[tirsales]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

In the case of BitTorrent (and Pirate Bay, specifically), there's nothing being put in a shared space. The file resides on the seeder's hard drive, and it's copied, bit for bit, to the recipients' hard drives. It's not being shared. It's being copied.

Whether you define "sharing" as "the same object residing in the shared space and being used by multiple people" or "the same *content* etc"
Actually that is the reasoning the publishing industry is using (its the content, not the container thats matters) - so P2P is sharing.

The fact that DRM-free content works for music (now) doesn't necessarily mean that it will work for ebooks (now).

The fact that the market of today WILL die is a reason to change it, not to clang to it like .. I dont know.

The primary reason that DRM-free music works is because the hardware involved (primarily, the MP3 players) became easy enough to use, and the associated software (including the MP3 format) became good enough for consumers to easily download, store, play, search, manipulate (e.g., normalization), and catalogue their music -- with standards that were developed.

This is actually why digital music is working and unrelated to DRM. DRM hinders the development of any market (see Kindle vs Sony vs ...)

Ebooks, by contrast, have very few of those things. The reader hardware is good, but not necessarily great, and it's relatively expensive. Ebooks can come in several different formats (not including DRM formats), and there are metadata issues.

Yes. Thats why DRM is evil.

Don't get me wrong: I love my Kindle, but there's a distance to go yet, before ebook readers will be ready for the masses. (The introduction of color e-Ink will obviously be a huge step in the right direction, as would the ability to have a light of some kind built-in to the book, which so far has proven difficult for e-Ink devices.)

This is understood and I agree.

On top of all this, DRM-free e-book experiments have not gone all that well.

There are several publishers providing DRM-free e-books and they have worked fairly well.
There NEVER was a real test of drm-free e-books in a large market..

That's an oversimplification. Like any other technology, DRM is only "evil" if you want to do something the DRM wasn't designed for.

It is not. DRM hinders any open development, it ties people to vendors, it hinders the development of readers (see e.g. Kindle vs Sony vs etc), etc
Apart from that: Why should I pay MORE for an ebook then for a pbook while getting much less? (and that is primarly drms fault).
I can understand the usage of DRM in SOME special markets - but not in large content-markets. Either I pay for the container (then do I want to be able to resell it and do whatever I want with this container) or I pay for the content - then I will be able to read it any way I like (etc).
NONE of this is given with DRM.

The DRM is simply a watermark that lets content providers know where a file came from, to discourage people from going to The Pirate Bay and "sharing" the video to 10,000 of their close, personal friends.

This is then called watermarking, not DRM.

MP3's were never delivered by the MP3 Fairy.

No, it was developed by the Frauenhofer Institute.

The technology to rip music is what produced the motivation for selling music online.

Nope, those techniques where available for YEARS before the media industry ever started providing download services (or similar). At first they tried to kill any kind of MP3 (or similar), then they tried to enforce DRM'd low quality music (both to keep to the old CD market). This failed (gravely).
Thus they were forced to provide a better market - first trying medium quality DRM'd, then somehow better, now DRM-free.
No, I really believe P2P enabled this market change.

If anything, the download sites hindered the adoption of open formats by the music industry. Do you seriously believe that the record industry would've been skittish if WinAmp existed, but not Napster? The technology to exchange files online existed long before p2p did. p2p simply made it less painful to do so.

Yes, I DO believe this. MP3 and stuff was available long before Napster and file sharing got large - the media industry would have been more then able to go for this market - they didnt even try.

I agree with you in part. The old model of selling a whole CD at a time, without letting consumers hear most of the songs first, is dying, if not dead.

No, the whole "I am selling a piece of content that you (and only you) can listen to"-model is dead. New models have to be build - and they are very reluctant to even try.

But no content provider with two neurons to rub together would put out more content or service, knowing full well that they'll get less in return (again, see what happened to Stephen King).

Stephen King was ONE try (and not a very large one). I for one didnt really hear of it - so it cannot have been a large test.
And whats the meaning of "knowing full that they will get less" - they do NOT know this. They never once tried.

From a business standpoint (and anyone who is selling their books, or representing someone who is selling books, is in it as a business), that would be suicidal.

Now. Trying to hold to an old business model - no matter the cost - is suicidal.
They prefer suing and repelling their customers before they even try to test something. To quote Joda: That is why they fail.

1) I can almost guarantee you that there is not currently "subbstantial ebook piracy". There is some ebook piracy, but it won't be substantial until the masses want to read electronic texts.

Yes. So - they now (and only now) have the chance to establish the new market before the piracy settles in.
And - you can see this with the (now) working music market - people do go for "legal" markets - if they are fair, provide at least some service (not what Thalia and Co are doing now) and provide high quality to fair prices.
Whatever - I am NOT arguing against publishers, authors, musicians, etc owning money. I want to do the same...

Widespread piracy will come with ebook popularity, if it gets that far, just like it did with music.

Piracy came because there was no alternative - and it is declining since there is an alternative.

Every time a person downloads a book that is under copyright and is being sold, that's another sale the author and publisher don't get. You can't even make the argument, like you can for music, that people can try a part and buy the rest if they like it, because ebooks are continuous works. (And in fact, selling by the chapter is the method that Stephen King tried for "The Plant").

As I said - Stephen Kings experiment has not been large (I have not heard of it ...), it does not count (or do you count the horror market as the largest market available?)
And yes - I can make this argument. Or you could say that libraries are destroying the market - essentially they provide the same.

3) Publishers have learned from the music industry. That's why you see them protecting their intellectual property now, before it's too late.

No, they have NOT learned. Otherwise they wouldnt try to menace their customers before they even try to establish a market.
In Germany the ebook-market is a bad joke - its low quality, its nearly no service (to a point that I believe to be illegal), they are only supporting ONE format, etc - this is NOT learning from the music industry. This is redoing the same errors over and over again.

Remember: DRM was a response to piracy for the music industry (which should have learned the lesson well from the software industry, but didn't).

Yeah - as if DRM has ever helped in the software industry. Sorry, DRM was a bad idea - thats why they are leaving it in the music industry AND (for parts) in the software industry.
They might have started DRM as a response to piracy - but it was the wrong one. They once jumped for the wrong horse, and they continue betting on it.

It started with copy protection on CDs, and then moved to copy-protection on music store files, once the music industry realized that copy-protected CDs weren't going to sell. It was the rejection by consumers of DRM'd CDs that backed the music industry into a corner.

Yes - the rejection of DRM forced the industry to stop DRM. The very same will happen with the eBook-market (they just dont want to believe it).

If you can't sell a copy-protected CD, you can't prevent people from ripping to MP3, so you might as well give them a digital file.

As I said - it was piracy that forced them to start "file" shops...

that took the first step into the MP3 sales arena, and offered better quality sound (and certainly better tagging) than you could get for free.

YES - thats what I am trying to say.

but some vendor is going to have to be the first DRM-free vendor to really make a success of it, before things start moving in the DRM-free direction. That won't happen until ebook readers are more than a niche product, which they still are, at this point.

YES - thats what I meant by "they have learned not a single point". They are even asking the same lawyers to help them menace their customers.