Quote:
Originally Posted by Liviu_5
The tired comparison between drm and locks/bank vaults which is such a dear for anyone defending drm (heard it 3-4 times before at least, maybe more); leaving aside the insulting premise that anyone wanting drm-free books is equivalent to someone wanting free access to other people's house, money and so on, the bottom line is that drm in e-books has been soundly rejected by people voting with their wallets...
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Actually, had you bothered to read what I wrote instead of immediately repeating the same thing that I've already read hundreds and hundreds of times, you would have noticed that I didn't make such a comparison. I fully understand the conceptual difference between DRM/copy-protection and locks. I have for twenty years. I was involved in this subject back when it involved CP schemes for 5.25" floppies. We're actually on the same side of this particular issue, but you're so eager to pounce that you haven't noticed. Anyone who questions
anything is immediately shouted down as a pawn of the evil DRM conspiracy monster.
My statement had nothing to do with the comparison between DRM and locks, and everything to do with why publishers will never listen to the loudest voices in the anti-DRM crowd. Screaming unreasoned dogma at people never makes them listen. Assuming you know what they're thinking and responding to that, instead of to what they actually say, never makes them listen. Belittling people who are actually on your side because you don't understand what they wrote, never helps your cause.
Now, on to the bloody point.
It has been stated repeatedly that because DRM can not achieve its stated goal, that its
real purpose is something else. At least when rlauzon wrote it upthread it was in the form of "that's why we say that the real goal...." so it doesn't look like there's supposed to be some direct causal link between "can't achieve" and "real goal is". The problem is that even in this form, it still doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Almost nothing achieves its stated goal, especially if that goal is stated in terms of absolutes. To say that because X can't achieve its stated goal, it's real goal must be something else lends no weight to the argument against DRM, especially if the arguer gets to choose that something else. It also assumes knowledge of the goals of the person using "X" in the first place. Specifically relating to DRM, a publisher's goal might be anything from "to stop piracy" to "stop casual piracy" to "slow piracy down long enough to make a couple of sales" to "to make a statement that we don't want it pirated, even though some people will anyway."
That leads to the second problem. It assumes that a widely disparate industry is somehow a single-minded monolith. Publishers make the decision as to whether or not to sell e-books directly, sell them through a single DRM-laden distributor, sell through multiple distributors (each with or without DRM), or not to sell them at all. Authors who retain their e-rights have all those same decisions, as well as the additional choice of whether or not to go with a publisher whose e-book choices are known. E-book retailers also get to choose which e-books they're going to sell depending on the DRM-choices of the author, publisher, and distributor.
The only way it would make sense for "vendor lock-in" to be the real goal of DRM would be if a single entity were acting as publisher, DRM vendor, and e-book vendor. Right now, the closest thing to that would be Sony. They're not acting as publisher, but they are acting as a single source vendor for a particular DRMed format and the hardware that supports it.
MobiPocket is acting as a combination DRM vendor, distributor, and retailer. Vendor lock-in would be of value to them, if by "vendor" we mean "DRM vendor". They make a cut off of every DRM book sold through their retailer network or their Web site. However, they can't be too interested in vendor lock-in, or they would have negotiated
exclusive e-rights with the publishers, instead of allowing someone like Sony to negotiate their own deal in their own format. If an exclusive arrangement is too expensive, then the publishers can't be too interested in vendor lock-in, either, otherwise they would have made it affordable enough to achieve that goal.
Also, the term "vendor lock-in" becomes hopelessly muddled as soon as someone points out that you can buy DRMed MobiPocket books from a lot of sources and read them on a lot of hardware. It
means DRM-vendor in that case, but no one's going to take the time to dig down far enough to understand that's what is meant. They're just going to write argument off and walk away.