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Hamlet53 · 04-11-2010, 10:11 AM

I don't see DRM going away anytime soon because it is a different sort of animal than in the past. There was never a Universal DVD player made to play DVDs released by Universal and restricted to playing on the Universal VD player. One of the principal objectives of the current DRM for e-books is to restrict the e-book use to the e-book viewers made by the company selling the e-book. I believe the only reason Amazon, Sony, and Barnes & Noble (to cite the principal players) have any interest in e-books at all is to promote sales of their e-book devices.

That is why I am so down on the whole e-book pirating. If people could be trusted to just pay for the content that they are getting this justification [preventing pirating] for DRM would vanish. Authors would lose any incentive for supporting DRM and actually have an incentive to oppose a DRM scheme that hampers sale of their books through restriction to only certain e-reader devices.

So DRM is not going away soon which leaves me the e-book consumer with limited choices for books not in the public domain. Public domain books can be had without DRM several places, including here. In fact from this site I have already replaced the 100 'free' titles that came with the Sony PRS-505, my first e-reader purchase. It freed me from the ever so slight twinge of guilt for stripping the DRM from those books and in all cases provided better versions anyway. When not in the public domain my options in order of preference are: buy the e-book from Sony if available, buy it from another source and do what is necessary to make it readable on my Sony Daily Edition, or all to often discover that the book is not available as an e-book.

I consider it a real paradox in current law, in the U.S. At least, that I am committing a greater crime in buying an e-book form Amazon and removing the DRM to allow conversion to an EPUB viewable on my reader than I would be going to the 'darknet' and downloading a free copy; and action that deprives the book author and book publisher of their rightful income.

“if the law supposes that then the law is an ass.”

04-11-2010, 10:11 AM	#35
Hamlet53 Nameless Being	I don't see DRM going away anytime soon because it is a different sort of animal than in the past. There was never a Universal DVD player made to play DVDs released by Universal and restricted to playing on the Universal VD player. One of the principal objectives of the current DRM for e-books is to restrict the e-book use to the e-book viewers made by the company selling the e-book. I believe the only reason Amazon, Sony, and Barnes & Noble (to cite the principal players) have any interest in e-books at all is to promote sales of their e-book devices. That is why I am so down on the whole e-book pirating. If people could be trusted to just pay for the content that they are getting this justification [preventing pirating] for DRM would vanish. Authors would lose any incentive for supporting DRM and actually have an incentive to oppose a DRM scheme that hampers sale of their books through restriction to only certain e-reader devices. So DRM is not going away soon which leaves me the e-book consumer with limited choices for books not in the public domain. Public domain books can be had without DRM several places, including here. In fact from this site I have already replaced the 100 'free' titles that came with the Sony PRS-505, my first e-reader purchase. It freed me from the ever so slight twinge of guilt for stripping the DRM from those books and in all cases provided better versions anyway. When not in the public domain my options in order of preference are: buy the e-book from Sony if available, buy it from another source and do what is necessary to make it readable on my Sony Daily Edition, or all to often discover that the book is not available as an e-book. I consider it a real paradox in current law, in the U.S. At least, that I am committing a greater crime in buying an e-book form Amazon and removing the DRM to allow conversion to an EPUB viewable on my reader than I would be going to the 'darknet' and downloading a free copy; and action that deprives the book author and book publisher of their rightful income. “if the law supposes that then the law is an ass.”