Tor Books UK on Dumping DRM: "no discernible increase in piracy"

[Ninjalawyer]

There's a blog post here from Tor that talks about the affect (or lack thereof) of ditching DRM.

The title of the thread gives away the ending, but I'll quote a salient section of the post anyway:

We had discussions with our authors before we made the move and we considered very carefully the two key concerns for any publisher when stripping out the DRM from ebooks: copyright protection and territoriality of sales. Protecting our author’s intellectual copyright will always be of a key concern to us and we have very stringent anti-piracy controls in place. But DRM-protected titles are still subject to piracy, and we believe a great majority of readers are just as against piracy as publishers are, understanding that piracy impacts on an author’s ability to earn an income from their creative work. As it is, we’ve seen no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles, despite them being DRM-free for nearly a year.

I hope more publishers ditch their DRM schemes, and I also hope sellers of other media take notice. I dream of the day I can buy a video file from any service and play it on any device without first stripping the DRM.

[JSWolf]

I'll just pipe in with the following...

The move has been a hugely positive one for us, it’s helped establish Tor and Tor UK as an imprint that listens to its readers and authors when they approach us with a mutual concern—and for that we’ve gained an amazing amount of support and loyalty from the community. And a year on we’re still pleased that we took this step with the imprint and continue to publish all of Tor UK’s titles DRM-free.

[John Carroll]

This is a great move by Tor. Hopefully others will follow.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

There's a blog post here from Tor that talks about the affect (or lack thereof) of ditching DRM.

I hope more publishers ditch their DRM schemes, and I also hope sellers of other media take notice. I dream of the day I can buy a video file from any service and play it on any device without first stripping the DRM.

Ditto ...

[ghostyjack]

I hope that means they will tell the retailer that the previously purchase DRM-laden books should now be made available to the purchaser DRM-free.

I purchased many L. E. Modesitt Jr. books from Kobo before they made them DRM-free. The books are available now as DRM free, but the ones in my library are still DRMed and Kobo says that untill Tor tells them, they wont let me have them DRM-free.

I know it trivial to remove the DRM, but the fact is the books are available DRM-free, so why aren't mine?

[sonofthe]

Originally Posted by ghostyjack

I hope that means they will tell the retailer that the previously purchase DRM-laden books should now be made available to the purchaser DRM-free.

I purchased many L. E. Modesitt Jr. books from Kobo before they made them DRM-free. The books are available now as DRM free, but the ones in my library are still DRMed and Kobo says that untill Tor tells them, they wont let me have them DRM-free.

I know it trivial to remove the DRM, but the fact is the books are available DRM-free, so why aren't mine?

If you log into the Kobo site and look at your library, I think there's a download link for each book. Is it DRM-free there? If so, maybe you can delete the books from your reader and re-download them in their DRM-free format.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by sonofthe

If you log into the Kobo site and look at your library, I think there's a download link for each book. Is it DRM-free there? If so, maybe you can delete the books from your reader and re-download them in their DRM-free format.

I think what he's referring to is that Kobo CS needs to push an updated version to his account so he get the DRM free downloads. In my experience once you buy a book from Kobo you don't get any updated versions automatically, they have to be pushed to your account.

[ottdmk]

The thing is, the kepub downloaded to the reader is irrelevant. You can't take kepub books off of the reader (at least, not easily), so what does it matter if the copy has DRM or not?

As long as the Download link from the webpage is updated to serve up the DRM-free edition, that's all that's needed.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

The thing is, the kepub downloaded to the reader is irrelevant. You can't take kepub books off of the reader (at least, not easily), so what does it matter if the copy has DRM or not?

As long as the Download link from the webpage is updated to serve up the DRM-free edition, that's all that's needed.

When ghostyjack says in his Kobo library I guess I'm just assuming he means ePub's, not kePub's. I know that's what I was referring to in my post.

[soulfuldog]

I wish I liked the science fiction, fantasy genres so I could buy books from them!

[bgalbrecht]

I think it's ironic that the Big-6 insistence on DRM and price fixing did more to ensure locking customers into the Amazon walled garden more than anything else they could have done. I'm glad Tor was able to do this experiment, but I don't think the publishers got the message yet. I'm not even sure that Macmillan and the rest of its subsidiaries have switched to DRM-free, they certainly resisted dropping the price fixing.

[ghostyjack]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

When ghostyjack says in his Kobo library I guess I'm just assuming he means ePub's, not kePub's. I know that's what I was referring to in my post.

Yes I was referring to ePub and not KePub, don't see any point in backing up a Kobo proprietary format when I may well be attempting to read the file in a non-Kobo (or Kobo-compatible) device.

I was also talking about the library on the Kobo web site when I log into it via a web browser. The files there are still DRMed.

As I now have purchased my first Kobo reader - an Aura HD - I can download them direct to the reader using the KePub format if I choose. But as I have only had it recently, this format would not be of any value until now. My purchases from their site would require me to download them to my PC so I could transfer them to either my Sony reader or Android phone or tablet (I use Mantano as it's much better at rendering ePub's). Having to download them via ADE and them strip the DRM before transferring to the device, although trivial, is a pain if you don't have to.

[Jack Tingle]

I once wrote a post, "[novels] not worth stealing". It's pretty simple. If a publisher makes his books available in ebook form, and without DRM, I wouldn't steal them under any circumstances. It takes quite a bit of time to find a pirated copy of a particular book (or strip one), check it for viruses, reformat some of them, and put them in whatever form you need. Once you value your time at something over minimum wage, stealing costs too much in most cases.

Now at [exorbitant price], I might not BUY the book, but I wouldn't generally steal it. There is an ethical component here as well. The publisher and I just disagree about how much the book is worth. If you wouldn't shop-lift it, I say you shouldn't pirate it either.

Now, if the publisher won't sell it to me in a usable form at any price for whatever reasons, I have no reason to respect his position. I still may not steal it for ethical reasons, but under some circumstances, I might. He is not materially harmed under those circumstances.

[danskmacabre]

So can I buy ebooks directly from the Tor site from Australia or do I have to go through a 3rd party and are there any region restrictions?

I've generally avoided buying books from big publishers because of the DRM and stuck with indie authors with no DRM, but if I can get ebooks drm free from Tor directly I'd love to buy some of their books, especially as I'm a big scifi/Fantasy fan.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by danskmacabre

So can I buy ebooks directly from the Tor site from Australia or do I have to go through a 3rd party and are there any region restrictions?

I've generally avoided buying books from big publishers because of the DRM and stuck with indie authors with no DRM, but if I can get ebooks drm free from Tor directly I'd love to buy some of their books, especially as I'm a big scifi/Fantasy fan.

You can only buy paper books directly from the Tor/Forge site, ebooks you need to get from a third party. There are regional restrictions for some books, but quite a few are available outside US/Canada too. Kobo discounts Tor books in a lot of countries, so where they are available outside US/Canada they can usually be had a lot cheaper than the US/Canada price.