Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Which other electronic media distribution industry can you name that has found a DRM method that satisfies both customer and producer?
The only comparable industry it seems to me is the music industry. Which after trying innumerable DRM schemes has finally decided that no DRM is best.
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DVD DRM satisfies producers and customers. We can take a DVD with DRM and put it in any DVD player (as long as it matches the region) and it will play fine.
The problem with eBooks is the tower of eBable and that causes issues because of the DRM. Let's say there is an eBook you want at a price you are willing to pay. But it turns out the shop that has the eBook only has the ePub and the other shops charge more for the Mobipocket format you need. That does you no good unless you can strip the DRM and convert. But with a DVD, If I find a movie I want to buy, I can look around at any shop that sells this movie because I know if I buy it it will work with my DVD player. If we standardized on ONE eBook format (ePub and not PDF) then we'd be good to go., We could shop around and it would cost the publishers even less as they'd only have one format/DRM to deal with. And we (the consumers) would win as any copies we'd find would work so we can go price comparison very easily.
Another example is one of the recent Star Trek eBooks. BooksOnBoard & Fictionwise both only had it in eReader format. I managed to find it at CyberRead in Mobipocket. This was on the day of release. I think BOB may have it in ePub now. But even if a new format is forthcoming and the customer doesn't know this then the customer is going to shop elsewhere. So we need just ONE format and then DRm will work as well as it does for DVDs.