People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Yes, he did, which is why he's now using the 10%-50% range for losses to the Music Industry Income. IMO, the actual losses are much more likely to be towards the 10% end than the 50% end of the range.

"But a later 2010 meta-study by the same authors concluded that piracy did, in fact, account for a bit of the decline in music sales—around 20 percent."

Note that's 20% of the decline, for which 50% is probably an over estimate, so the estimated loss in revenue is 10%.

You should also know that the paper's authors were originally arguing that piracy had little or no effect, BEFORE they did their study. Its likely they are minimizing the feffect of piracy/casual sharing.
What's intersting to me is the numerous people on this wforum and elsewhere, who seem emotionally commmitted not only to the idea that casual sharing/piracy has little or no effect on digital sales, but even to the idea that it CAN have no effect, no matter how pervasive it is. There is fertile ground here for an interesting pyschological study, I think.

[stonetools]

You tell me how DRM is not a problem when you need to update the DRM and cannot because you no longer have access to do so.

Didn't say it was no problem, mate. I said it was no INSURMOUNTABLE problem. Indeed, its more of an inconvenience, more on the level of you losing your warranty on a Circuit City product when CC goes out of business.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by tompe

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?

Books that were published 20+ years ago, which are the ones I'm most likely to buy, are not "early access" to say the least. Even for newer books, if the MM is on the market, it makes no sense to compare with the HC; the MM is closer to what the actual content costs, rather than the extra cost of heavy paper, a dust jacket, and so on.

I like Baen's system: if I want a book that's going to be published this fall, I can get it. It's more expensive -- that's the "early access" thing -- and it's basically an unproofed galley, but I can get it if I really want it Right Now(tm), instead of waiting for it to be actually finished up (like, oh, proofread). Or I can wait until it hits the shelves and buy it for less than than its paper equivalent. Choices are a good thing.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Didn't say it no problem, mate. I said it was no INSURMOUNTABLE problem.

How do you surmount the problem of "I paid for an ebook four years ago; now it's not readable on the same computer because the DRM servers have shut down?"

Indeed, its more of an inconvenience, more on the level of you losing your warranty on a Circuit City product when CC goes out of business.

Except the Amazon "license" says you have a right "to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times"--it doesn't say "until we stop authorizing your device with the DRM content servers." It doesn't say anything about the content no longer being available if you change the software on your device.

It says you can view the content on the device authorized for that at time of purchase. If I reinstall Windows on my computer, it's still the same device; Amazon should still allow the content to be viewed on it.

Going out of business doesn't void warranty requirements. In many cases, getting recompense is impossible because they're bankrupt. Amazon, however, is not bankrupt, and has no ethical, legal reason not to have refunded the cost of the ebooks they sold from 2005-2007.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stonetools

5.Nobody has really shown that the average reader is even aware of DRM, has been significantly inconvenienced by DRM , or has been significantly damaged by DRM. I agree that DRM doesn't stop piracy. We're focused on large scale casual sharing.The music industry gives us real world experience of what happens when people get used to passing around music files like candy. It ain't pretty for the music industry-50% fall in revenue with no end in sight.
Again, inf someone can show me WHY they think that large scale casual sharing wouldn't depress eBook sales, particularly of best sellers, I'm all ears. All I've heard is :
It won't happen. Honest, trust us.

As for the music industry, they have nobody to blame but themselves. They screwed up what was working. We had Napster 1.0 and with it a 6% increase in CD sales. So what does the RIAA do? They get Napster shut down. Then they decide it's a good idea to raise prices. Next, they decide to use unethical practices to take people to court and/or get their ISP to shut them down. People don't like the way the RIAA uses strong-arm tactics and raising the prices. The RIAA is at fault for this. They did things anti-customer and the customer fought back and screw the RIAA. The RIAA caused any drop in sales and increase in file sharing.

I casually share eBooks among family. I have no issue with this. In fact, I could legally share among 11 people. With one ADE account, I can have six computers and six devices registered. So in total, that's 12 people for one eBook. And to be honest, I do expect casual sharing among a household. So really, DRM does not stop casual sharing. It may limit how many people you can share with, but it won't make it 1 eBook to one person like the publishers want.

[Worldwalker]

Y'know, there's one thing that I have been increasingly curious about in this whole discussion.

We've all explained why we think DRM is bad for readers, and why. Stonetools, on the opposite side, keeps saying we're wrong.

So, Stonetools, answer me this: why do you think DRM is good for me, personally, not just "people" but Worldwalker who's sitting here typing to you? And if you say "because the publishing industry needs it", please explain to me why the needs of the publishing industry are important to you, personally. What's your dog in this hunt? Why do you support DRM?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Er, my point was never that inhibited sales: my point was that large scale casual sharing would happen in the absence of DRM and make it unprofitable for publishers and authors.
So far I have seen no convincing argument that it won't happen, and plenty of evidence from the music industry that it will.

Since prices have risen (overall) on eBooks, it makes it harder to b able to afford all I want to read. I have gone the route of spitting the cost. Now, a few people may be reading one eBook. But that one eBook is a sale that very well may not have occurred. Would the publishers rather we didn't share or would they rather not have the sale?

[stonetools]

Going out of business doesn't void warranty requirements. In many cases, getting recompense is impossible because they're bankrupt. Amazon, however, is not bankrupt, and has no ethical, legal reason not to have refunded the cost of the ebooks they sold from 2005-2007.
__________________

And I sincerely hope that Amazon, famed for its customer service, worked with JS Wolf to resolve the problem. Indeed, we did not hear from JS Wolf that they simply blew him off. I wait to hear the rest of the story.

[kennyc]

I wait to hear your answer to worldwalker

[stonetools]

Why do you support DRM?

Well, that's the usual point here, I guess. I must somehow be benefitting for DRM and am working for the publishers. Well, I'm not. I think it might be a necssary evil to ensure that writers and people in the publishing industry in general make a living, because I really like reading good books. If revenues fall sharply because of widespread piracy and/or casual sharing, then there will be fewer good writers and fewer good books. NOw you guys argue that you can have your cake and eat it too: you can have no DRM with little increase in casual sharing and piracy and point to the music industry as an examnple of a successful No DRM regime. You cite a few indie writers and and some minor publishing houses offering no DRM content and say, " See? That can work for everyone". Well, the publishing industry is not convinced and I can't say as I blame 'em. I know that if I was betting my company on such evidence, I'd want more-a lot more.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

1st emphasis: rare
ehm you are either kidding, treating otherposters here like complete morons, or deliberately ignoring galore of postings, by using such a word, regardless of all the cases,which have been presented from all fields of digital media usage in general AND ebooks in particular.

None of both possibilities casts a good light at the quality of your arguments an your manners.

2nd emphasis: when stores shut down or software publishers go out of business, consumers have problems

Yes there's problems aplenty which can emerge in such a case
And the examples of Lokigames (publisher), or all the games supported by ScummVM show, that they can also be solved pretty well.

But - as you admitted - that have nothing to do with DRM. Thus there is no need to use said problems as a weasel-out argument.

In fact it's even the other way around, because if there is no DRM present people actually get the opportunity to face problems of the aforementioned kind and try to solve them - at which - as the above listed examples show they might succeed.
But if there is DRM on the data people might plainly end up with nothing at all.

There's no chance for maintenance
when everything flashes and turns to ashes.

Do you remember Lotus 1-2-3 when it was sold on floppy disk with DRM? I do. And it was a hellish nightmare. If the hard drive died, you could not them reinstall it on another computer as you had to uninstall it so it could write back to the floppy disk. If there was a problem when the uninstaller wrote on the floppy disk, you had a problem. And in some cases, the DRM caused a problem with doing hard drive backups. So really, it was just a nightmare. And considering how much it cast, it wasn't worth the hassle.

[Catlady]

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."

I don't see anything inherently wrong with setting prices at what the market will bear.

I do object to the inability of retailers to discount the books in any way.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Books that were published 20+ years ago, which are the ones I'm most likely to buy, are not "early access" to say the least. Even for newer books, if the MM is on the market, it makes no sense to compare with the HC; the MM is closer to what the actual content costs, rather than the extra cost of heavy paper, a dust jacket, and so on.

So what? The $15 quote was about new ebooks. Comparing them to paperbacks is a bogus argument.

[CyGuy]

This sense of entitlement that these publishers and authors have is just disgusting to me. We The People allow you to do business in our country, we allow you to sell us products and services. We allow you to profit from these transactions. But you now seem to think that We The People have an inappropriate sense of entitlement, you are mistaken. You certainly do have copyrights, but only because we granted them to you...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by stonetools

What's intersting to me is the numerous people on this wforum and elsewhere, who seem emotionally commmitted not only to the idea that casual sharing/piracy has little or no effect on digital sales, but even to the idea that it CAN have no effect, no matter how pervasive it is.

I am not such a person. I'm sure that unauthorised copies of digital files have some effect on sales. We do disagree on the likely scale of the effect.

Originally Posted by stonetools

Didn't say it was no problem, mate. I said it was no INSURMOUNTABLE problem. Indeed, its more of an inconvenience, more on the level of you losing your warranty on a Circuit City product when CC goes out of business.

Not so. Losing a warranty on a physical product is only a problem if the item breaks inside the warranty period. If your supplier a DRMed product ceases to support that DRM, you will lose access to that product when your currently authorised devices either break or need to be reinstalled. This is insurmountable. Well, unless you have sensibly removed the DRM first, of course. But that's a different discussion.

Originally Posted by stonetools

Now you guys argue that you can have your cake and eat it too: you can have no DRM with little increase in casual sharing and piracy and point to the music industry as an examnple of a successful No DRM regime. You cite a few indie writers and and some minor publishing houses offering no DRM content and say, " See? That can work for everyone". Well, the publishing industry is not convinced and I can't say as I blame 'em. I know that if I was betting my company on such evidence, I'd want more-a lot more.

You have acknowledged my point at last. The present of DRM or not on the digital files that are sold does not affect the amount of unauthorised copying to any significant extent.

This is, I would have thought, completely obvious. Because you didn't see that this was obvious, I have offered you facts and figures that support this obvious conclusion.

* You have evidence from an industry that's going through the same transition to digital, but a decade ahead of the publishing industry.
* You have evidence of a digital pioneer in the publishing industry, who has been producing DRM-free ebooks for over a decade, gets a few genre fiction titles into the NYT Best Seller lists, and has grown their business considerably over the past decade.
* You have the evidence of other leading-edge publishers switching over to DRM free digital files over the past few years, and also seeing overall sales increase.

What more evidence do you need?