STUDY SHOWS: Ditching DRM could reduce piracy, prices

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I know half a dozen people who've bought Kindles in the last year. They buy books from the Kindle bookstore. They read them. They've probably never heard the word "DRM" and wouldn't know what it meant if they did.

"Being burned in the future" is only an issue if you re-read books. My experience is that most people don't. They buy a book, read it, and never read it again. They aren't buying books to keep, or to collect; they're buying them as a form of ephemeral entertainment.

So your justification for people having access to their own purchased content revoked is that they're unlikely to read it again?

That is irrelevant. It's still wrong. "Eh, they don't use their rights all that much anyway. They won't miss them!"

Great.

Even if it weren't just wrong, there are people who do re-read books, and most of us have that handful of books we've read over and over. It's still hurting people.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

So your justification for people having access to their own purchased content revoked is that they're unlikely to read it again?

No, I'm not justifying anything. I'm just saying that for most people it just plain doesn't MATTER. And that's the truth. We, who collect eBooks, or have multiple different readers, are not representitive of the typical user of these devices. But we know how to get around these issue, so once again, it doesn't matter.

Without DRM, most mainstream publishers wouldn't be publishing eBooks. That's a fact. It's not the bookstores who are insisting upon DRM; it's the publishers. If it's a choice between having eBooks published with DRM, and not having them published at all, give me DRM any day.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I know half a dozen people who've bought Kindles in the last year. They buy books from the Kindle bookstore. They read them. They've probably never heard the word "DRM" and wouldn't know what it meant if they did.

Instead of assuming what these people are thinking, and using that for justification, how about you ask this anecdotal sample of people if they've ever heard of DRM and what their take on it is? That's the least you can do before trotting it out as 'evidence'.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I don't know why some people think that DRM would be effective in any way. Different people have different views on sharing, but I don't see how DRM would keep more people honest.

You're right, DRM is absolutely useless for preventing piracy. However, it is fairly effective at removing rights from the legitimate consumer.

Anybody think that is an accident?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

...

"Being burned in the future" is only an issue if you re-read books. My experience is that most people don't. They buy a book, read it, and never read it again. They aren't buying books to keep, or to collect; they're buying them as a form of ephemeral entertainment.

Truth in that. In fact I don't often re-read fiction so I shouldn't be concerned about that, but I do re-read once in a while and do so much more often with non-fiction.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I know half a dozen people who've bought Kindles in the last year. They buy books from the Kindle bookstore.

How many people do you know who buy books for their Kindle from other bookstores?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

You're right, DRM is absolutely useless for preventing piracy. However, it is fairly effective at removing rights from the legitimate consumer.

Anybody think that is an accident?

Not even for a nano-second.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, I'm not justifying anything. I'm just saying that for most people it just plain doesn't MATTER. And that's the truth. We, who collect eBooks, or have multiple different readers, are not representitive of the typical user of these devices. But we know how to get around these issue, so once again, it doesn't matter.

Without DRM, most mainstream publishers wouldn't be publishing eBooks. That's a fact. It's not the bookstores who are insisting upon DRM; it's the publishers. If it's a choice between having eBooks published with DRM, and not having them published at all, give me DRM any day.

Give it a couple years. It will.

The market is diversifying. And your average person, who has a longer device replacement lag than your average user here, may wind up getting their second ereading device from another company.

Then, it will matter. It will matter a lot. Even if we're going to go with your "they don't use their rights thus they don't need them" argument (which is wrong both factually and ethically, but we'll go with it), how many ebooks do you have that are waiting to be read? Probably a lot more than you've read.

What happens when you try to transfer those books, that you haven't even read yet?

Apart from that, it doesn't matter if your average user knows how to strip DRM, or even what DRM is. They know what Pirate Bay is. When I was 13, I didn't know what DRM was but I did know that my music wasn't playing on my new mp3 player. And I knew that when I got another copy off the torrent sites of the times, they worked.

That was all I needed to know. That's all it took for me to pirate something. And I did it without having any idea why I was doing it. I just knew I had already bought this music with what little allowance money I made, and I wasn't buying it again.

Are you saying publishers wouldn't be going to ebooks without DRM because the market is inviable or because they'd be too scared of losing a few cents? Either way, you're wrong.

On the point of viability, we're talking about the industry that has had more of its cut taken by used sales than any other by a country mile.

The music, movie, and game industry have changed form factors multiple times in the last 3 decades. But the format for books hasn't changed in over a thousand years.

I am perfectly likely to buy a used copy of Catcher in the Rye from 1970. However, I'm not going to buy a VHS copy of anything even though it's only half as old because I don't own a VCR anymore.

The book industry has always had to deal with this issue. If there ever was an industry prepared to make the shift online, it should have been the ebook industry. The fact that they're screwing it up so badly is almost comical.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by afa

Er, no. I just checked Alexa (because I was stunned by the Top Ten claim and wanted to confirm) and Boing Boing is ranked 891 in US and 2,029 globally.

Sorry, most popular *blogs*. http://technorati.com/blogs/top100 Not quite the same thing, I know.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

drm would be like only being able to use the same condom with your partner. if you use a new condom you've gotta switch partners.

...pause....if that were the case, we'd all own every variety of EBR we could get our hands on!

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

Apart from that, it doesn't matter if your average user knows how to strip DRM, or even what DRM is. They know what Pirate Bay is. When I was 13, I didn't know what DRM was but I did know that my music wasn't playing on my new mp3 player. And I knew that when I got another copy off the torrent sites of the times, they worked.

The entire world does not consist of college students. The average Kindle user is a woman in her 50's 75% of Kindle users are over 35, and almost 40% are over 55. I don't think that there is a huge awareness of Pirate
Bay in this demographic, much less a desire to experiment with torrents.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

The entire world does not consist of college students. The average Kindle user is a woman in her 50's 75% of Kindle users are over 35, and almost 40% are over 55. I don't think that there is a huge awareness of Pirate
Bay in this demographic, much less a desire to experiment with torrents.

Where did you get that data?

just curious.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A more likely scenario is the person who "borrows" the book from the library, knowing that they can strip the DRM and keep it, INSTEAD of buying the retail version of the book. That's most assuredly a lost sale.

It is one thing to say that a person who gets a book from the library probably would not buy the book. It doesn't follow that someone who reads a library book will necessarily have bought the book were it not available from the library.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Harmon

It is one thing to say that a person who gets a book from the library probably would not buy the book. It doesn't follow that someone who reads a library book will necessarily have bought the book were it not available from the library.

No, indeed, and that's not what I was saying. My meaning was that, given the ease of removing DRM, I'm sure that there are people who will borrow a book from a library, remove the DRM, and keep the book, as an alternative to buying the book. ie, they are using the library as a source from which to pirate books.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Harmon

It is one thing to say that a person who gets a book from the library probably would not buy the book. It doesn't follow that someone who reads a library book will necessarily have bought the book were it not available from the library.

Very true.
In some cases it will result in a sale, but the converse is more likely false than true.