Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
Convenient access, well-formatted and proof-read content - and a fair price.
Alas, these things are all too rare with e-books, but experience with the music industry has shown that this model can work (OK, except for the DRM part!)
|
I'm pretty sure that pirated ebooks are exactly the same as their legal counterparts, except that they are stripped of any DRM restrictions. Where do you think they come from in the first place?
Someone downloads the book, fixes the DRM and makes it available on bittorrent etc.
The only way a publisher could avoid piracy is to only sell paper books, as scanning a book is usually too much work for a pirate.
That's why I don't understand the attitude of the publishers. They charge too much for the books (no printing or distribution costs) and then do silly things like DRM which makes the purchaser feel cheated.
I think the reason itunes has worked so well is that they have fixed prices to make the music easily affordable, and got rid of DRM.
Finding an illegal book (or music or video) takes probably five minutes and comes for free with no restrictions.
itunes makes the music even easier to find and download, and doesn't charge much for it, so it redresses the balance somewhat.
People generally follow the path of least resistance.
Publishers need to lower their prices to reflect the savings they make by not using printed media, and they also need to stop treating their customers with contempt by dispensing with DRM.
DRM doesn't affect people who download illegally, but it does make people who download legally bitter. Ask anyone who lost their entire (paid for) music collection...
Why punish the honest people?