One author's pledge on DRM

[neilmarr]

The problem is, Steve, that the author and/or publisher has little control over store-imposed DRM. No matter how strongly you oppose it, they will apply it regardless.

I think the idea of compensating someone who's already paid their money in all innocence for a book of yours that carries third-party retail-imposed DRM with a free non-DRM copy is an effective way to play as fair as you'd obviously like to.

If a few more authors and publishers take the pledge as we have done, the stores might not like it ... but as far as I'm concerned, they can go take Kurt Vonnegut's famous flying f*ck at the mooooooooooon!

And, who knows, it might just make a few of the big boys think again if we protest in a way that doesn't directly hit their sales, but does seriouslty undermine their nefarious policy of DRM imposition by making it less and less effective and more and more notoriously discredited.

Good luck, Steve. I admire your stance and your pluck. Neil

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I feel confident - without any actual backing - that the people who constructed the Amazon DRM will offer it to the public domain should Amazon file for Chapter 11.

This, I fear, is real science fictional thinking.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Doranna Durgin

Just as a data point, Dennis--and to show the pitfalls of assuming on short data--my Baen webscription books have been consistently and continually pirated, and even though they're finally removed from the Baen site/servers (years past when they were reverted, I might note, including one book that was put up *after* it was long reverted), they still show up. (I think I have several sites to hit with a DMCA even at the moment.)

I have never been happy with that program from an author point of view, which is not politic to say, but I think it's important to remember that appearances can be deceiving (hey, it's 5am my time, I'm gonna use cliches and make typos). I'm sure others feel differently, and have their own reasons. Mine are certainly much deeper than DRM issues.

Just one illustration of how things look unexpectedly different from the other side, sometimes.

Doranna, I'm sorry to hear of your negative experience with the Baen program. I've found it to be a customer-friendly site, but their royalty rate to authors is on the low side, and they do make mistakes. (They put my Free Library books up for sale for a while, by mistake. But they caught it, apologized, took them down, and sent me a check--enough for dinner at a downscale restaurant.)

Re your pirated books, are you certain it's the Baen ebooks that were pirated? Thousands of SF books that are paper-only are up on the darknet, as I learned when I was just getting into this and a fan sent me a zipfile of pirate PDFs of most of my books, all of them scanned and ODR'd versions of my paper editions. (He did this in the spirit of, "I thought you might like to know these are up, and maybe you can use them," not "Hahaha." In fact, I did use one of them as the starting file for the legit ebook of one of my pre-computer novels.) Unless you've downloaded and verified, I don't think you can assume that the torrents have pirated editions of the ebooks rather than the paper books.

This is probably a topic for another thread, but...at first I was mad, and then I decided that the pirates were probably doing me a favor, though illegally and unintentionally. The vast majority of the reading world, even the SF-reading world, has never heard of me or my books. Why not make the best of it and accept the free advertising? It's not as if most of the people who download those torrents would have bought the book, anyway--though it's possible that some might later, if they discover that they like my writing. I suspect the real truth is that most pirated books wind up sitting inert on people's hard drives; someone just downloaded them because they could, and they'll never read them.

I'm not defending the pirating--it's clearly illegal--but it's way low on my list of things in life to worry about.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by starrigger

This, I fear, is real science fictional thinking.

I'm not going to deny that possibility, I just have a strong belief in the inherent good of mankind. Be they authors or programmers.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Doranna Durgin

Just as a data point, Dennis--and to show the pitfalls of assuming on short data--my Baen webscription books have been consistently and continually pirated, and even though they're finally removed from the Baen site/servers (years past when they were reverted, I might note, including one book that was put up *after* it was long reverted), they still show up. (I think I have several sites to hit with a DMCA even at the moment.)

I have never been happy with that program from an author point of view, which is not politic to say, but I think it's important to remember that appearances can be deceiving (hey, it's 5am my time, I'm gonna use cliches and make typos). I'm sure others feel differently, and have their own reasons. Mine are certainly much deeper than DRM issues.

Just one illustration of how things look unexpectedly different from the other side, sometimes.

I certainly don't get to see things from the author's side. Speaking as a reader, however, I will simply note that without Webscriptions I would never have heard of Doranna Durgin. I got some of your books that were included in various bundles. I read them. I liked them. So I went back and bought the rest the books by Dorranna Durgin that were available through Webscriptions. And when your books become available somewhere else, I'll almost certainly buy all the rest of what you've written (assuming reasonable price and lack of DRM).

That's one copy of everything you've written that's available in bits, purchased (or soon-to-be-purchased) by me solely because one of your books was included in a bundle that contained other books I knew I wanted. The descriptions of your books and their subject matter didn't appear to be to my taste, so I wouldn't have given you a try without that bundle. It turns out that I was wrong , and that I really like your writing. But without the bundle, I'd have kept right on passing you by.

I can't speak to issues of royalty rates, or contract terms, or any of those kinds of things. But the bundling is sheer genius! It got me to try out a ton of authors whose books I would never EVER have purchased on their own. There're quite a few I didn't (and still don't) like. More whose books I now check out when I see them, and many who've gone on the "buy it all, ASAP" list. Including you.

Xenophon

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I'm not going to deny that possibility, I just have a strong belief in the inherent good of mankind. Be they authors or programmers.

I doubt that the programmers would have anything to say about it. It would be in the hands of the lawyers and the CEO-types. And they might be good, honest people, but their responsibility at that point would be looking to save whatever they could of the company in hopes of a buyout.

[Kumabjorn]

On the surface, yes. Behind the scenes? Now there is a story to write about. Who will write the first DRM thriller. The nerdy programmer who tries to get the code out on the net behind lawyers and firewalls.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I'm not going to deny that possibility, I just have a strong belief in the inherent good of mankind. Be they authors or programmers.

Psst...Hey, buddy.....I've got this great bridge on some bottom land in Tennessee....

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Psst...Hey, buddy.....I've got this great bridge on some bottom land in Tennessee....

I'd be really interested in taking a look, because I'm certain you are not the deceiving kind, are you kennyc?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I'd be really interested in taking a look, because I'm certain you are not the deceiving kind, are you kennyc?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by starrigger

I'd be interested in hearing how other writers (or publishers) on the board feel about it.

I think this is an excellent attitude to take towards your customers. I think the good will is much more valuable than having customers that give up on your books because they can't shift them. I have also provided the same service for my customers on my former site, and I plan to continue that with my new (and, yes, still unfinished) site.

Fortunately for me, being self-published means I don't have to clear it with anybody.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I'm not going to deny that possibility, I just have a strong belief in the inherent good of mankind. Be they authors or programmers.

Mankind? Yes.
Corporations? No.

[jaxx6166]

Nice stamp Neil. Mind if I pirate it for whenever I decide to start selling my garbage?

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

The problem is, Steve, that the author and/or publisher has little control over store-imposed DRM. No matter how strongly you oppose it, they will apply it regardless.

I think the idea of compensating someone who's already paid their money in all innocence for a book of yours that carries third-party retail-imposed DRM with a free non-DRM copy is an effective way to play as fair as you'd obviously like to.

If a few more authors and publishers take the pledge as we have done, the stores might not like it ... but as far as I'm concerned, they can go take Kurt Vonnegut's famous flying f*ck at the mooooooooooon!

And, who knows, it might just make a few of the big boys think again if we protest in a way that doesn't directly hit their sales, but does seriouslty undermine their nefarious policy of DRM imposition by making it less and less effective and more and more notoriously discredited.

Good luck, Steve. I admire your stance and your pluck. Neil

That's a good point. That's why I'm hoping my fellow Open Sourcers will be able to put the final nail in the coffin of DRM very soon. I mean, heck, just look at all the progress they made in just the past 4 years! Wow. 5 years ago DRM seemed unavoidable. Now it's getting very hard to find, thankfully. All that remains is to educate the remaining masses that don't (or refuse to) get it, or accept that DRM doesn't work, and DRM-less content is not only better, but it's more consumer friendly. Oddly though, if the trend continues, we'll be able to sort out the anti-consumer/reader douchbags from the true authors, because only the douchbags will demand, or have, DRM on their products! And when that's 100% true, you simply don't buy from them and they will in short order either see the light, or go away.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Mankind? Yes.
Corporations? No.

Corporations are people too!