People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Cyberman tM

If the competition becomes too strong, maybe you're doing it wrong.

Much as it hurts, every few centuries traditions HAVE to be reworked.

Why rest everything on the hardcover? Perhaps in the new age the eBook will be the primary revenue-stream, with hardcover and paperbacks only bought afterwards, to have something physical. I still buy CDs, even though I could download them all.

It's just that the publishers are in a period of transition, and obviously are not sure how to deal with the changes. I have a lot more sympathy for them on the matter of pricing than I do on DRM.

While I do mind paying $12-$15 for 40- 50-year-old backlist e-books, I think that's a quite legit price for a newly published book. In fact, I think it's a bargain.

But DRM is another matter. That interferes with my ownership of the book, and I resent it at whatever the price of the book is.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It's just that the publishers are in a period of transition, and obviously are not sure how to deal with the changes. I have a lot more sympathy for them on the matter of pricing than I do on DRM.

While I do mind paying $12-$15 for 40- 50-year-old backlist e-books, I think that's a quite legit price for a newly published book. In fact, I think it's a bargain.

But DRM is another matter. That interferes with my ownership of the book, and I resent it at whatever the price of the book is.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by queentess

But see, retailers aren't allowed to discount ebooks. Why would I pay $16 for the hardcover (which I can promptly resell) or $13 for the ebook with DRM? I agree, $1-2 is likely too little. But expecting me to pay hardback prices for an ebook is extreme.

I agree with you that retailers should be allowed to discount whatever they feel like discounting. But all I'm saying is that if you look at the prices the publishers set, they are generally setting the e-book prices lower than the hardcover prices, as they should.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by stonetools

We don't even have to consider jewelry stores. Think of the B&N store in downtown DC. To enter the store, I walk past a metal detecter and a security guard . The items in the store have RFID tags on the them, which alarm if I try to take the items out of the store without paying for them. Do I feel offended by all this? Do I clutch my pearls and moan that I am being treated like a potential criminal and I deserve the trust of the storeowner? No, and I don't know anyone who does.

That's all happening BEFORE I PAY FOR THE ITEM. DRM is a restriction AFTER I PAY FOR THE ITEM.

B. Lots of regular folk become incensed about DRM and stop buyiing books as a result. Right now, they're buying DRMED ebooks hand over fist, and seem OK with DRM .

Nonsense. Books are not fungible. If I want to buy Anne Perry's latest as an e-book, do I have a choice of buying a DRM version or a non-DRM version? Joe Schmoe's self-published non-DRM schlock is not a legitimate alternative.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I got the same results as Stonetools. So did you also use the word torrent in your search?

I got the same results as Lemurion. I didn't use the word torrent. I spelled dragon correctly.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It's just that the publishers are in a period of transition, and obviously are not sure how to deal with the changes. I have a lot more sympathy for them on the matter of pricing than I do on DRM.

While I do mind paying $12-$15 for 40- 50-year-old backlist e-books, I think that's a quite legit price for a newly published book. In fact, I think it's a bargain.

But DRM is another matter. That interferes with my ownership of the book, and I resent it at whatever the price of the book is.

Oh, right you are, Catlady. I would've happy paid for the $7.99 they are asking for Hounded. In fact, I might have even paid that twice (both the eBook and the paperback because I can share the pb). Lets see, that is just under $16. A hardcover can be over $20. I would pay that for a book that sounds right up my alley and got a Publisher's Weekly starred review to boot. However, I will just be getting the paperback because the eBook is only on Amazon and B&N and all DRM'd.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I agree with you that retailers should be allowed to discount whatever they feel like discounting. But all I'm saying is that if you look at the prices the publishers set, they are generally setting the e-book prices lower than the hardcover prices, as they should.

Publishers have said that buyers have to be "trained" to accept $15.00 as the "proper" price for an ebook -- in other words, twice the mass-market paperback price. I don't think that's setting prices in line with anything else other than "what the market can be forced to bear."

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stonetools

In this article

[URL="http://www.idealog.com/blog/what-the-powers-that-be-think-about-drm-and-an-explanation-of-the-cloud#"[/URL]

at least one publisher( and the poster,) thinks the solution is to move everything to the cloud . Apparently, HTML 5.0 will allow the offline reading of ebooks stored in the cloud, so you can read ebooks without requiring a persistent wifi or cellular connection. Maybe that's solution.

Discuss.

The problem comes when you then need an internet connection to be able to get at your content. That is unacceptable. What if my net connection is down. What if I have no net access? They would be forcing everyone to be on the net. That's not always possible. Also, I want to be responsible for storing my eBook. I don't want to risk my content to some cloud somewhere that I have no control over. I understand about the cloud, I just don't like it.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem comes when you then need an internet connection to be able to get at your content. That is unacceptable. What if my net connection is down. What if I have no net access? They would be forcing everyone to be on the net. That's not always possible. Also, I want to be responsible for storing my eBook. I don't want to risk my content to some cloud somewhere that I have no control over. I understand about the cloud, I just don't like it.

[kennyc]

I love clouds, but not for storing my data.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by stonetools

One mo' time...

Some arguments against DRM that I think don't work:

1. "I bought this ebook, I own it, I should be able to do what I want
with it". Er, no you didn't. I know making this observation is about as
welcome as a turd in a swimming pool, but according to the law, when
you "bought" an ebook, you did not receive an absolute transfer of
title in an object in exchange of money: rather, you bought a license
to access a copy of the digital file.Now you can argue that the
license should not incluide DRM. You can and should argue that the
price for the license should be much lower than the sale price of a
pbook. What yo cannot do is argue into a court of law and insist that
DRM is an unlawful restriction of your ownership rights. Well you can ,
but you will likely be disappointed.

Actually, there's a substantial legal question there. Plenty of court cases agree that not all license terms are enforceable. Especially when the language surrounding the transaction strongly indicates "sale." The general sense of the case law is that calling it a sale makes it a sale, in spite of any license terms to the contrary.

Whether that case law applies to eBooks is a question no one can answer (in the US, at least) because it hasn't yet been ruled on in any court -- to the best of my knowledge. It's worth noting that the most closely related case law (on software purchases and the licensing thereof) is split, with differing outcomes in different US circuits.

So, overall, any confident statement strong than "no one really knows, yet" is guaranteed to be arguing in advance of the legal realities. This observation holds equally for my position (it's a sale, dammit!) and yours (it's a license, you fool!).

Aside: I Am Not A Lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Should you require legal advice on which you can place reliance, go hire yourself a real lawyer -- don't listen to some guy on the internet!

My writing here is based on a graduate seminar on IP issues for computer scientists, lectures therein from a wide variety of leading legal experts, and my layman's understanding (or possibly misunderstanding) of my certainly-flawed class notes. That's a long way from a legal opinion; it's also far better informed than average internet bloviation.

Originally Posted by stonetools

2."The music industry still exists, [...]

I have nothing useful to add on either side of this one.

Originally Posted by stonetools

3." The use of DRM treats the buyer of ebooks like a criminal". I'm
sorry but this is horse#### (to put it delicately).Storeowners have
every right to take precautions to protect their goods. When the goods
are valuable and easily stolen, they have a right to take even greater
precautions. Maybe there is a jewelry store somewhere that displays its most expensive products in open shelves, is noncholant about patrons handling their merchandise, and has an attitude of total trust to anyone who enters their stores. Most jewelry stores don't , and weunderstand why they don't.
We don't even have to consider jewelry stores. Think of the B&N store in downtown DC. To enter the store, I walk past a metal detecter and a security guard . The items in the store have RFID tags on the them, which alarm if I try to take the items out of the store without paying for them. Do I feel offended by all this? Do I clutch my pearls and moan that I am being treated like a potential criminal and I deserve the trust of the storeowner? No, and I don't know anyone who does.

You overlook here my earlier argument that these store-owners have hard data about and real-world experience of the costs and risks on which to base their policies. And they consider the necessary lack of trust to be a problem that leads to expenses they wish they could avoid, to more difficult relations with their customers, and to occasional (or even frequent!) lost sales. For that last, consider the frequency with which a customer walks away rather than waiting for store staff to find someone with the key to open the case where the iPods (or whatever) are kept.

By comparison, the BPH:

• Have fears (arguably reasonable; arguably unreasonable) about piracy and casual sharing
• Lack both hard data and experience about piracy and casual sharing
• Choose to ignore folks who provide them with the admittedly limited hard data and experience that is actually available. Like you've been doing in this thread.

Originally Posted by stonetools

THe attitude of the digerati appears to be that publishers and boooksellers take whatever precautions they liketo protect their goods against theft, but no right to take measures to prevent the theft of ebooks, unless such measures (A) work perfectly (B) never inconvenience the digerati. Not suprisingly, the powers that be in the book industry are mostly unconvinced.
Now what could convince the PTB? Some ideas:
A. Some big time author puts his book out there without DRM and it becomes a best seller without large scale casualsharing/piracy.

We've given you this one. For multiple authors, and multiple best-selling books. Admittedly, not the very-biggest-time of big-time authors. But folks who routinely hit the hardcover bestsellers list, and who make plenty of money for themselves and their publishers.

Originally Posted by stonetools

B. Lots of regular folk become incensed about DRM and stop buyiing books as a result. Right now, they're buying DRMED ebooks hand over fist, and seem OK with DRM.

Dunno about "lots of regular folk." But I do know about "lots of folk who purchase a LOT of books." You know, the kind of people who spend >$50/month (and often >$100/month) on books (including eBooks).

I fall in the >$100/month category. The spending breakdown goes like this: I very reluctantly purchase a DRMd ebook every other month, or so. I spend most of the rest -- call it $80/month up to $100/month -- on DRM-free ebooks. Finally, I very reluctantly purchase a paper-format book every other month, or so -- I'm completely out of shelf space, and have nowhere to add more, so I'm on a "one in, one out" budget for paper books.

Among my friends who read and purchase eBooks, the breakdown is somewhat less lopsided. Instead of running 90% DRM-free, with the remainder split between DRMd ebooks and paper, they run more like 80% DRM-free ebooks with the remainder split between DRMd ebooks and paper.

I recognize that the really-avid-reader crowd I describe represents a minority of sales of the latest "bestseller" (a.k.a. big fat airport novel). I suspect, but cannot prove, that we represent a large plurality of the sales of most everything else -- including the remainder of the bestseller lists.

Originally Posted by stonetools

C. Some major retail channel (maybe Apple once again?) goes non DRM. (Apple could afford to do so, but what's the business case for them to do so? Dunno).

Apple, Amazon, and others going DRM-free in the music world didn't convince you... The four small-to-medium-sized publishers we've listed didn't convince you... In spite of actual data showing that the effect of DRM-free bits on their businesses has been at worst a non-issue, and arguably a substantial boost.

Heck, the folks at Baen credit their ePublishing approach with fueling their steady and solid growth over the course of a decade in which publishing as a whole was shrinking. Yes -- they grew while the industry shrank. Hmmmm...

Originally Posted by stonetools

If you can think of some other ways, suggest them. The purist arguments (publishers ashould give up on DRM, because its somehow morally wrong or its against publishers' long term intersts in ways that that the publishers can't measure) aren't convincing.

On to 500!

And the BPH arguments that they have to have DRM or the sky will fall also fail to be convincing.

The available data are insufficient to settle the question. If the data sufficed to make the answer obvious, we wouldn't be having this discussion. However, all data presented to date shows that the problems DRM supposedly addresses are:

1. Not demonstrated by actual experience. See lack of data from BPH.
2. Contradicted by actual experience and real data. See actual data from Baen, O'Reilly, Wiley, National Academies Press.
3. Impossible to address via DRM (for large-scale piracy). See many academic papers.
4. Largely unaffected by DRM (for casual sharing). See results on sharing of paper books, ease of DRM-stripping, etc.

Meanwhile, the problems posed by DRM are:

1. Proven by experience -- added cost, customer confusion, increased need for customer support
2. Proven by experience -- loss of product when DRM servers shut down. See removal of a DRM provider from Fictionwise; Amazon's abandonment of PDF ebooks; end-of-life for Rocket/RCA ebook line, etc.
3. Proven by experience -- Device lockin may provide some benefit for hardware vendors, but provides absolutely no benefit for publishers (and maybe a detriment). And, of course, it's a problem for the customers (remember them?).

I repeat: The hard data are inadequate to give a conclusive answer. But that hard data is heavily weighted on one side. And it's not the pro-DRM side!

Xenophon

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Some arguments against DRM that I think don't work

I'm going to ignore 1 and 3, and concentrate on 2.

Originally Posted by stonetools

2."The music industry still exists, so that proves that casual sharing and piracy had no effect on the music industry and maybe even helped it. Look at the success of ITunes when they shifted to non-DRM."

The music industry-, including musicians, believe that they have been severely hurt . The revenues from the music industry fell 50% since the 1990s when casual sharing/piracy of music files became widespread. Even the paper that argues that filesharing isn't the sole reason for the fall revenue agrees that file sharing contributed to at least 20 per cent of the decline-a substantial percentage.

I think we can agree that the wide availability of unauthorised digital copies of music through Napster and other decentralised mass-distribution solutions has had some effect on the income of the music recording industry. It is hard to quantify: estimates range from a drop in income due to this unauthorised copying of 10% to 50% from the highs of around 2000.

The question is, did DRM on digital music help? The evidence is that it did not, and that removal DRM from digital music sales in no way hindered the increasing sales of digital music, through iTunes and elsewhere.

Until you can see that DRM and the availability of digital files are separate issues, we're not going to get much further.

Originally Posted by stonetools

Now what could convince the PTB? Some ideas:
A. Some big time author puts his book out there without DRM and it becomes a best seller without large scale casualsharing/piracy.
B. Lots of regular folk become incensed about DRM and stop buyiing books as a result. Right now, they're buying DRMED ebooks hand over fist, and seem OK with DRM .
C. Some major retail channel (maybe Apple once again?) goes non DRM. (Apple could afford to do so, but what's the business case for them to do so? Dunno).

If you can think of some other ways, suggest them. The purist arguments (publishers ashould give up on DRM, because its somehow morally wrong or its against publishers' long term intersts in ways that that the publishers can't measure) aren't convincing.

My argument isn't just that DRM is against publishers' long term interests, but that it's also against their short term interests. DRM costs them money and does them no good!


I'm pleased to see you acknowledge that publishers might eventually drop DRM. Other ways things might change is

D. A major ebook DRM service has a business, financial, or technical problem that locks lots of people out of their DRMed ebooks.
E. A major publisher actually listens to his technical people, looks at the available evidence, and realises that they can save a millions of dollars* a year by dropping DRM.



* Yes, really. Millions of dollars a year. Adobe DRM costs $0.22 per ebook. US ebook sales will be at least 200 million units in 2011. If Adobe DRMed ebooks only have 20% of the market, that's $8.8 million dollars to Adobe.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Publishers have said that buyers have to be "trained" to accept $15.00 as the "proper" price for an ebook

What they are more likely to "trained" to do is to type "<book title> torrent" into their Google search bar.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Publishers have said that buyers have to be "trained" to accept $15.00 as the "proper" price for an ebook -- in other words, twice the mass-market paperback price. I don't think that's setting prices in line with anything else other than "what the market can be forced to bear."

Why do you compare with the mass market paperback? Why not compare with the hardback since it is the early access price they refer to?

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Publishers have said that buyers have to be "trained" to accept $15.00 as the "proper" price for an ebook -- in other words, twice the mass-market paperback price. I don't think that's setting prices in line with anything else other than "what the market can be forced to bear."

Corrected version: Buyers have said that publishers have to be "trained" to accept 50% off the paperback price as the "proper" price for an ebook.