Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Lauzon,
One has only to read these forums to see how many dishonest people there are around, who have no qualms about reading illegally-downloaded versions of "Harry Potter", for example. It is clear that DRM is critically important - without DRM these dishonest people will carry on illegally downloading books rather than buying them. Book publishers exist for one reason, and one reason alone - to make a profit; they are not charities. No DRM means no profit and hence no books.
Open formats are worthless - DRM is the only way to go if you want to see more commercially-published eBooks. I am astonished that you fail to see this self-evident truth! Long live DRM!
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Does piracy really cost us as much as publishers claim? Everyone is quick to pint out that there are pirated materials out there, but few question whether or not a pirate download is actually costing a publisher money. If the downloader would not have bought the book/cd/movie, then that download hasn't cost anyone a dime.
Piracy can even help publishers; I know of many people who have downloaded a pirated album, liked what they heard, and then went on to buy cd's by that musician. Same thing happens in a library- those cheapskates <G> read the CONTENT without paying for it!!!! Then many go out and buy other works by that author. So what's different in the library scenario?
I get so tired of hearing whining about piracy. M$ had a crappy windowed OS with nowhere near market share- until this OS was pirated in great numbers and put the company on top of market share. Piracy is out there- deal with it. And realize that sometimes, it may help sales, and that the risk of having your material pirated is greatly reduced if it is reasonably priced. And also that every pirated download does NOT mean a lost sale- the sale is only lost if a customer that would otherwise have BOUGHT your product does not buy.