Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That's a very nice idea in theory, but if the "only pay if you liked it" business model actually worked as well as the "pay in advance" model, don't you think we'd have cinemas where you made a donation on leaving if you liked the film, or supermarkets where you only gave whatever you felt that the food was worth?
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Well, it was only one example of technology adapting to human nature, allowing donation at the moment of maximal enjoyment for the reader. I didn't mean it as the only way to buy the book, personally I think I'd donate more than once on the same book, different readings, if I had the button to click available and the amount of money on my Paypal account shown at the right moment.
My point is, people are lazy, and love instant gratification, and there aren't many of those who prefer to hunt for all freebies on the darknet to going to the webstore and buying the book - those "pirates" are like Linux tinkerers, sure they can hoard/do much but that costs time, there's so few of them and not many others like that way of life. The more convenient buying and donating will be, the more people will choose that before resorting to darknet (or even hearing of it). Writers, editors and publishers have much more to gain by solving the problem of non-existent backlist, georgraphical restrictions and device/format incompatibility than they'll gain by battling piracy (especially if they choose to do it through DRM, then they'll just shoot themselves in the foot).
I believe this practical vision of the future stays valid, no matter whether piracy/sharing is seen as criminal acts or as just reactions of people to copyright owners chipping away at their cultural heritage.
EDIT: On the other hand if publishers take their sweet time concentrating on DRM, people might eventually make darknet convenient enough to deliver any title on one click, through a P2P network of distributed nodes with secure connection. Something like freenet. I'd prefer seeing publishers make it convenient first though, after all they're getting paid.