How Mobipocket DRM can drive away customers

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Wow. I had the same Windows crash/reinstall thing happen to me -- one quick call to the ConnStore support line and the old one was removed. Five minutes, no fuss, no muss.

When we had my wife's account deleted by Sony, they somehow left her computer activated. So what I did was call Sony and they sorted it out right away. Easy.

[RalphTrickey]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

igorsk,

Exactly. Because if it weren't vendor lock-in, then any ebook I legally purchased would be readable across all platforms, no matter which vendor got my money.

Derek

Think about that paragraph, that makes no sense. You're linking two unrelated things.

DRM is mean to prevent caual piracy. It's meant to keep me from handing out copies to all my friends. It's unlikely to ever prevent copying by the hackers. The fact that it locks you into a vendor harms the industry if anything. I'm not willing to buy anything that's doesn't have a breakable DRM because I will read my books again years later. I'm not willing to buy them again if the vendor went out of business.

DRM isn't going to lock you into a vendor, the authors that they have signed are going to lock you in.

There are a bunch of DRM vendors because it's profitable if you can become the market leader, and because creating a DRM solution that will prevent 99% of the people from cracking it is an easy problem to solve.users.

Ralph

[VillageReader]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I disagree, Nate. If nobody stole eBooks, there would be no reason for publishers to use DRM. It is the criminals who make publishers believe that DRM is necessary.

Yeah, and if more people used the library they wouldn't sell as many either. DRM relates more to the fear of lost sales than a proven reality.

[delphidb96]

Ralph,

Ummm... That's a stupid paragraph??? For two reasons. First, putting in DRM is *MORE* likely to make average readers opt into finding/acquiring 'hacked' ebooks. Second, the more complex the DRM, the more it locks the average reader into one hardware platform, the more likely a reader is going to say "NO" to authors who insist upon using that vendor. Case in point: Embiid. Now Embiid worked great on the Windows PC platform, and not nearly so great on the PalmOS platform and NOT AT ALL on Windows Mobile, Linux or Mac platforms. You might note that Embiid is no longer in business and at least one set of authors, Steve Miller and Sharon Lee - who write wonderful stories about Liad and the Korval clan - now offer many of their books - in ebook format - through Baen's Webscriptions -- *SANS* DRM!

Derek

Originally Posted by RalphTrickey

Think about that paragraph, that makes no sense. You're linking two unrelated things.

DRM is mean to prevent caual piracy. It's meant to keep me from handing out copies to all my friends. It's unlikely to ever prevent copying by the hackers. The fact that it locks you into a vendor harms the industry if anything. I'm not willing to buy anything that's doesn't have a breakable DRM because I will read my books again years later. I'm not willing to buy them again if the vendor went out of business.

DRM isn't going to lock you into a vendor, the authors that they have signed are going to lock you in.

There are a bunch of DRM vendors because it's profitable if you can become the market leader, and because creating a DRM solution that will prevent 99% of the people from cracking it is an easy problem to solve.users.

Ralph

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by RalphTrickey

DRM is mean to prevent caual piracy. It's meant to keep me from handing out copies to all my friends. It's unlikely to ever prevent copying by the hackers. The fact that it locks you into a vendor harms the industry if anything.

It might harm industry as a whole, but it benefits the vendor (in short-term), since the users are stuck with the vendor's software/hardware if they want to access their content.