Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Books are actually quite easy to digitize. Scanner technology has really improved. The thing to keep in mind is that it only takes one person to digitize something to make it available for everyone.
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I still can't agree with that. I don't know anyone who has scanned an entire book but I know quite a few people who have "ripped" music.
I'm not familiar with scanning a book using new technology but I just assume it takes longer to do than music and that it takes special equipment and might be filled with errors.
Ripping a song off a CD can be done with just about any computer out there today, it's fast and produces a pretty good copy.
Just a guess, but I believe a lot of the people who put the music illegally out there for free are student aged folks. A lot of kids rip and share their music making it widely available. I doubt the same is for books. Don't hear many kids or even adults talking about scanning books to share.
In terms of books, it's probably more difficult to find illegal copies of books that are not best sellers or technical guides. For music, you can find a lot of songs even though they aren't main stream.
I'm not sure DRM will go away as the market grows. Look at DVD's. The market is pretty large for those and DVD movies still have DRM. However, the DRM for movies is less restrictive and doesn't cause many problems for the consumer. For example, you can watch your DVD on any DVD player that supports that region. That includes DVD's in computers and game consoles so the DRM isn't so noticeable.
In my opinion, the DRM on ebooks are pretty crazy and I'm surprised that more people aren't upset by it. What drives me crazy is the number of different DRM's out there for the same format. For example, I think Barns and Nobles uses their own DRM on Epub's versus Adept Epub versus whatever Apple uses for their Epubs.
1 DRM scheme with 1 standardized format I can live with. 3 different DRM's on one format makes me want to abandon ebooks.