STUDY SHOWS: Ditching DRM could reduce piracy, prices

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm not aware of any bookreader which restricts you to getting books from a single source. Can you name one?

Generally speaking, though, with the exception of the very occasional "exclusive" publishing deal, pretty much all eBooks are sold in all the major bookstores.

Sadly enough, not really.

There are two books I want to buy for my Sony (when I get it) that Amazon carries and Sony does not:

The Blue Sword - Robin McKinley
The Pearl of the Soul of the World -Meredith Ann Pierce


Kobo - my current ereader - carries The Pearl of the Soul of the World but not The Blue Sword.


*sigh* I came real real close to buying a Kindle just to get a copy of The Blue Sword in eformat. I eventually bought the paperback.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

If that is the ratio, then the typical users would be the sophisticated users, typical being the most common user.

Beside that this is also a matter of time. How many people that have been reading ebooks for lets say 5 years could be described by the definition that you gave for TU? How many that are TU today will be SU next year? How many of them don't know somebody that can do the sophisticated work for them?

Corrected - thanks!

As prices go down, the ratio is likely to go up. Eventually, EBRs will be sufficiently cheap that DRM and file formats will be irrelevant. The technical stuff will become invisible to the normal end user, just as has happened with the Apple OS.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

Kobo - my current ereader - carries The Pearl of the Soul of the World but not The Blue Sword.

*sigh* I came real real close to buying a Kindle just to get a copy of The Blue Sword in eformat. I eventually bought the paperback.

I think you have just become Exhibit A for the point I make below about convenience.

(No, I can't time travel, nor insert posts into the middle of a thread. What I can do is retrieve something I thought had posted but didn't, and repost it.)

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

If that is the ratio, then the typical users would be the sophisticated users, typical being the most common user.

Beside that this is also a matter of time. How many people that have been reading ebooks for lets say 5 years could be described by the definition that you gave for TU? How many that are TU today will be SU next year? How many of them don't know somebody that can do the sophisticated work for them?

Corrected - thanks!

As prices go down, the ratio is likely to go up. Eventually, EBRs will be sufficiently cheap that DRM and file formats will be irrelevant. The technical stuff will become invisible to the normal end user, just as has happened with the Apple OS.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

What happens if the single source that works with their EBR doesn't have the book they want? Remind me again, what forces them to only be able to buy from that single source?

I don't disagree with what you are saying - I do think that you are missing the point. In fact, what you are saying supports my position.

I'm saying that in the real world, the real issue is convenience to the end user. Forget about the imposition and aggravation that DRM represents. That only adds a measure of inconvenience. Think, instead, of cost in terms of time, money and effort to the customer.

If the price of a second EBR plus the price of the typical ebook are sufficiently high, the potential customer will measure that against other acquisition opportunities: namely, stripping an already owned file, or going to the darknet.

Putting aside the red herring that it is illegal to strip DRM or download from pirate sites, the only real question is: "what is easier for the customer at any specific price point." Most people are willing to trade money for convenience. That's why a typical user will likely pay a buck on Amazon for a public domain book, even if he or she knows that the book is available on Project Gutenberg. How much of your time & effort is it worth to save a buck?

If a second EBR cost $10, and ebooks cost a dollar, very few people would go to the dark side to acquire ebooks. At these price points, DRM is irrelevant. The EBR is essentially free, measured over its reading life. And why would anyone was time on stripping, conversion, or downloading if EBRs were essentially free and ebooks cost a buck?

But at $150 for the second EBR, and $10 fo each ebook, a whole lot more people would be willing to such things.

I think that this shows that DRM is irrevelevant, except in that it represents a kind of super duper proprietary file format. Because it is harder to strip DRM than to convert file formats, and because of the practical barriers the law places on getting the tools to strip DRM, the actuall effect of DRM is to make enough consumers willing to pay more for ebooks at a higher profit to the seller (or so the seller believes) - hence a higher "convenience factor" price point, and that higher price point in & of itself tends to tether consumers to a single EBR with a single company.

That's why DRM is about convenience, not piracy. DRM does not prevent piracy. It just makes it more likely that a customer will pay a higher price for an ebook because of the relative convenience.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm not aware of any bookreader which restricts you to getting books from a single source. Can you name one?

Where else can you buy a DRM'd title for the Kindle other than from Amazon? The only DRM they support is their own, right?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Harmon

...the actuall effect of DRM is to make enough consumers willing to pay more for ebooks at a higher profit to the seller (or so the seller believes) - hence a higher "convenience factor" price point, and that higher price point in & of itself tends to tether consumers to a single EBR with a single company.

That sure sounds like DRM has an impact on the average consumer (higher prices, tethered to a single company...etc). Many of them don't realize they're being impacted, but they certainly are.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

*sigh* I came real real close to buying a Kindle just to get a copy of The Blue Sword in eformat. I eventually bought the paperback.

Instead of buying it for a Kindle app, stripping DRM and converting it to epub?

And you are correct, Kobo and Sony both have limited selections compared to Amazon and B&N. Also, Sony at least tend to be a bit higher prices than any of the other ones. You only need to look at the "free now at..." threads in the freebie forum to see that selection and prices vary wildly between ebook (r-)etailers. Surprisingly often, books listed for Kindle are not available in the Sony store when I look for them there.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

The Blue Sword - Robin McKinley
The Pearl of the Soul of the World -Meredith Ann Pierce


*sigh* I came real real close to buying a Kindle just to get a copy of The Blue Sword in eformat. I eventually bought the paperback.

The Blue Sword doesn't appear to be available in ebook form at any retailer. Perhaps, the author plans to release it herself.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Harmon

As prices go down, the ratio is likely to go up. Eventually, EBRs will be sufficiently cheap that DRM and file formats will be irrelevant. The technical stuff will become invisible to the normal end user, just as has happened with the Apple OS.

We're almost at that point.

A new Kindle for $79 and a pre-owned Nook Touch for $79 are available. For $158 you have most things covered. That's only $9 more than what one ereader cost last year.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Harmon

It seems to me that the "Typical User" buys ebooks from a single source like Amazon or B&N, based on which EBR he or she has purchased. This TU reads the book once, or rereads it, on that EBR. The TU does not own more than one EBR, is unaware of calibre, and would not find it either easy or worth the time to format shift. He or she would not know how to retrieve the ebook file and email it to someone else, nor would the TU care to go to the trouble of doing it.

It is only the "sophisticated user" who can or will or wishes to do these things.

I'll bet that the ratio between TUs and SUs is 100-1.

I went from fitting your definition of a "typical user" to a "sophisticated user" in probably less than a week last year.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Fbone

We're almost at that point.

A new Kindle for $79 and a pre-owned Nook Touch for $79 are available. For $158 you have most things covered. That's only $9 more than what one ereader cost last year.

Except I want all my books accessible on the same reader. I don't want to have to remember that I bought this book for a Kindle and that book for a Nook. It would be as silly and confusing as having to organize my library of paper books by which seller they came from.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Except I want all my books accessible on the same reader. I don't want to have to remember that I bought this book for a Kindle and that book for a Nook. It would be as silly and confusing as having to organize my library of paper books by which seller they came from.

(shrug)

So buy an iPad .

OK, just joking, but that's one of the reasons I did that. I've got Kindle, Kobo, B&N, and iBooks, and that's not even all the ebook reader apps I have.

If you have a general purpose tablet or smartphone, you don't really have a DRM problem-there are apps for that. Final point: as the price of reader devices go down and as smartphones becomeubiquitous, DRM isues will go away. The final nail in the coffin will be the ubiquity of cloud computing in the 5-10 year time frame. OK, back to unpacking. Have fun.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

(shrug)

So buy an iPad .

OK, just joking, but that's one of the reasons I did that. I've got Kindle, Kobo, B&N, and iBooks, and that's not even all the ebook reader apps I have.

If you have a general puropse tablet or smartphone, you don't really have a DRM problem-there are apps for that. Final point: as the price of reader devices go down and as smartphones becomeubiquitous, DRM isues will go away. The final nail in the coffin will be the ubiquity of cloud computing in the 5-10 year time frame. OK, back to unpacking. Have fun.

Except when the seller or DRM provider go out of business. Then it's the same ol' krap. You can't access your books and can't transfer them to another device.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Fbone

The Blue Sword doesn't appear to be available in ebook form at any retailer. Perhaps, the author plans to release it herself.

Oh shoot! What happened?!

Ok, I admit that when I originally made the decision to not buy the kindle for this book was almost a year ago. I hadn't paid attention to the page since, even when I pulled up the link. It used to be available in kindle format...and I've borrowed it from the library in ebook format, too. But that was the beginning of the year. I hope you're right and she has those plans...