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Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
I agree that the ebook business is still pretty small, but do you think that it would necessarily be stopped if it made an impact on corporate copyright holders? Corporate copyright holders haven't got their own way as far as music is concerned. They continue to make attempts to stop piracy, but I'm not cinvinced that they can succeed.
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It depends what you mean by succeed. If you mean music copyright holders haven't managed to stop the unauthorized copying and distribution of the material they hold rights to, then they haven't succeeded. But if you mean, are those copyright holders making money out of digital content and its distribution, then I reckon they are very successful. As for their attempts to stop piracy - yeah, I guess it would be nice and they have to make a show of trying, because not to make such a show is effectively to condone it, and how do you hang on to all those people who are willing to pay £7.99 for an album if you don't condemn those who get it for nothing. But really, what you are calling piracy is pretty irrelevant in its real effect on their business.
The same I suspect will be true of electronically distributed books. Once the publishers develop a business model that focuses on those who are willing to buy and the fuss about those who are willing to get the stuff from elsewhere dies down, publishers will start making money off it.
In the retail industry they call it wastage, (well, it's not even that in the case of electronic goods), they put a security guard on the door and a tag on anything worth over fifty quid. It reduces it a bit but no retailer has a serious strategy to achieve zero wastage. It's just not that important - apart from to those who think it signals the end of civilization as we know it - but retailers have got better things to do, selling stuff to people who want to buy it.