Thread: ebook survey
View Single Post
Old 08-01-2009, 11:21 AM   #17
anappo
Enthusiast
anappo doesn't litteranappo doesn't litteranappo doesn't litter
 
anappo's Avatar
 
Posts: 47
Karma: 247
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Device: Cybook Gen3
> The media is not available without DRM - 27.6%
> The media is not available in electronic format - 53.4%
> The price charged for electronic formats is too high - 25.9%
> Copyright law is immoral - 6.9%
> I need my money for other things - 5.2%
> A digital copy doesn't negatively affect the copyright holder - 5.2%

These are great numbers

So, by far the biggest justification for piracy is that the work simply fails to be on sale. Both "price is too high" and "DRM is evil" reasons are -half- of that (but still significant, affecting 1/4 of the sample). And the rest are all down there at about 1/10th of the "leader".

> I think the question as it stands is useful

Yes, of course. It shows how many people -would- download from darknet if given enough reason to do so.

> I also forgot to ask 'Is it OK to download a bootleg copy of a book
> for which you already own a paper copy?'.

A very good question - I've been pondering the same. To me the intuitive answer always was that it's ok. For years I actually used this as an ethical workaround - when something I wanted to read was unavailable, I would download a bootleg copy and then buy some other book from the same author (usually on paper) to fairly compensate.

This intuitive answer might no be entirely correct tho. It assumes that creator's share from e-book and p-book are the same. Which should -not- be the case.

> If they came up with a DRM that was impossible to remove,
> I would buy drastically fewer DRMed books.

Yes, that would be another good question for expanded survey - how many would still buy e-books if the DRM actually worked

All in all - very nice survey, thanks for doing this

Last edited by anappo; 08-01-2009 at 11:24 AM.
anappo is offline   Reply With Quote