formats is probably the most likely reason for DRM.
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Originally Posted by rlauzon
But pBooks aren't that secure either. Within 12 hours after the new Harry Potter book was available on paper, it was available in an unofficial eBook version.
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Yeah, I noted this. But the fact is that paper is still the most secure form of wide-distribution book there is - and is presumably the standard against which new DRM should be measured, as the current "state of the art". It's certainly far from perfect, though.
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Originally Posted by rlauzon
I wouldn't use the term "big draws" to describe the ease of copying.
The biggest benefit of eBooks is convienence. They are much lighter and much more compact. I can, theoretically, carry around my whole O'Reilly reference library on my iLiad, for example.
The ability to easily copy an eBook is actually a drawback - because it causes DRM to seem to make business sence.
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Well, the reason I said that is because most of the benefits of ebooks rely on it being easy to copy. They're compact and light because they can be moved from one digital storage medium to another. You can have all your O'Reilly ebooks on your Iliad because you don't have to bring around one object for each, you can copy them onto a single piece of memory. You can download them over the internet rather than walking to the store because they can be copied from the server, through the routers, to your hard drive.
Because they're bits, transmitting, displaying, and really doing anything at all with ebooks means copying them. "Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.", to probably misquote someone or other.