STUDY SHOWS: Ditching DRM could reduce piracy, prices

[HansTWN]

DRM is a royal pain in the you-know-what for the publishing industry's loyal and honest customers. Will that persuade stonetools and his publisher buddies to get rid of it and suddenly start becoming customer friendly? Of course not. He has made it very clear, they want to sell a new copy every single time a book is being read. That is the reason for DRM. So if you want to move a book from your Sony to your Kindle, buy a new copy! Who cares about customers?

And will stonetools convince us that DRM removal is "totally and completely evuuul"? Now that's a laugh. We will just have to raise the issue again and again to raise awareness that customers are being taken for a ride by the industry until there is a backlash. And teach as many people how to strip DRM as we can. Time is on our side. The more people buy infested ebooks the more will run into trouble with DRM sooner or later and will get angry at the industry. The only thing the industry has going for them is that the vast majority of ebook buyers really have no idea what they are buying and what can go wrong for them. We can change that and are doing it here.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

This is so ridiculous.

On the pro-DRM side of this line, this is basically what I hear: "Some people don't pirate or break DRM."

Sure. And you know who those people are? They're the sorts of people who are content to run in tiny circles within the confines of a walled garden. Those sorts of people are going to behave exactly the same way whether DRM exists or not. If you give them a tool within their walled garden that they can use to do something, they don't care if they can find it cheaper or free somewhere else: they're going to use it because that's the kind of person they are.

You don't need to chain down those sorts of people. They're not going to run anywhere anyway. iTunes remains one of the most popular media programs despite getting rid of DRM on their music years ago. Why? Because Apple people like their garden.

Everyone else?

For everyone else, they're going to have a couple bad experiences with losing their content when a DRM protocol ends support, or being unable to back up a Nook Book because the site refused to disclose the DRM and you didn't know what you were paying for, or Kindle's proprietary lock-down, and where's their next stop? Pirate Bay. And it will continue to be Pirate Bay until someone pulls their head out of their derriere and stops trying to prevent them from doing totally reasonable things like putting their own damn book on their own back-up or their own reader.

And it's only going to get worse as time goes on. I'm only 22, and what used to be a "geek" when I was in high school is now your average teenager. People are getting more tech savvy, not less, and it's going to get easier and easier to crack DRM.

Basically, DRM is totally irrelevant to proprietary users, and totally ineffective against every other kind of user.

frahse, you live in a fantasy land. It is no trouble at all to strip DRM. Once you install the plugin, you don't even have to think about it or do anything. It's easy as pie. And if you can't be bothered to install the plugin, there's a million and ten people on a million and ten torrent sites who have already done it for you, and your average Joe on the street knows at least a couple of them right off the top of his head. It's as common knowledge to anyone who has ever used the internet as Facebook.

I also have no idea why you think it's wrong for someone to strip DRM so they can use their own ebook for their own personal reading. Your moral compass is spinning, dude.

Because that's really all that DRM does. All it does is cause frustration to honest customers who paid for their books. You think it stops pirates? Seriously, where are you from?

It doesn't bother me because it's difficult to get pirated content or strip DRM. It's not. It bothers me because it's wrong. It's wrong to screw paying customers.

Whatever problems may exist in a multitude of industries as they all make the move online, DRM is obviously not the answer. It does nothing to deter pirates - it only punishes paying customers, which makes them more likely to turn to pirating, not less.

Worried about the viability of the business model? Come up with a better one. Stop trying to band-aid the bullet holes in the old one (which applied to a totally different society which we no longer live in) with increasingly insane degrees of desperate consumer interference.

Pre-internet business models are not going to work. No matter what you do. No matter how draconian you get. They just won't. This is a new age and someone is going to have to come up with something else. In the meantime, industries across the board will undergo some shaky years.

This is normal. It has happened before and it will happen again. By flailing around and lashing out at your own customers over something your non-customers did, you are doing nothing but cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[sabredog]

DRM is as anachronistic as publisher's business practices. Which is to be expected considering they are so intertwined.

I really do not need industry mouthpieces to tell me otherwise.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

I also have no idea why you think it's wrong for someone to strip DRM so they can use their own ebook for their own personal reading. Your moral compass is spinning, dude.

Because that's really all that DRM does. All it does is cause frustration to honest customers who paid for their books. You think it stops pirates? Seriously, where are you from.

Now you're being logical. Haven't you realized from the thread so far that logic is doomed to fail?

[xg4bx]

i just bought a book tonight that i know my wife would also enjoy so i stripped the drm and will put in on her kindle.

i refuse to spend another $5 when shes in the same house with me, it would be stupid to do so. i could easily hand her a paperback so i can just as easily drag&drop a file too.

the drm may as well not even be there, it took an extra 10 seconds of effort. neither of us are going to upload it to pirate sites because frankly we're more honorable than that and i'm not giving strangers access to what i paid for.

downloaders are whatever but someone who pays their own cash money for something and allows strangers to snag it for free are dopes imo.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

DRM is a royal pain in the you-know-what for the publishing industry's loyal and honest customers. Will that persuade stonetools and his publisher buddies to get rid of it and suddenly start becoming customer friendly? Of course not. He has made it very clear, they want to sell a new copy every single time a book is being read. That is the reason for DRM. So if you want to move a book from your Sony to your Kindle, buy a new copy! Who cares about customers?

And will stonetools convince us that DRM removal is "totally and completely evuuul"? Now that's a laugh. We will just have to raise the issue again and again to raise awareness that customers are being taken for a ride by the industry until there is a backlash. And teach as many people how to strip DRM as we can. Time is on our side. The more people buy infested ebooks the more will run into trouble with DRM sooner or later and will get angry at the industry. The only thing the industry has going for them is that the vast majority of ebook buyers really have no idea what they are buying and what can go wrong for them. We can change that and are doing it here.

Quoted for Truth!

[stonetools]

Every single one of you just repeated the drm is ineffective against piracy argument. It's true - and irrelevant. Drm is meant to prevent casual sharing by the average user- a much bigger threat. Ok, I'm going to stop here because I need to get on the road and folks either can't or don't want to understand that concept they just want to recycle the argument that they are comfortable with, as if it's a familiar hymn. Cool. I see the personal attacks have restarted too. I think we have all seen the end of this movie. Bye.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Every single one of you just repeated the drm is ineffective against piracy argument. It's true - and irrelevant. Drm is meant to prevent casual sharing by the average user- a much bigger threat. Ok, I'm going to stop here because I need to get on the road and folks either can't or don't want to understand that concept they just want to recycle the argument that they are comfortable with, as if it's a familiar hymn. Cool. I see the personal attacks have restarted too. I think we have all seen the end of this movie. Bye.

Why shouldn't the casual user be able to share, just like with a pbook or magazine?

Why shouldn't the casual user be able to make a backup copy that doesn't rely on the seller?

Why shouldn't the casual user be able to read their book on any of their devices at any time?

Why?

[kennyc]

Here is an example of someone (Purple Lady) having a problem right now with DRM they she should not have to be dealing with!

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=152852

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Why shouldn't the casual user be able to share, just like with a pbook or magazine?

Because you're not "sharing" when you give someone a copy of an eBook - you're creating an additional copy of the book which didn't previously exist. You can't compare it to lending a friend a paper book - no additional copy is being created in that scenario.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Because you're not "sharing" when you give someone a copy of an eBook - you're creating an additional copy of the book which didn't previously exist. You can't compare it to lending a friend a paper book - no additional copy is being created in that scenario.

Well I could argue that, I do understand what you are saying, but if I've finished reading a book or magazine and want to share it, there's really no difference (particularly if I'm not going to read it again - and if I do they can 'give' it back).

Hell, Amazon already allows this by the simple fact that multiple devices can be on the same account. eh?

And besides, I can (if so motivated) use a copy machine and make a copy of a paper book I've purchased.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kennyc

And besides, I can (if so motivated) use a copy machine and make a copy of a paper book I've purchased.

Of course you can, and that's absolutely fine if that copy is for your own personal use, but you're not suggesting that it would be legal for you to give the photocopy to someone else, are you?

That's the problem with trying to compare this with paper books: if you have a paper book, you're free to pass it around to your friends as much as you want - there's only one book in circulation. It's the fact that multiple copies of the book get created when you do this with eBooks that's the issue.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Every single one of you just repeated the drm is ineffective against piracy argument. It's true - and irrelevant. Drm is meant to prevent casual sharing by the average user- a much bigger threat. Ok, I'm going to stop here because I need to get on the road and folks either can't or don't want to understand that concept they just want to recycle the argument that they are comfortable with, as if it's a familiar hymn. Cool. I see the personal attacks have restarted too. I think we have all seen the end of this movie. Bye.

Well, when your average user probably frequents Pirate Bay, it doesn't accomplish that either. Furthermore, stripping DRM is well within the tech reach of your average user. Look above - one of our own just did that to share with his wife and it reportedly took "10 seconds."

DRM doesn't stop anything, period. It really doesn't matter where you approach it from, the answer is still the same.

Although I don't get how this addresses DRM-stripping at all, a focal point of my and most other peoples' posts. DRM-stripping has nothing to do with piracy necessarily. It's far more likely to have something to do with... casual sharing. Do try to follow along.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Hmm... DRM is a law now? It is a legal measure to insure public saftey, by limiting how
the product may be used or disposed of? I do admit that it resembles the "Child Saftey
Caps" that they put on old people's medicine bottles. We shouldn't complain about or
remove the DRM if it restricts our use?

Perhaps you mean it's a law like that which gave us the "low flow toilets" or shower
heads? Something else where the manufacturer has installed a feature to insure that
the consumer can't steal more than their fair share, of water, the thiefs.

Laws that regulate the use of a product generally don't put mechanisms in place that
make the product hard to use in other legitimate ways. Most, in fact don't come into
play until a crime is committed that harms someone.

You would have every right to pursue legal action against anyone uploading a copy of
your property, and bringing the theft to the attention of law enforcement. The use of
totally ineffective preemptive measures that restrict the use of your product, after the
sale, must be for another, hidden purpose.

Luck;
Ken

There was an article by Malcolm Galdwell in the New Yorker about how the introduction of child-proof caps on medicine bottles actually led to an increase in acccidental child poisoning. Parents were led into a false sense of security by the marketing, and that led to more bottles lying around in the open, which in turn led to more children getting their hands on them and opening up the 'child-proof' bottles.

Publishers are only fooling themselves into thinking that DRM works. It not only doesn't work, it also pisses off genuine customers who resent being accused of being potential thieves, which is what the implication of DRM is.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Of course you can, and that's absolutely fine if that copy is for your own personal use, but you're not suggesting that it would be legal for you to give the photocopy to someone else, are you?

That's the problem with trying to compare this with paper books: if you have a paper book, you're free to pass it around to your friends as much as you want - there's only one book in circulation. It's the fact that multiple copies of the book get created when you do this with eBooks that's the issue.

It's true it's creating another copy, but really, how different is it? How many people read the same book repeatedly? Now, how many reads do you think you can get out of one book before it falls apart?

One person pays for a book, reads it, and it gets sold to a used book store, or even donated to their library. One book, which is to say one payment by one person, may be read a hundred times by a hundred different people, none of whom paid anything to the originator. This is the primary means of reading for a lot of people, especially in this economy.

I know it was for me - I have an "in" at the local used book store, and I used to read for cheap or free all the time. I'm young and a broke student and if I bought everything I read new I wouldn't have groceries.

And yet I see no outcry to tear down used bookstores and libraries. Even though this is really not that different. Am I a bad person for mostly reading used books?