Defective by Design is targeting the Kindle

[astra]

Originally Posted by JohnClif

We have DRM for music because millions of people were illegally transferring unprotected music (from CDs) via Napster, etc.

So, you are saying that people do not (or at the very least the traffic was reduced) transferring unprotected music (from CDs) via Napster, etc since implementation of DRM?

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by JohnClif

In short, all of the whining about DRM ignores one crucial factor that will make or break digital publishing of ebooks: without DRM there is no incentive for the publishing industry to migrate to ebooks. We have DRM for music because millions of people were illegally transferring unprotected music (from CDs) via Napster, etc.

Instead of wanting to completely eliminate DRM, what we should want is the ability to have the same rights we have with a physical book... the right to give or sell the book, or read a single copy on any device, while protecting the publisher's right to receiving compensation for each copy that a different user can simultaneously use. I think Amazon's model is the only model that can support these features.

With DRM there is no incentive for publishers to migrate to ebooks because sales results are so poor. DRM music is dying if not dead; here is the latest headline about the granddaddy of drm support Sony-BMG:

The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues

Link:

http://businessweek.com/technology/c...eek+exclusives


Instead of accepting crippling restrictions on e-books we should fight for drm-free e-books (and actually as it happens people do so by voting with their money and refusing to buy that many crippled e-books).

Again, and again, and again, when paper books allow you to read them pretty much anywhere and everywhere why should we accept no less from e-books?? I know that I do not, and I am sticking with drm-free e-books, convertible drm-books and paper books only.

There is no reason to accept something bad just for the sake of getting the ball rolling.

Personally I think that since the publishing industry is doing well, the incentives for them doing e-books are minimal right now, until some external pressure will come.

[astra]

As I said before, DRM doesn't curb piracy. It only increases it.

LIT format is almost DRMless format, because it is so easy to remove DRM. So, one would expect to find a whole range of professionally created books that you can buy in LIT format on the darknet (it is DRM's purpose, right? to stop people buying 1 file then upload it to the darknet allowing millions to download the file for free). However, you do not find them on the darknet. What you do find on the darknet is either books that you cannot buy as ebooks or books that were not published in lit format (thus were published in DRMed formats, that are being hated by customers).

So, what is a purpose to put DRM on ebooks if it doesn't make any difference? Removing DRM protection would make no difference in the very least. Although, I am quite positive it would only increase the sales.

[JohnClif]

I don't believe DRM increases or encourages piracy (unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content to non-purchasers).

I believe the problem with DRM is that it breaks the conventional model of buying books and music that consumers have built up over time. If a DRM scheme existed that had no drawbacks for consumers, they wouldn't care.

So, the onus is on the seller to come up with a DRM scheme that has no drawbacks for consumers, yet protects the rights of the seller.

I think Amazon has it figured out when it comes to the Kindle. Amazon obviously maintains a list of what you've bought, so even if Kindle v2 is totally incompatible, from a file format point of view, with the existing Kindle, they can easily authorize you to download to your new device.

Amazon's technical model also supports working with other ereader manufacturers to register ereader devices for users, so as to allow for other formats, e.g., DRM MOBI, and even DRM music devices (although the DRM scheme would have to change slightly, as DRM MOBI is slightly morphed to become AZW). Question is, does their business model? (It should.)

Maybe what the industry needs is a 'DRM clearing house' that can help to associate purchasers with their purchases, so rights can be transferred and so that consumers aren't at the mercy of any one seller in terms of losing access if that seller goes out of business.

[astra]

Originally Posted by JohnClif

I think Amazon has it figured out when it comes to the Kindle. Amazon obviously maintains a list of what you've bought, so even if Kindle v2 is totally incompatible, from a file format point of view, with the existing Kindle, they can easily authorize you to download to your new device.

Uhm...what if you buy a reader of a different brand? or amazon looses its interest in Kindle all together? What are you going with all the AWZ DRMed books you have bought???

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by JohnClif

Maybe what the industry needs is a 'DRM clearing house' that can help to associate purchasers with their purchases, so rights can be transferred and so that consumers aren't at the mercy of any one seller in terms of losing access if that seller goes out of business.

The DRM clearing house ain't going to happen for the same reason no proprietary device will read more than a drm format. DRM is about control first and foremost and only.

And anyway this discussion is sort of moot since drm is on its way to the dustbin of history, at least outside very definite small niche markets like libraries

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

The DRM clearing house ain't going to happen for the same reason no proprietary device will read more than a drm format. DRM is about control first and foremost and only.

And anyway this discussion is sort of moot since drm is on its way to the dustbin of history, at least outside very definite small niche markets like libraries

And what evidence do you have that this is true?

Dale

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

And what evidence do you have that this is true?

Dale

Look at the music industry and see why they are chucking out drm. The main reason is not because they want to, but because Apple drm was used so masterfully to lock people to iPods by S. Jobs on the one hand (that's the control part) and p2p downloading of mp3's on the other hand (that's the fact that drm protects nothing)

Look at commercial e-books that are so insignificant part of most publishers business, and quite clearly a very insignificant part of the business pie in general, while any popular book or with a cult following is easily available on the darknet depsite drm or even lack of legal e-book (again drm protects nothing). Or how despite all the big hoopla with the latest epub thingy, the big guys like Amazon/Mobi and Microsoft/Lit are staying away and even Sony and Adobe are not doing that much (that's the control part - if the fact that Amazon came with azw for Kindle when they could have used Mobipocket which is technically identical but not drm-wise does not show clearly that drm is about control I do not think what will convince you - or do you seriously believe that this year or next year Amazon will say, yo Adobe, you are the king of e-books and we will chuck out azw and Mobi and use epub instead ??...)

Look at all attempts to do drm movie downloading and how they repeatedly failed, most recently Wal Mart threw in the towel. And the divx fiasco And...

I think there is enough evidence to show that all these attempts to lock people in, to control when/where you can use your entertainment, to create artificial scarcity are costly failures.

And again my opinion is irrelevant ultimately. The market speaks much more forcefully when real money are on the table not just talk, and the examples above are quite unambiguous. It's very, very hard to fight the trend

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

And again my opinion is irrelevant ultimately. The market speaks much more forcefully when real money are on the table not just talk, and the examples above are quite unambiguous. It's very, very hard to fight the trend

Agreed, the market will do whatever it wants to without our opinion but I do not believe any of the data is conclusive proof that will drive the eBook market at least this year. If Amazon believed you they would not have come up with another DRM system to control the sales of their product just a couple of months ago. I guess they are too stupid to realize it is futile.

Dale

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

If Amazon believed you they would not have come up with another DRM system to control the sales of their product just a couple of months ago. I guess they are too stupid to realize it is futile.

Why not? If they think that in five or ten yers DRM for books will be gone it can still be rational to use DRM now.

[TallMomof2]

It's great that the music industry is finally coming around. It's so nice to be able to purchase DRM-free mp3s as an impulse buy instead of buying and ripping the CD. And I can play them on any mp3 capable device, I'm not locked into proprietary equipment.

Can't wait for the day when I can buy all my books DRM-free and be able to read them on my choice of device. I only own 2 Kindle specific books and won't buy any more since I can use .mobi and can covert to that format.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Agreed, the market will do whatever it wants to without our opinion but I do not believe any of the data is conclusive proof that will drive the eBook market at least this year. If Amazon believed you they would not have come up with another DRM system to control the sales of their product just a couple of months ago. I guess they are too stupid to realize it is futile.

Dale

I do not think the problem is with Amazon but with the culture of publishing which (in my opinion of course) just does not care about e-books considering them irrelevant at best and a threat at worst.

As I mentioned in another post, this kind of discussion about the inevitability (or dustbin) of drm for e-books is premature for now, since e-books are just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of ... the book publishing business. When they will achieve market penetration of say 10-20% we can talk and see who was right.

For the moment the only digital e-product that has non-negligible market penetration is music and there the evidence is clear against drm.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

I do not think the problem is with Amazon but with the culture of publishing which (in my opinion of course) just does not care about e-books considering them irrelevant at best and a threat at worst.

As I mentioned in another post, this kind of discussion about the inevitability (or dustbin) of drm for e-books is premature for now, since e-books are just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of ... the book publishing business. When they will achieve market penetration of say 10-20% we can talk and see who was right.

For the moment the only digital e-product that has non-negligible market penetration is music and there the evidence is clear against drm.

I would agree. DRM is going to be around for a long time in eBooks and the lack of a clear consistent winner in the format issue is also telling. Publishers want DRM and eBook makers want control of their format it would seem (at least the big one's do). This is not likely to change in even 4 or 5 years I suspect.

Dale

[JohnClif]

The reason that DRM was abandoned for music is not because the publishers wanted to. It's because MP3 is a legacy format that has no way to tie the owner of a file to a specific MP3 player.

The absolute number of ereaders out there is pretty small. Amazon went with AZW instead of MOBI in order to stop the 'MP3' problem before it got too large to handle. (I'll hypothesize that Amazon didn't want to worry about bringing all MOBI publishers on-line and coordinating a central user database among them, so by owning/controlling AZW they avoided all of the problems... at the risk of angering ebook early adopters, and I guess Amazon knows how many that is and figures the number is small enough to not worry about.)

(Again, my hypothesis) Amazon sees the Kindle as being transformative in the way that MP3 players have transformed the music industry and killed the demand for CDs, hoping the Kindle will kill demand for bound books. They looked at the music industry as being a model for what to do, and what not to do. If the music industry had established a standard with MP3 player manufacturers to have the individual players verify lawful ownership of MP3s before playing against a database... but it's too late now. The genie is out of the bottle (too much music is available without DRM). It's not too late with ebooks. Hence, DRM.

BTW, the fact that CD sales have fallen dramatically is, to me, a clear sign that piracy is rampant in the music industry. I think that this piracy will transform the music industry radically. Either the industry will band together and come up with new formats which aren't supported by existing players, so they can re-implement DRM, or the recording companies will disappear, leaving the artist to sell works directly to the consumer via the web. Signs of the latter are already visible, e.g., Radiohead's promotion of their latest album by providing free, unprotected MP3s for download.

Every transformational technology causes disruption, and usually the existing market titans are rendered obsolete. Cars killed the railroads. Airplanes killed passenger liners. We're seeing the death of print media at the hands of the online media. Darwinism at it's finest... adapt or die.

[TallMomof2]

Originally Posted by JohnClif

BTW, the fact that CD sales have fallen dramatically is, to me, a clear sign that piracy is rampant in the music industry.

One reason CD sales have fallen is people like me who BUY mp3 songs and albums. The few CDs I purchase are immediately ripped to mp3 and the CDs are put in storage. Now that Amazon is offering mp3s without DRM and album prices that are usually lower than new CDs I may never purchase another CD.