People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[Lemurion]

The point is not that 11 of 13 agreed with the poster of the original article that they believe DRM is necessary to protect sales; the point is that neither the original article nor you have offered any evidence that it does so.

We've offered evidence that the lack of DRM does not inhibit sales; you haven't offered any to the contrary.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Really? If so, I do apologise. Would you mind reminding me, either by repeating it or pointing me to specific posts?

Look you said that the success of Itunes proves that offering non DRM content doesn't depress digital sales. I said that the revenue of the recording industry halved during that period, proving that offering Non DRM content didn't really do anything for the financial health of industry. You said that was irrelevant. I guess the treatment is successful, even if the patient dies. What more is there to say?

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

The point is not that 11 of 13 agreed with the poster of the original article that they believe DRM is necessary to protect sales; the point is that neither the original article nor you have offered any evidence that it does so.

We've offered evidence that the lack of DRM does not inhibit sales; you haven't offered any to the contrary.

Er, my point was never that inhibited sales: my point was that large scale casual sharing would happen in the absence of DRM and make it unprofitable for publishers and authors.
So far I have seen no convincing argument that it won't happen, and plenty of evidence from the music industry that it will.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Look you said that the success of Itunes proves that offering non DRM content doesn't depress digital sales. I said that the revenue of the recording industry halved during that period, proving that offering Non DRM content didn't really do anything for the financial health of industry. You said that was irrelevant. I guess the treatment is successful, even if the patient dies. What more is there to say?

The problem is that you didn't prove the connection between offering DRM-free content and the drop in revenue for the recording industry.

What the iTunes numbers show is that while revenue for the industry as a whole fell, revenue from digital purchases rose when DRM was removed from iTunes.

This indicates that the drop in revenue was primarily due to a decrease in sales of physical media, rather than digital downloads - and does not prove any connection between the total industry revenue shortfall and the removal of DRM.

This does not address the following:

1) Digital media made it possible for people to return to buying music by the song, rather than by the album - which would naturally lead to a drop in overall revenue.
2) People have largely stopped re-buying music they already own. The industry has benefited significantly over the last few decades from people replacing records and cassettes with CDs - but now that people can rip CDs they already own, there's less impetus to buy the same album for the third or fourth time.

If you want to argue that the shift to digital had a negative impact on the recording industry's bottom line, I'll be happy to agree with you. What I don't see is the connection between removing DRM on music and the drop in sales.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Er, my point was never that inhibited sales: my point was that large scale casual sharing would happen in the absence of DRM and make it unprofitable for publishers and authors.
So far I have seen no convincing argument that it won't happen, and plenty of evidence from the music industry that it will.

Again, you haven't proven the point.

Those publishers which do offer DRM-free eBooks don't appear to suffer from large-scale casual sharing, even of books on the NYT bestseller list. So, while it may be a fear, there's no evidence that it would actually happen to the degree you're implying.

You've made the assertions, but you haven't connected the dots.

[kennyc]

Just popping in to provide this link to the Apple iTunes Anti-Trust lawsuit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...t-dispute.html

[toddos]

Originally Posted by stonetools

On #1, you are talking about rare instances of stores shutting down. Actually, when stores shut down or software publishers go out of business, consumers have problems that have nothing to do with DRM. Sure DRM doesn't help, but its just one incidental concern

What issues would a user have that's not DRM-related? Let's restrict this simply to media (videos, music, books, etc -- not software, where the lack of technical support or future updates could be a problem). Without DRM, media is media. It can be played anywhere the format is supported, and post-purchase is not tied to the store in any way. If the store that sold me the media goes out of business, my media still works. This is equivalent to a CD or paper book or DVD (but not necessarily Blu-Ray, due to the copy protection on the discs). With DRM, if the store that sold me the media goes out of business, I may or may not lose immediate access to that media (for example, music I've downloaded via Zune subscription, where the license is renewed monthly). If I don't lose access immediately, I will lose access as soon as I have to change devices (bought a new PC, new mp3 player, new ebook reader) because I no longer have the ability to authorize new devices.

And note that this doesn't even have to be the company going out of business, but simply a shift in business priorities. Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe are still very much alive, yet any pre-Kindle ebook I bought from Amazon is dead, any pre-Zune music I bought from Microsoft is dead, and any Content Server 3 content I bought from companies that licensed Adobe's ADE content delivery system is dead even. Most folks won't even know this has happened until their media breaks, since these types of stories don't reported nearly as widely as "ZOMG, company X went out of business" stories.

[stonetools]

This is not a copout, but I've GOT to get back to work. See you tomorrow, all

[Barty]

I forget, how was music DRM done away with? Did apple twist the industry's arm? Or was it Amazon? Did the industry achieve enlightenment by itself?

I think the situation there was different because Apple didn't own the DRM scheme and it was not tied to their hardware so they didn't have an incentive to keep DRM. Amazon IIRC was trailing itunes so they had an incentive to drop DRM to differentiate themselves. Otoh, apple wants to tie people to their iBooks and iThingies and Amazon wants to tie customers to their store and kindle. So it seems we're unlikely to see book DRM dropped absent significant customer revolt. For now, most people either are unaware of it or believe there's nothing they can do about it. I know six people with either a kindle or nook; they all think (aside from free and library books) they can only get books from amazon/BN resp., but they're ok with it since their chosen store works well and has all the books they want.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Barty

I forget, how was music DRM done away with? Did apple twist the industry's arm? Or was it Amazon? Did the industry achieve enlightenment by itself?

I think the situation there was different because Apple didn't own the DRM scheme and it was not tied to their hardware so they didn't have an incentive to keep DRM. Amazon IIRC was trailing itunes so they had an incentive to drop DRM to differentiate themselves. Otoh, apple wants to tie people to their iBooks and iThingies and Amazon wants to tie customers to their store and kindle. So it seems we're unlikely to see book DRM dropped absent significant customer revolt. For now, most people either are unaware of it or believe there's nothing they can do about it. I know six people with either a kindle or nook; they all think (aside from free and library books) they can only get books from amazon/BN resp., but they're ok with it since their chosen store works well and has all the books they want.

Read here. Steve Jobs called for removal of DRM, Amazon actually implemented it, and then a year later Apple followed suit. Given that Steve Jobs was the impetus for change, I suspect Apple would've gone DRM-free even if Amazon hadn't forced their hand.

It's interesting to note that Amazon didn't really have a dog in the hunt when it came to music. Without their own player, there was no reason to enforce any lock-in, and so going DRM-free was an obvious choice from a store perspective. With ebooks, they definitely want to lock you into the Kindle (note that they're very careful about saying "Kindle books" and never "ebooks", because they're not selling ebooks -- they're selling "Kindle books"). Apple's actually in a better position to go DRM-free here, since iBooks is severely lagging behind Kindle, Nook, and others (also why Apple's going nuts about getting a percentage of book sales from iOS apps). If they went DRM-free and opened up the iBooks store in iTunes itself rather than just on iOS devices, I suspect they'd see their sales soar.

On the other hand, Apple forced the agency pricing model on us, so it's pretty clear they don't "get" ebooks like they "got" music. Apple had no problem telling music labels to stuff it when they wanted control over pricing, but they couldn't stand up to the comparatively smaller and less powerful publishing consortium? I don't buy it. I think Apple just doesn't understand that market.

Amazon does, but they want everybody locked into Kindle so they have no incentive to fight the publishers.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

pirates don't release download figures.

Actually every pirate tracker logs download figures and makes them available for public inspection. Cyberlockers will also tell you the number of times a file has been downloaded. There are other places to download from that won't give you any figures, but those two will be by far the most commonly used so they will give you a pretty accurate idea.

Is it possible to find similar data on the number of legitimate purchases of a book on Amazon or similar? It would be interesting to compare figures for that Dragon Tattoo book.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Er, my point was never that inhibited sales: my point was that large scale casual sharing would happen in the absence of DRM and make it unprofitable for publishers and authors.

So why hasn't it happened for those companies & authors who release their works without DRM?

If lack of DRM causes casual sharing, to the detriment of the company, why hasn't Baen gone bankrupt? Why hasn't Ellora's Cave? How is Konrath getting richer every month, instead of his books being shared by so many people that he can't sell them anymore? Where's all the casual sharing that should be hurting these companies?

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by stonetools

On #1, you are talking about rare instances of stores shutting down. Actually, when stores shut down or software publishers go out of business, consumers have problems that have nothing to do with DRM. Sure DRM doesn't help, but its just one incidental concern

1st emphasis: rare
ehm you are either kidding, treating otherposters here like complete morons, or deliberately ignoring galore of postings, by using such a word, regardless of all the cases,which have been presented from all fields of digital media usage in general AND ebooks in particular.

None of both possibilities casts a good light at the quality of your arguments an your manners.

2nd emphasis: when stores shut down or software publishers go out of business, consumers have problems

Yes there's problems aplenty which can emerge in such a case
And the examples of Lokigames (publisher), or all the games supported by ScummVM show, that they can also be solved pretty well.

But - as you admitted - that have nothing to do with DRM. Thus there is no need to use said problems as a weasel-out argument.

In fact it's even the other way around, because if there is no DRM present people actually get the opportunity to face problems of the aforementioned kind and try to solve them - at which - as the above listed examples show they might succeed.
But if there is DRM on the data people might plainly end up with nothing at all.

There's no chance for maintenance
when everything flashes and turns to ashes.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Is it possible to find similar data on the number of legitimate purchases of a book on Amazon or similar? It would be interesting to compare figures for that Dragon Tattoo book.

One of the major stumbling blocks in these discussions is that the Big 6 publishers, and the DRM-heavy ebookstores, absolutely refuse to release any hard data about sales. They'll release soundbite quotes--"digital sales up 37%!" or useless ratios--"more ebooks sold than hardcovers!"--but won't give a baseline to work from, and won't give dollar amounts, and won't say how many sales makes a "bestseller."

Rusch's recent post about publishers' "trust me" approach shows how fuzzy the numbers have been for a long time; it's possible that publishers aren't used to actually dealing with hard-line numbers in any coherent way. (Of course they have production costs numbers. But they may not have "cost of printing book" and "cost of printing dust jacket" and "cost of wrapping dustjackets around the hardcovers" and "cost of packaging to ship" as separate costs, except at some low-level accounting subgroup. The high-end decision-making reports may just have "production costs" all in one line. And it may include the cost of replacing machinery and parking-meter costs for rush shipments.)

One of the things that's got to be terrifying them about ebooks is the incredible granularity of data... knowing *exactly* how many books sold at *exactly* which shops, to *exactly* how many buyers. They're swamped with data that they don't know what to do with; their economic models don't have a spot for those numbers.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

So why hasn't it happened for those companies & authors who release their works without DRM?

If lack of DRM causes casual sharing, to the detriment of the company, why hasn't Baen gone bankrupt? Why hasn't Ellora's Cave? How is Konrath getting richer every month, instead of his books being shared by so many people that he can't sell them anymore? Where's all the casual sharing that should be hurting these companies?

I actually think that sharing of books encourages sales. I've certainly picked up authors as a result of library reads, borrowing from a friend, etc. I almost never pick up a book blind for $8.

My secondary source would be cheap used books. I've certainly picked up authors for $2-$3 used at a used bookstore and become fans.

I think the music industry is suffering because people buy more singles (a point someone else has made) and also because people simply don't hear music any more. I have one rock radio station around me and I barely listen to it - it's a Clearchannel owned station that tends to run the same top-40 type tracks all of the time.

I rarely hear new music any more. It doesn't help that the RIAA has decided that the people are their enemies. I NEVER buy new CDs or music any more as a result - and I was the kind of person that ran multiple Columbia House memberships and bought lots of CDs in the 90s.

I think that sharing actually leads to greater sales. Some studies have suggested this (or that at minimum they have little effect)...like this one:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dp...h_ip01456.html

I think that if they successfully get books into a DRM'd, one-person-one-new-ebook-at-MSRP model, they are going to lose more money than ever. I'm almost never willing to chance reading something at full MSRP. I think most people are hesitant to do this. Part of the problem with the PC gaming market, I think, is that people hate buying something they cannot return and cannot resell if it sucks. That makes people hesitant to buy.