Quote:
Originally Posted by Hamlet53
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.
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I doubt it.
You properly described the characteristics of DRM protected ebooks in your post: they are goods unlike anything that we have seen so far. They are tied to one particular device (hence cumbersome to share even with someone from your household), they are time constrained (that device will eventually go to garbage dump), the "ownership" of copy is not tied to permanent information carrier like paper, no second-hand sales...
IMHO, the prevention of piracy is very low on the list of reasons for existence of encryption. And if it goes through, if the market swallows that new and transformed type of goods where everybody pays for the encrypted content, DRM will stay with us forever.
No, it is only the lack of success, if sales are affected by the publisher's insistence on DRM, that can force publishers to give up on encryption.