[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

"Fundamentally," we are still reading. But beyond that, there are essential differences between printed and electronic books that can't be denied or ignored. Trying to treat e-books like printed books only holds e-books back (which, as it happens, is exactly what had happened to e-books for the past 20 years).

Of course there are differences. It's easier to share digital than it is a physical product. If we had no DRM it would be far more convenient for us as social creatures to spread that cultural knowledge around. We're (the readers) not the ones who are denying or ignoring the change from one format to the other. It is the publishers who are placing artificial restrictions upon the end product, if they even deem it necessary to make that product available in the first place. If you must use the horse / car analogy; ebooks as they stand are like Porsche 911 turbos with the engines stripped out and pulled by a horse. But they don't have to be.

No... it's about what everybody wants. Without readers, publishers have no market. Without publishers, readers have no (well, a lot less) content. If no middle ground is discovered, both sides will lose.

DRM is not a middle ground, it favours only the publisher, and even then it does not favour the publisher because it does not work. It never has worked, and never will work. The publishers risk losing 'everything' and that is no exaggeration, to writers who are savvy enough to understand that offering products without DRM and treating their readers with some dignity and trust is the only way to behave.

Other industries have ably demonstrated that DRM can be part of a middle ground solution. Only in e-books have customers remained mule-stubborn in accepting those solutions, and as a result, e-books are presently behind every other electronic media product. Even the music industry found a way to work DRM into their system, long enough to gain and train their customers into being regular revenue streams... after which they could begin to remove DRM and go to the next step.

This is so rife with wrong I don't know where to begin. Okay, let's start with iTunes (whose Fairplay DRM is by and far the easiest to crack) who never wanted the damn DRM in the first place and only instituted it to get the companies on board. They dumped that crap as soon as they could and gained a lot more sales in the process. It's a hassle for them, for their customers, and for the companies in the long run to use DRM. It costs money to run, it doesn't improve sales, its easily cracked and...it plainly doesn't work, and never has. Amazon had no middle ground offering, they went DRM free from the get go when they launched in 2007 because they saw the mistakes that had been made in the past, as does any other sane thinking person running a business. Again, DRM does not work, its been proven that it doesn't work, I don't see how that's going to magically differ when its applied to ebooks, or if it remains on books. The book publisher are making exactly the same mistakes the music companies did at the beginning.

Should this even be an argument in the year 2009 when we have all the facts at our fingertips from 10 years of pointless battles with the music industry?

DRM gives on a false sense of security. It is easily cracked and removed. It's costly to maintain. It adds nothing to the paying customer's experience, in fact it only hinders their fair use of the product they buy. DRM is nothing to hackers/pirates and those who would wish to take your product for free and re-distribute. Offering products without DRM is seen as good and will generate more profits.

And even after all that, isn't the simplest rule of all the best to go by? Why make something more complicated than it has to be?