Quote:
Originally Posted by fugazied
Corporations who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat the failures of the past.
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Someone actually read the article!
This isn't about what is right, it isn't about what is moral, it isn't about what is profitable, it's about what is real. The easy availability of music, ebooks, and video from the pirate market is not subject to debate. It is a constant, not a variable. It's there. It's always going to be there unless you want a society that makes 1984 look libertarian.
What the article concerns itself with is that most readers, viewers, listeners, etc have no problem with paying for material. We just want it to be reasonable and given the constant that piracy will exist, if publishers don't offer it on reasonable terms, the market will push people to simply pirate it.
What do consumers want?
Universal availability--ie, we want everything to be available and are not going to accept that some things aren't available in digital format--Harry Potter may very well be the 'gateway drug' to ebook piracy.
Reasonable pricing--People expect an electronic version to be cheaper than something that involves a physical object and supply chain to produce and distribute it. That is perfectly reasonable. And geezus on a popsicle stick, it can't be more expensive than the physical item. You can't tell me I have to pay $9.99 for a book that is available for $6.95 in mass market paper then tell me I'm getting a bargain because the hardcover is $25.
An understanding that we aren't going to have to buy something repeatedly or go through a huge honking deal if we switch devices. That is sort of a DRM question, but sort of not at the same time. People don't care about DRM, they don't know about DRM. What they care about is not having to buy a new book when they get a new reader. If the industry settled on one form of file and drm that would work as well, but it hasn't happened. (That might very well be the issue upon which the "information wants to be free" and consumer markets part on. Consumers don't care about DRM as a rights or technology issue, they care about portability and ease of use--make it invisible and they won't care.)