DRM is necessary and good, stop complaining

[NatCh]

Putting on my Moderator's hat for just a moment: I'd like to chime in and express appreciation for the civil and respectful tone of this discussion, as someone noted early on: anywhere else this would be a flame-war, here, it's a substantive, courteous discussion.

This sort of discussion is the very Heart of MobileRead, and the tone you have all collectively taken is very much its Spirit. Thank you.

Moderator's hat off: carry on.

[JSWolf]

NatCh's moderator's hat has two beer cans and straws. On the front it says Moderate This.

[micomicon]

Originally Posted by JohnClif

Fairness can never become obsolete. What's fair is fair, regardless.

In an ideal, platonic world -- maybe. In the real world, the definition of concepts like fairness changes quite a bit depending on the society and context it is being used in. It was once thought "fair" to base an entire economy on slave labor.

It's not about power, it's about rights.

In the real world, power defines what rights you have. For an example of the consequences, look at this quote which has thus far gone unquestioned:

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

I don't feel like a terrorist when negotiating the hell that is current airport security.

[Penforhire]

One facet the pro-DRM group seems to gloss over is, it ONLY affects legal users. Pirates will always break the DRM, with enough interest they always have. So the key point is DRM is a hassle-factor only for those of us who buy the books anyway!

If you take away DRM AND price the material reasonably ($10 still feels high for a typical e-book) Joe Public will play by the rules and continue buying e-books. That is how authors will get paid.

You guys touched on it above, Microsoft made their fortunes on non-DRM'd software. It is only recently that they decided to crack down on unauthorized users. Same for Adobe and others. It seems like they forgot how they got to the monster successes of today. Are you saying Bill Gates is suffering financially today because of lack of DRM yesterday? I argue the exact opposite.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

One facet the pro-DRM group seems to gloss over is, it ONLY affects legal users. Pirates will always break the DRM, with enough interest they always have. So the key point is DRM is a hassle-factor only for those of us who buy the books anyway!

One needs to differentiate between the casual pirate and the serious professional criminal. The latter will indeed be unaffected by DRM, but there's a heck of a lot of casual piracy goes on - we must have all encountered that, or perhaps even participated in it; giving copies of CDs to our friends, etc. It's that which DRM prevents.

The true criminal - the person who uploads books to usenet or bittorrent sites - will only be stopped (IMHO) by a few "lock them up and throw away the key" type prosecutions.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

One needs to differentiate between the casual pirate and the serious professional criminal. The latter will indeed be unaffected by DRM, but there's a heck of a lot of casual piracy goes on - we must have all encountered that, or perhaps even participated in it; giving copies of CDs to our friends, etc. It's that which DRM prevents.

And the other kind of piracy we must prevent is when you lend the original to a friend. It must be stopped!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

And the other kind of piracy we must prevent is when you lend the original to a friend. It must be stopped!

As long as your friend has the same type of bookreader that you do, every device on the market (AFAIK) provides that capability.

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In a free-market economy, though, anyone has the right to offer their product for sale at any price that they wish. You certainly don't have any right, either legal or moral, to say "they're charging too much for it, so I'm going to steal it". That's no different whether the product is being sold by a millionaire or a pauper.

At the end of the day it's the market which will determine what a fair price is. If the price is too high, sales will be poor, and the seller will have to reduce their prices to remain competitive.

This analysis is too simplistic for the digital world. Standard economics theory can't explain digital mediums very well. Cost of production? May make sense when considering farm products or televisions or other material goods. But what about software and e-books? Cost of production remains the same whether 100 or 100 million copies are sold. Even cost of distribution remains almost unchanged if web distribution is employed.

Given these facts, I think market forces, and even theft and piracy, will act to drive the prices of digital goods way down. I think we'll see all but some specialized software become extremely cheap or free, and digital entertainment media prices will plummet. The companies that DRM stuff are acting against market forces, and will fail. Watch Amazon- watch the Kindle crash and burn. It's been done before- the mass of consumers didn't care then and didn't buy into the scheme, and they won't now either.

I like e-books, and have several readers, but- say I want to read a book, and either the library doesn't have it or I want to own a copy. Well, hardcover price is $24. Would I buy the e-edition, DRM-locked to a particular device, for $19.99? No way, probably not for 9.99. But remove that DRM and make it available for most formats, and I probably would.....

[slayda]

Interestingly enough, many if not most of the books found on bit-torrent site do not originate from ebooks whose DRM has been broken but from scanned and OCRed pbooks.

So the bottom line for the DRM huggers is how does DRMing an ebook prevent pbook scanning and OCRing?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

NatCh's moderator's hat has two beer cans and straws. On the front it says Moderate This.

You're close, I've been a Mr. Pibb man most of my life.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by mores

*gulp* dude, what kind of money do you spend on ebooks ?
mobipocket has been around since 2000, so that means you've purchased about 285,7 books per year. average price of an ebook is something around 10 bucks, so you spend 2857 bucks a year just on mobipocket books ? that's 238 dollars A MONTH!

i think i want your job if you can afford that, AND have enough time to read 238 dollars worth of books

Naw... Actually you *don't* want a job! You want to go 'medically disabled' and get enough of a settlement to pay for all those books!!! (Seriously, if it weren't for the settlement that allowed me to buy the ebooks, I'd go start raving *BONKERS*!!!) And I'm working very hard to get back to the point where I *can* work!

But until I do get back to health and work, I need every ebook I can lay my hands on. And there's no way I'm going to pay extra - per ebook - to convert my extensive library to run on the Kindle. Like I said, give or sell me an inexpensive, standalone program I can run on my own PC and I'll gladly shell out for a Kindle.

However, this pay-per-conversion clearly is Yet Another Way To Milk Excess Profits From Unsuspecting Readers! Bad Amazon! Bad! Bad!

Derek

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

I like e-books, and have several readers, but- say I want to read a book, and either the library doesn't have it or I want to own a copy. Well, hardcover price is $24. Would I buy the e-edition, DRM-locked to a particular device, for $19.99? No way, probably not for 9.99. But remove that DRM and make it available for most formats, and I probably would.....

I don't think you're taking into account the fact that most of the cost of producing a book is still present for an eBook. All the work done by the publisher - copy editing, the publicity and marketing, etc - is still present whether the book is printed on paper or distributed electronically. The reason the HB costs $24 is because most publishers rely on the HB print run to recoup their costs - the MMPB is where the profit lies. If the publisher didn't have that pretty much guaranteed pay-back of costs from the HB, they wouldn't publish the book in the first place.

[micomicon]

Serious criminals are undeterred by DRM. It does zilch to protect digital property from this crowd.

People who engage in "casual piracy" do so unwittingly (most probably don't know what they are doing is illegal). It is the most natural thing in the world for someone to lend their friend a CD or a book.

This also happens to be the base of paying customers, folks that publishers and authors should try to avoid alienating. DRM is extremely alienating. Have you read the posts on Sony Reader reviews around the web by confused nontechies asking "why can't I read Kindle books on my Reader?" This is very frustrating to these people, it seems to have no logic at all. We can't expect them to "get" it -- frankly it is totally unnatural.

What publishers and device makers can do to protect themselves from "casual piracy" is to make it less convenient for people to forward stuff than it is for them to go to points of purchase. An example: it'd be silly to have a button in the Sony Connect software that allows the user to forward a book to friend. But it'd be really cool for there to be a button to send your friend a link to the book so she can buy it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by micomicon

People who engage in "casual piracy" do so unwittingly (most probably don't know what they are doing is illegal). It is the most natural thing in the world for someone to lend their friend a CD or a book.

That, of course, isn't illegal with paper books and physical CDs. The problem with digital media is that one "lends" the friend a copy while retaining the original. Perhaps the answer to that would be a DRM mechanism which permits the copy of the book to be read on the unlicenced device, but auto-expires after 24h, or something like that?

[mores]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Naw... Actually you *don't* want a job! You want to go 'medically disabled' and get enough of a settlement to pay for all those books!!! (Seriously, if it weren't for the settlement that allowed me to buy the ebooks, I'd go start raving *BONKERS*!!!) And I'm working very hard to get back to the point where I *can* work!

i'm sorry derek, i didn't know about your situation and apologize if i offended you in any way.
i actually thought you were exaggerating, but even with some "lee-way" you seem to buy A LOT of books, and i applaud your honesty.
because i have read the occasional eBook with OCR mistakes when the credit card was maxed-out again.
anyhow, i'm sorry if i put my foot in it, and i hope you get well soon!