Digital Vs. Physical Goods

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I must be talking to the wall...

[Catlady]

I keep thinking of a line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "If he'd just pay me what he's spending to make me stop robbing him, I'd stop robbing him."

If the publishers wasted less time and effort on elaborate schemes to prevent piracy, and instead used their resources to provide well-produced e-books at reasonable prices, the problem of piracy would largely go away.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I keep thinking of a line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "If he'd just pay me what he's spending to make me stop robbing him, I'd stop robbing him."

Seems to be what a lot of ebook buyers want...

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Catlady

If the publishers wasted less time and effort on elaborate schemes to prevent piracy, and instead used their resources to provide well-produced e-books at reasonable prices, the problem of piracy would largely go away.

Unfortunately, the evidence does not support your belief.

Specifically, digital music has been available in DRM-free formats from at least 3 retailers (Amazon, Apple, eMusic) for about a year in the US -- much longer for eMusic by the way -- and I have yet to hear of any reductions or fall-offs in music piracy rates.

Similarly, Radiohead offered a new album in a DRM-free, pay-what-you-want (including "free") means, and people still distributed and downloaded the album via P2P sites rather than go to the band's website.

This is not to say that removing DRM offers no benefits or no effects on sales, rather that it just doesn't seem to affect piracy rates.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Unfortunately, the evidence does not support your belief.

Specifically, digital music has been available in DRM-free formats from at least 3 retailers (Amazon, Apple, eMusic) for about a year in the US -- much longer for eMusic by the way -- and I have yet to hear of any reductions or fall-offs in music piracy rates.

The problem of piracy is not "how much of it exists." The problem is "how much it cuts into artists' & associates' profits."

There's no evidence that providing DRM-free, reasonably-priced (i.e. customers think it's reasonable) digital products do worse than the locked versions. Nor that having cheap, DRM-free digital versions cuts into physical sales.

The "problem" of piracy may well be fixed by having cheap, accessible digital versions. It may not cut into the amount of piracy, but the problem is not "how many people are copying this file," but "how many people who would pay, aren't paying right now."

[Penforhire]

I'm as much against DRM as any consumer who has ever been burned by it. But I don't see it going away any time soon. The alternative is just that much worse to content providers, with rare exception. I see a DRM arms-escalation continuing into our near future.

Perhaps the time will come when your content is no longer "yours" and, in the cloud, it is continually scanned to autheticate your right to access it under whatever identity structure is current (say passwords for you biometric Luddites, lol). Some form of that cloud-future is coming down the pipe. We can and will fight it but I expect us to lose. The benefits to content producers are too great. Not just authentication control but also revision control. Change the central file or program and it gets rolled out instantly and effortlessly because we're all using essentially "dumb" terminals, requiring a constant internet connection. Those require minimal local storage and processing power.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I see a DRM arms-escalation continuing into our near future.

If the publishers change things enough that I can't remove the DRM any more, I jut won't buy any more DRMed ebooks.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

If the publishers change things enough that I can't remove the DRM any more, I jut won't buy any more DRMed ebooks.

The only way they can make it impossible to bypass the DRM is to also make it impossible for the legitimate customer to access the content (it's really the same thing). That'll never happen, because buying such a product would be pointless. It's the fundamental flaw in DRM that makes the whole thing nonsense.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by penforhire

Perhaps the time will come when your content is no longer "yours" and, in the cloud, it is continually scanned to autheticate your right to access it under whatever identity structure is current (say passwords for you biometric Luddites, lol). Some form of that cloud-future is coming down the pipe. We can and will fight it but I expect us to lose. The benefits to content producers are too great. Not just authentication control but also revision control. Change the central file or program and it gets rolled out instantly and effortlessly because we're all using essentially "dumb" terminals, requiring a constant internet connection. Those require minimal local storage and processing power.

If it comes to this kind of DRM-on-everything, I will simply stop buying things and turn into a crotchety old man. I'll either go without, or pirate the stuff if I get desperate enough. Because buying with DRM isn't "buying". It's renting. And I'm not paying purchase price for a rental.

I avoid DRM at all costs. If I can buy something without it, I do. I'm passing on the sequel to my favorite game in almost a decade, Dragon Age II, due to the excessive call-home-to-EA or Steam DRM. I did the same thing with Civilization V and its Steam DRM. In comparison, I bought Civ4 on release, and each expansion. I bought the first Dragon Age on release also. So they lost my $50 for each game. I refuse to buy a game that requires calling to a remote server to approve me playing it. It's ridiculous. I'm being treated as a criminal for buying it legit.

I refuse to buy any DRM'd videos, or music, or books that requires authentication of any sort beyond the physical product itself. I rarely bend this if the money savings is substantial or time is critical (bought a few ebooks for class). I will buy DRM'd content only at very low rental-type prices - sub $10 for games, sub $2 or so for ebooks.

To me, a physical book is a superior product to a DRM'd ebook. No DRM to annoy me, no loaning restrictions, no device restrictions, I can resell it, no worrying about technological change if I want to read it 20 years from now.

[Namekuseijin]

you know what? It's a different culture we're seeing rising. It's a culture where everyone feel they are entitled to their share of happiness and content-free consuming -- aside from authors, of course. People already pay for their power, internet access, cable TV and phone bills and just want to be amused with cheap free content. Perhaps including a "content" tax into this mix would make digital consumption more bearable to authors?

I wonder how something akin to radio never came into being for other media. I mean, you can literally listen to "free" music in its entirety, but you can't do so with books, or games -- for movies there's TV, but even then it's interspeced with other content. Why is it so? You would be able to turn on your multimedia "radio" and either listen to music, watch movies, read comics and books, play games... all for the duration of the program, lest you purchase it right there.

Many possibilities, the only one which doesn't work is trying to impose artificial limitations to technology made with the precise goal of making it possible to have cheap copying and distribution literally for free. That's not progress.

[Penforhire]

Namekuseijin, something akin to radio is alive and well in other media. A very amusing example is a recent lawsuit against Redtube (a 'free' porn site) by some traditional producers. The judge in the case actually cited radio as part of why he ruled Redtube was doing nothing wrong (getting paid by advertising, not directly by consumers).

Most of Google's 'free' services are paid for, indirectly, in the same way.

Perhaps someone will come out with 'free' e-books that include an advertising banner on the page. Not sure I'd like that consumption of my limited screen space to pay for my reading but it is conceivable.

[Piper_]

Putting ads in books is a distinct possibility, I think. The idea has been bandied about, and a few months ago, there was even a report about Amazon sketching out a way to implement them.

The idea meets with a lot of resistance from users, and they're not foolproof, as, unlike radio or live TV, they'd be as easy to skip as TV ads are in DVR/Tivo, or even to remove completely if drm is stripped.

Personally, while I'd prefer to avoid them, a few static ads wouldn't bother me as much as most other ideas do. (e.g., anything that requires a connection to the cloud or personal identifiers I couldn't give to a friend or family member would be a deal-breaker.)

[Anke Wehner]

Putting ads in print books has been done. Terry Pratchett switched publishers here in Germany because the first one who'd picked up his books put an ad for soup in the middle of the text. If it came to that, I'd prefer banners/boxes where you can tell an ad is coming, as opposed to something that looks like a continuation of the text until the content hits.

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Perhaps the time will come when your content is no longer "yours" and, in the cloud, it is continually scanned to autheticate your right to access it under whatever identity structure is current (say passwords for you biometric Luddites, lol). Some form of that cloud-future is coming down the pipe. We can and will fight it but I expect us to lose. The benefits to content producers are too great. Not just authentication control but also revision control. Change the central file or program and it gets rolled out instantly.

a whole new meaning for "rewriting history"

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

I mean, you can literally listen to "free" music in its entirety, but you can't do so with books, or games -- for movies there's TV, but even then it's interspeced with other content. Why is it so?

It's right that you put "free" in quotes, because of course, the content is definitely not free... advertisers pay for it.

So people have a choice: They can pay for content themselves; or they can let others pay for the content, under the condition that they accept advertisement.

Those who want something that no one at all will pay for... will be waiting an awful long time, and be disappointed at what they get.