People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by sabredog

when the Agency 5 restrictions came into play last year I was suddenly geographically restricted from titles I had purchased from both diesel and Fictionwise. The total cost was well over AU$120 spread over the two estores, though the majority was at Diesel.

The geo restrictions are indeed annoying. I went looking for At Swim-Two-Birds a couple of days ago. I have a pbook copy but want it for my EBR. One seller, in England. So I went to buy a copy. No can do, being outside the geo.

Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to the darknet we go. I was willing to pay for this book twice over, but the publisher evidently doesn't want any more of my money.

So...I should be concerned about the "morality" of the darknet? If a publisher has the book, but won't sell it to me, he is misusing and has therefore morally abandoned the protection of copyright.

Likewise with a store that withdraws your access to a book you paid for, on grounds of geography. Even if they refund you the money.

No one who asks for the law to protect their business of selling books should be allowed to refuse to sell those books, or restrict where, when or on what the books may be read.

[stonetools]

I don't see any reason that selling ebooks without DRM would have any negative effect on sales of ebooks either.

I have now provided a detailed explanation, with verifiable data, for why I don't think that selling ebooks without DRM will harm publishers or authors.

Please explain why you persist in your belief that DRM is essential.
__________________

THank you for your serious, fact based response. At least you didn't stoop to personal attacks like some .
THere is a lot of really good data about the music business. Unforetunately , there is data that sharply contradicts your position.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If you watched the Grammy Awards Sunday night, it would appear all is well in the recording industry. But at the end of last year, the music business was worth half of what it was ten years ago and the decline doesn't look like it will be slowing anytime soon.

Total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing plunged to $6.3 billion in 2009, according to Forrester Research. In 1999, that revenue figure topped $14.6 billion.


Although the Recording Industry Association of America will report its official figures in the early spring, the trend has been very clear: RIAA has reported declining revenue in nine of the past 10 years, with album sales falling an average of 8% each year. Last decade was the first ever in which sales were lower going out than coming in.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news...dex.htm?hpt=T2


The industry insiders blame digital music for the collapse in revenue. This is substantial evidence that offering DRM free music hasn't helped things.

The volume of unauthorized downloads continues to represent about 90% of the market, according to online download tracker BigChampagne Media Measurement.

Faced with such data, it is far from clear that going DRM free will lead to a healthy publishing industry. You would have to explain why a similiar collapse in revenue would not happen in the publishing industry, as people got in the habit of sharing bestsellers with all their Facebook friends. Thanks in advance for your response.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by stonetools

THank you for your serious, fact based response. At least you didn't stoop to personal attacks like some .
THere is a lot of really good data about the music business. Unforetunately , there is data that sharply contradicts your position.

Correlation does not imply causation.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The "whole world" is not. Certain areas of business are under the impression that people no longer care about having permanent access to their purchases, but plenty of us don't trust Google, Amazon and B&N to be around in 10 or 15 years when we're fondly remembering a much-liked book and want to re-read it.

Why do people download books from Gutenberg or from MR's library or from any other public domain source? Because some of us want to OWN the books, not just access them. It's not even a question of trusting that they'll always be there--I suspect they will, but I still want them on my own hard drive or e-reader. That way they're mine.

And, what the heck, I'll admit to some paranoia. If the only copies of books exist in the cloud, they can be bowdlerized with a few judicious clicks. When no physical copies exist, who can say anymore what was originally written?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

WE're going in circles here. Read the above post on casual sharing. Thanks

How is people not reading books because they can't borrow them going to benefit writers?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

THank you for your serious, fact based response. At least you didn't stoop to personal attacks like some ....

Which is exactly what you did.

We're still waiting on the answer as to your motivation here. Are you are are you not employed in the publishing business?

Please answer that before we proceed further. Otherwise you are just tolling.

[vaughnmr]

Stonetools, when you leave out part of the data, it's easy to make the wrong assumption. The BIG change in the music industry was the sales of individual songs, instead of only selling whole albumns. This came about at the same time, and was facilitated by digital, but actually had nothing to do with drm. Before that, you were FORCED to buy songs you didn't want, now people can get only what they want to listen to.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

..
The industry insiders blame digital music for the collapse in revenue. This is substantial evidence that offering DRM free music hasn't helped things.

....

The fact that it is digital is (once more) not the issue. It's the business model that is at fault.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by toddos

Traditional publishers do provide copy editing, typesetting, and marketing that the average author can't or doesn't want to do himself, and those have value.

They have value, but only as a one-off service paid for with a one-off fee. There is no reason to give away 90% of your income forever just to get those services. Publishers need writers, but writers do not need publishers. As more writers realise that, the publishers will need to come up with better deals.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by stonetools

The industry insiders blame digital music for the collapse in revenue. This is substantial evidence that offering DRM free music hasn't helped things.

Faced with such data, it is far from clear that going DRM free will lead to a healthy publishing industry. You would have to explain why a similiar collapse in revenue would not happen in the publishing industry, as people got in the habit of sharing bestsellers with all their Facebook friends. Thanks in advance for your response.

(bold added)

Note that the problem is digital music itself, not whether the music they sell digitally has or has not got DRM.

The music industry would be facing the same or, IMO, a worse crisis, if it had not gone DRM-free. Any problem of piracy isn't due to the digital tracks they sell, whether they have DRM or not. It's the digital tracks people download from torrents instead of buying.

The question for publishers isn't "Will we be OK if we go DRM-free?" but "Which will hep us get the best out of an inevitable transition to ebooks, DRMed or DRM-free ebooks?"

IMO, going DRM-free will be best for publishers, authors and readers.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by MartinC

I'm talking existential angst here. A writer never knows. If you think you do, you're quite likely sadly wrong. So... Your wife likes it? Your best friend's sister's boyfriend couldn't put it down? I would rather put my faith in the opinion of someone who is going to lose a wad of cash if they make the wrong call.

That's why I call it vanity publishing

Because being able to say "Look at me a publisher thinks my book is good enough to make them a wad of cash" is really the only thing you are getting for your 90% reduction in income.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by toddos

The ebook industry does away with a lot of that. Not all of it, sure, but a lot. Copy editors and marketing will still be required. New jobs will be available for typesetting ebooks rather than typesetting for printing presses. But there's no printing press to run, no up-front cash layout required to generate inventory to sell, no warehouse required to store the books, no shipping costs to get the books out to book stores, no brick and mortar book stores to sell these books to the end user.

The publishing industry is still stuck in the paper mindset. They price ebooks like paperbooks event though they cost a fraction of the cost of a paper book to make. They then try to protect this by using DRM, and they have an old fashioned idea of having to "make up" lost revenue, as if anything were lost.

They're still in the "paper mindset" because they're still selling on paper. In a sense, they're competing with themselves when they offer an e-book while also offering a hardcover. Every e-book sold means one fewer paper book sold of that same title.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

actually US paper money IS DRM protected. Only it's called counterfeiting measures. Each bill has many levels of this DRM protection.

And your point is?

[stonetools]

We're still waiting on the answer as to your motivation here. Are you are are you not employed in the publishing business?

Please answer that before we proceed further. Otherwise you are just tolling.

I'm really damned sorry about this, but I'm going to restrict my responses to the data and to the arguments, and not personally attack anyone or disclose personal data. Possibly we should take this up with the moderators and ask whether we need to disclose personal informatiopn whenver we contest the preferred position on these forums. I don't recall Babi Yuga (sp? ) being asked whether he/she was in the pocket of the publishers when he defended agency pricing.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

THank you for your serious, fact based response. At least you didn't stoop to personal attacks like some .
THere is a lot of really good data about the music business. Unforetunately , there is data that sharply contradicts your position.

How is a profit of $6.4billion the sign of an industry in trouble? If profit in 1999 was $14.6billion any drop in profits can't be related to piracy because mp3 piracy went mainstream in 1997 when the RIAA started advertising Napster.