STUDY SHOWS: Ditching DRM could reduce piracy, prices

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Your empathy is touching.

This said by a person continously stating that the majority of buyers of digital goods are potential criminals.*) That's touching too - but unfortunately it touches the wrong spot.

You still have never given a reasonable explanation why you have such an opinion about said group of consumers. It's said that people usually judge others by making assumptions based on their own character.

*)Alas it must be a painful burden to you to be surrounded by such a heap of criminal scum like us. I pray for that you shall regain the strenght to leave such an unworthy company behind you the sooner the better.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by frahse

Maybe the truth is that DRM works.

That's a delusion if I ever saw one. If DRM worked, nothing would ever be pirated.

[Freeshadow]

It works in some cases but with the side effect of being a consumer repellent too.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

It works in some cases but with the side effect of being a consumer repellent too.

Name one.

Yes, I'm serious. Name one single case, in the ebook, movie, music, or video game industry, where the DRM prevented a product from being pirated even once.

[Freeshadow]

i meant some cases of consumers not cases of drm systems

[markbot]

STUDY SHOWS: Ditching condoms could reduce STDs, prices

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by markbot

STUDY SHOWS: Ditching condoms could reduce STDs, prices

How is that even coherent?

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

i meant some cases of consumers not cases of drm systems

But that is not relevant. It doesn't matter if you prevent billions of consumers from stripping the DRM, if one single person manages to do it, then the DRM failed.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I am still waiting for that list of ebooks that haven't been pirated (made
available for free on the internet) because of the "protection" provided by
DRM. Of course there are plenty of books that aren't pirated because no
one thinks they would be worth the effort. It would have to be some book
that most of us have heard of.

Perhaps you could start with the Harry Potter Series, they had the best
DRM possible, they were never released as e-books. Oh wait, they were
pirated!

Luck;F
Ken

DRM prevents casual sharing by the average consumer , not piracy. I know that the standard anti DRM argument focuses on piracy, but there is more than one type of copyright infringement. DRm could be totally useless against piracy, but still protect sales. It's unfortunate that anti DRM activists refuse to recognize this point, and keep recycling the anti-piracy argument. Bank security guards don't protect against forgery, but that doesn't mean that banks shouldn't continue to employ security guards.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by stonetools

DRM prevents casual sharing by the average consumer , not piracy.

DRM does not prevent piracy. You just killed all of your own arguments.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

DRM does not prevent piracy. You just killed all of your own arguments.

No , I didn't. You just showed that you failed to comprehend my argument, which is that DRM works against other forms of copyright infringement. Please reread what I wrote.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

But that is not relevant. It doesn't matter if you prevent billions of consumers from stripping the DRM, if one single person manages to do it, then the DRM failed.

No, it makes no difference if all the consumers removed the DRM, that
would not effect things, at all. It does matter if one thief posts a readable
copy to the internet, without regard to how the thief may have obtained the
copy that he/she posts.

A DRM scam that could not be removed would cost far more sales for that
ebook than would be lost from the "casual pirating" to "friends" that they so
fear.

Luck;
Ken

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

A DRM scam that could not be removed would cost far more sales for that ebook than would be lost from the "casual pirating" to "friends" that they so fear.

My point exactly.

@stonetools,
I have no idea which alternate universe you live in, but you still have to prove to the one I live in that DRM prevents anyone from infringing on any form of copyright at all. Until you can present me with an case where DRM clearly and obviously prevented any kind of copyright infringement at all, you have no argument.

Unless of course you honestly believe that casual sharing between friends is far more damaging to sales than systematic piracy by Chinese bootleg factories is, in which case you had better be rabidly opposed to libraries and Netflix as well, or you'll be sadly ignored as just one more voice of propaganda without any though to back it up.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Actually DRM is effective to deterring casual sharing by the nontech consumer. What theauthor and publisher is rightly afraid of is some teenager buying a copy of the latest vampire bestseller and forwarding it to her peeps on Facebook, who will then forward it to THEIR peeps on Facebook, etc.

Anyone who doesnt think large scale casual sharing does not pose a serious threat to the revenues of authors and publishers is either indifferent to the rights of authors and publishers hasn't really thought the problem through.

The underlying assumption of your argument is that sharing reduces sales.

But is that assumption correct?

I can think of at least three possible factors that counter it.

One is that some of the sharees (i.e., the ones who get the ebook from the original purchaser) might not have bought the book themselves, but are willing to read it if it's free. These people are never going to be customers, so we can't say that they are lost customers reducing sales.

A second is that the pool of sharees may not be as great as one might think. That is, while the teenager sharing vampire books on Facebook might distribute files to 100 of her BFFs, only five of them are actually readers who have EBRs.

A third is that there is an advertising effect resulting from sharing books, such that more new buyers might result from people being exposed to a particular author. This is a situation where there might be no lost sale on the shared book, plus there might be a gained sale on the next book. Of course, that book might be shared, too, but my point is that we are not at all certain of the overall longterm effect on sales. They might well increase, both in numbers and net revenue.

This whole issue is also related to the question of pricing and convenience. It may well be that the publishing industry and authors are going to have to accept lower prices for their books. It may be that lower prices could be offset by increased sales, and that in fact, lower prices, plus no DRM, plus cheap entry level EBRS would induce increased sales and result in greater profits.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Arithonne

Baen has been offering ebooks DRM free for over ten years now. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that if they were losing money because of it they'd have stopped by now or gone bankrupt.

You know , this has been repeated again and again on the other drm threads i've been in, so it's kind of tiresome to go over these things again. Baen is a small publisher of genre fiction . It's a niche player. It is one data point, which shows that going drm free might work in certain circumstances. You can't generalize from one data point .

Let me also add that I don't consider drm to be perfect, or even good. I think of it as a necessary evil, like car alarms, surveillance cameras, or airport shoe searches. I don't like any of those things, but I can't think of better options for dealing with the problems they were created to deal with .
Drm was created to protect authors copyright . After the fact remedies for copyright infringement don't work, period. If they worked well, there would have been no need for drm. Pretending that there is no need for copyright protection , or that after the fact remedies are effective don't really help the debate
Does drm work perfectly? Nope, but it's better than nothing, and no one has proposed a better solution. Until one comes along, successful authors are going to insist on it, I'm afraid, and they are not going to be swayed by the argument that they should unilaterally disarm because some folks feel that copyright protection schemes are wrong. It would be nice if we could move on from this impasse and discuss ways of making drm better and less intrusive of the rights of technically sophisticated consumers, but the all or nothing approach ( drm is evuuuul- totally and completely evuuul, in all it's forms) prevents that kind of discussion. Oh well... Off to bed.