The death of print ... (or, does DRM drive you to piracy?)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

On the other hand, creative artist, if what you want is to make the most money up front as the "flavor of the week", and don't care whether your work is remembered week after next, then use the toughest DRM you can find...

The available evidence is that this is not true. DRM has not been shown increase sales of books, and costs money to implement.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The available evidence is that this is not true. DRM has not been shown increase sales of books, and costs money to implement.

Right as usual, but I was trying to make a point about long term durability/availability. Consider how much early history of videogames is being lost due to DRM. What little that is surviving is due to "pirates". And by early history, I mean late '70's through the late '80s. Most of the companies involved went broke, and the titles involved went out of print, and often were for machine that haven't been produced for years. (how long has it been since somebody made an Atari 800 machine? Shucks, games from the early IBM DOS era are just as bad off.) Yet without a machine, (and 5 and 1/4 inch floppies with machine specific controllers) such software will fall away and disappear over the next hundred years of so. All due to DRM.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Right as usual, but I was trying to make a point about long term durability/availability.

Oh, absolutely.

[Jane A]

Originally Posted by Sonist

People with wings are so rare, I just forgot about them....

IMO, people who will not buy an ebook because of DRM, but will buy the paper book instead, are a publisher's dream, and an added incentive for maintaining DRM.

I'm far from having wings but even though I voted for option 3 I wouldn't buy a pirated ebook. But I don't buy dead tree copies, either. If I really want to read a book that is not available in a strippable format I'll get it from PaperbackSwap.com (so they're used) or the library.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by Jane A

I'm far from having wings but even though I voted for option 3 I wouldn't buy a pirated ebook. But I don't buy dead tree copies, either. ...

You mean, if you were looking to buy Harry Potter as an ebook on the web, but then discovered, that it is simply not available for sale, you wouldn't be tempted to take a peek at one of the myriad "unofficial" copies, which pop up during the search... ? If so, for real, then

But IMO, the only reason we have DRM-free music sales, at reasonable prices per song (instead of the $2.20+ the music industry was pushing on Apple,) is because of the threat of piracy.

Current literature is not an open, free market. It is a monopoly, applied to certain forms of each title.

Publishers have a working model in place, and naturally will attempt to kill anything they see as a threat. Ebooks are a threat to the current model, thus the publishers insist on prices often higher than paper editions, with the hope of keeping potential purchasers from straying from the current model.

In reality, the threat of "piracy" is a much bigger stick for change, than the "predatory pricing" of Amazon.

[gfnin]

Like many of you I have a small library of PDB formatted books that are for the most part worthless to me because they will not work with my current reader. I will not re-purchase these books in a new format. For what its worth I don’t believe this medium will be taken seriously until the publishing companies come to terms with the DRM issues. I fear they won’t. Yet, there will always be someone willing to purchase one of these books with their silly DRM locks. The worst thing is that I could have re-sold; loaned out or given away my paperbacks and I can’t say the same for my eBooks. I will try this eBook thing for a while but will continue to purchase the books I really like as paper books and probably give up the eReader after a while. Why would I buy a book I can’t re-sell loaned out or given away (donate). As far as carrying 350 books at once… I’m good with carrying just one or two.

[fugazied]

That cartoon is brilliant. I accidentally chose option B, I mean to choose C!

The people in the corporations who push DRM haven't done enough consumer preference research. If they had they would know this is how we feel - DRM is terrible, especially when there are alternatives. Them trying to stamp out the alternatives is about as successful as the US war on drugs.

Also at the minimum, any attempt at DRM has to offer the same rights/usage as with a printed book, and most of them don't.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by alecE

Let's see, if the industry does have rational brain cells, they would make it easy for me to buy and read the first book of a series, so that if I liked it I could buy the remaining titles...

I want to buy Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell in eformat:
Is it available in the UK? - no, not at the moment
Can I buy it from the US? - no, regionally restricted
Are there illegal copies available? - you betcha

So if I follow this through to the logical but illegal conclusion, I could download a pirate copy for free, or could even download Cornwell's entire œuvre for free, but I cannot legally **BUY** a copy and put money in the publisher's and author's hands.

Rational brain cell count = zero

With you there. Geo restrictions are shaping up for me, the number one reason to go "look elsewhere" or to do the "naughty" IP shuffle/location lie to get the book I want.

I want to buy the book, I want to do the right thing and you won't let me?

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

My one plea: never pirate a Baen (or other DRM-free) book.

Absolutely! I will add to that regarding self published authors like Michael McCollum

[jotekman]

Sorry to say, I pirate ebooks with abandon. As an American living in Eastern Europe, for nearly every site I try to buy ebooks online wont accept my credit cards, the print copy isn't available (in English that is) and therefore it is nearly impossible for me to get books to read. Other than paying like 3x the price per book of having someone in the U.S. buy them for me, and then ship them. Which is bad. On the other hand, I own nearly 7000 print books, and buy when I happen to be in a country that WILL accept me buying things over the net from there. I agree, regional coding and credit restriction based on geography is SUCH a GREAT idea :|

[mores]

When prices are reasonable, I am willing to put up with DRM in the hopes that some day there will be a DRM-Stripper-For-Dummies with a nice GUI. If prices are outrageous, I have gone below and checked the darknet. Geo-restrictions drive me underground pretty quickly. I don't want to wait ages for a translated version to be available in the country I currently live in.

[intelchiq]

Honestly my only beef with DRM is that it stops me from being able to use the books that I purchase on the device of my choosing. I don't mind paying for it as long as I am able to read it without such restrictions.
As far as my next option if I can't purchase it in the particular format that my reader can use then I go "old school" and buy a hardcopy from a bookstore because I want to show support for my favorite authors.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by fugazied

Also at the minimum, any attempt at DRM has to offer the same rights/usage as with a printed book, and most of them don't.

By design. People who hope that there will be DRM schemes which do offer the same rights are fooling themselves, unfortunately. The elimination of fair use and first sale rights was not accidental.

[happysnapper22]

Dont crash, can be loaned, borrowed, sold on, purchased cheap in charity shops and the print qualiaty is miles better than eReaders.

Having looked at a eReader - I'll stick to the printed stuff.

[GhostHawk]

Which one happy snapper? How many hours have you actually spent with one?

Seriously, you want to buy paper, go ahead, its your right.
But don't come here to the nexus of ebook readers and tell us we are wrong.

Take your troll and head back to your bridge please.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Which one happy snapper? How many hours have you actually spent with one?

Seriously, you want to buy paper, go ahead, its your right.
But don't come here to the nexus of ebook readers and tell us we are wrong.

Take your troll and head back to your bridge please.

He did state his personal opinion. He did not say that anybody are wrong.

And I think that MobileRead is the right place to be extra critical since the knowledgelevl is high here.

I have read a lot on my Gen3 but still thing reading a paper book is a better experience. Unfortunately I might have to start to read more on my Gen3 since I am starting to have trouble reading small text...