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Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
That seems to be a very cynical view, and I hate to think it's the only reason publishers put DRM into their products. It casts the publishers as pure villains with ulterior motives beyond simply the protection of their products.
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What other reason would there be, except to keep the customer from using the product in any fashion other than that required by DRM, which is the effective elimination of the legal right to fair use? I'm unaware of any implementation of DRM that fully recognizes fair use. I'm not even sure that there could be one. The essence of DRM is anti-fair use.
I don't think that what the publishers are doing is protecting is their product. They are protecting their business model, and attempting to expand the zone of profitability by denying customers rights previously associated with their product.
The internet changes everything. Publishers are going to have to come up with a new business model for their new internet product. Attempting to sell the new product using old methods will work for a while, but eventually someone will figure out how the new business model should work, and everyone will have to move to it.
About the only thing I'm confident of is that the essence of the internet lies in digital copying. So any new business model is going to have to leverage off of copying, not restrict copying.
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However, even if this is true, I would still discourage piracy, not only because I believe it is a violation of ethics, but because the existence of piracy gives cover to publishers to continue to use DRM schemes.
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Yeah, but what we call "piracy: isn't going away. It existed before copyright laws, and will exist after the current ones are obsolete - what we call "piracy" is nothing other than copying. What turns it into piracy is our sense that the author/creator should control the financial benefits and artistic life of his book. From that perspective seems to me that often, publishers are the real pirates, because they take control of those things for a pittance. Just remember the sad tale of the two kids who came up with Superman. Perversely, copyright law screwed them.
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As I've previously stated, I see nothing unethical about removing DRM for personal use from books that have been legally purchased.
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Heck, it's not even illegal (in the US, at any rate.)
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Kudos to you for your well-thought out reply, however!
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Aw, shucks...
