Social DRM Take 2

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

There is only one problem with applying this idea to electronic files, and that is web anonymity.

People don't steal at a produce stand, because of the concern of being identified and caught (either immediately, or the next time you're out in public). Most theft is headed off by showing the potential thief that they are not anonymous.

On the web as it is designed today, users can (mostly) establish anonymity, so they can steal and have no fear of being identified and caught. This creates more of a casually dishonest atmosphere on the web, and changes the business dynamic radically. Losses (not price, the proportion of stolen goods to sold goods) are higher, and a business must decide whether it needs to take steps to mitigate the larger amount of loss.

First, a point on which I beg to differ: I don't think the concern of being identified and caught is the only or even the main reason people do not steal from produce stands.

I may be a more trusting soul than some.

Second, I'm not questioning the idea that when a business sees increased losses it must take steps to mitigate those losses.

I'm questioning the idea that DRM, at least when applied to e-books, is in any way a viable method of mitigation. My contention is that rather than mitigating these losses the only effect it has is to increase losses due to illicit downloads if it has any effect on losses at all.

Why should the publisher waste money on something that annoys a significant proportion of their customers without producing the result they're looking for?

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Without commercial success to count on, not only will you see fewer writers, but you'll see less of a support base for them, i.e., editors, proofers, printers, artists, etc... so you'll get a much less polished product. There may be plenty of e-books, but if they have ugly (or no) covers, and read as if they were written by grade-schoolers... who will want to read them?

The recent years have just shown an explosion of titles p, e, whatever so I doubt profoundly there will be a decrease in the number of titles soon.

Regarding quality, that is something that history will decide, but again I doubt this era will be remembered at tons of titles but zero merit

Regarding artists, proofers and such, again digital art enabled lots and lots of new sff artists to produce since after all you may have a vision in your mind's eye but lack the technical skills to paint it, while using digital tools you can do it. Check the annual Spectrum books for example which have some of the most interesting sff art out there

So again to me is mind boggling to have all this doom and gloom projections

Personally I think that the only predictor of the amount of books written is societal wealth so as long as the US and Europe remain wealthy there will be enough books written, the ones that find their audience will generate revenue and so on...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

First, a point on which I beg to differ: I don't think the concern of being identified and caught is the only or even the main reason people do not steal from produce stands.

I should have been more clear: The reason that people who desire to steal, at any venue, do not... is the fear of being identified, and thereby caught and punished.

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I'm questioning the idea that DRM, at least when applied to e-books, is in any way a viable method of mitigation.

Granted: In its present form, e-book DRM is not an effective method of loss mitigation. But unlike many people on these forums, I believe that that fact can change in time.

Again, I know people here believe that I am for DRM, and I say once again, I'm not. But I don't believe for a minute that the present state of DRM is the best it's going to get, nor that companies won't stop trying to use it, if they see it as the only way to mitigate loss, and despite its unpopularity. And companies are trying to devise new methods as we speak, because they don't see an alternative.

My concern is that there are other methods of DRM that someday may be devised, that will turn out to be very effective... and a pain in the a$$ for everyone on both sides of the table. I worry that if the e-book market does not find another way to effectively sell e-books, we'll get stuck with it, whether we like it or not.

Saying "It sucks, so forget it" won't make DRM magically go away. We need alternatives to DRM that will be acceptable to both sides of the table, so DRM can finally be put to rest.

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Granted: In its present form, e-book DRM is not an effective method of loss mitigation. But unlike many people on these forums, I believe that that fact can change in time.

[...]And companies are trying to devise new methods as we speak, because they don't see an alternative.

My concern is that there are other methods of DRM that someday may be devised, that will turn out to be very effective... and a pain in the a$$ for everyone on both sides of the table. I worry that if the e-book market does not find another way to effectively sell e-books, we'll get stuck with it, whether we like it or not.

Saying "It sucks, so forget it" won't make DRM magically go away. We need alternatives to DRM that will be acceptable to both sides of the table, so DRM can finally be put to rest.

I agree companies will keep trying to look for ways to "protect" "their" electronic content against threats that may or may not exist.

Postulate perfect DRM: unbreakable, "future-proof", owned by a single or consortium of companies, the majority of electronic content produced burdened with it.

The losses to all of us are hard to oversee: I do not for one moment believe that corporate entities like that are EVER going to be willing to release content to the public domain, we'll see what is happening now: companies will just "sit" on the content (who knows, it might become profitable again someday), try to extend copyright terms indefinitely (not a new thing), and if they go belly-up, the content goes down in flames with them.

Bleak? Very. And of course, even if we do find an acceptable alternative to DRM, there is no guarantee that some bean-counter in a corporation won't think the whole DRM-deal is more profitable and go ahead with implementation anyway. That is the problem with corporations: you are not dealing with reasonable people, you are dealing with soulless entities aimed solely at making a profit.

That said, I do not believe this "perfect" DRM exists: it is only feasible if you give them control over the content, the hardware, and all the steps in between. Which would be terminally stupid, from both the consumer's as the content creator's point of view.

And in the case of books, unless we go to a 100% ebook world which I don't see happening anytime soon, there will always be the paper book, a band saw, a high-throughput scanner, OCR, and dedicated pirate proofreaders. The quality of these pirated products will only rise over time as scanning/OCR technology gets better and people stuck in this bleak future get 'behind the cause'.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

The losses to all of us are hard to oversee: I do not for one moment believe that corporate entities like that are EVER going to be willing to release content to the public domain, we'll see what is happening now: companies will just "sit" on the content (who knows, it might become profitable again someday), try to extend copyright terms indefinitely (not a new thing), and if they go belly-up, the content goes down in flames with them.

Why would it "go down in flames"? A company's IPR forms a part of its assets. If it goes "belly up" the liquidator will sell those assets - they don't just "vanish into thin air".

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why would it "go down in flames"? A company's IPR forms a part of its assets. If it goes "belly up" the liquidator will sell those assets - they don't just "vanish into thin air".

Well, imagine for a moment that Amazon or Mobipocket go bust. Imagine they have this "perfect" DRM. Their activation servers are now gone. That is one problem.

Then they have a large digital warehouse with locked content. Who knows what will happen to that? Even with the best intentions, horrible mistakes are made (such as the BBC taping over the old Doctor Who episodes). And even if nothing goes intentionally or unintentionally wrong and the content with DRM system gets sold off to an interested bidder, the most likely result is nothing will change. The new party will (maybe) resume sales, or they might decide that it is currently not "economically viable" and shelve the stuff indefinitely.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

And even if nothing goes intentionally or unintentionally wrong and the content with DRM system gets sold off to an interested bidder, the most likely result is nothing will change. The new party will (maybe) resume sales, or they might decide that it is currently not "economically viable" and shelve the stuff indefinitely.

But, with respect, if they hold the rights to the material, that is their choice to make, just as paper books frequently go out of print when the publisher decides that sales have fallen to a level at which a new print run in uneconomic. If the author is still alive, and feels that there is still money to be made from a book, they would probably, in that circumstance, request that the rights to the book revert to them, and make new publishing arrangements.

We have to accept that books are commercial property, and rights to them can be bought and sold. They aren't something that we have some "divine right" to.

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We have to accept that books are commercial property, and rights to them can be bought and sold. They aren't something that we have some "divine right" to.

Hey, I am all for people getting compensated for their work. But ultimately we do have that right, although it is not divine in nature. That is why there are limits on copyright, that is why we have a public domain, and that is where all books ultimately should end up.

One of the reasons why I find it so objectionable that companies like Disney build their "empire" on public domain content and then turn around and try to lock their reworking of that content up forever.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Regarding the "collect pre-order payments before the book is published" scenario, I know of one author who effectively did that by asking people to subscribe to a book that would be released one chapter at a time, but only if enough people subscribed (Diane Duane). That project is still ongoing, and is only up to Chapter 8 after over 2 years. See http://www.the-big-meow.com/ for more info.

Also http://www.korval.com/fledgling/ and http://www.korval.com/saltation/ by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (Liaden Universe).

[HarryT]

It should be noted that paying for a book by public subscription is an extremely old idea - it was commonly done in Victorian times.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

That said, I do not believe this "perfect" DRM exists: it is only feasible if you give them control over the content, the hardware, and all the steps in between. Which would be terminally stupid, from both the consumer's as the content creator's point of view.

You do realize you just came within a hair's breadth of describing the Kindle system, don't you? I believe that's exactly what Amazon is trying to do, and judging from the customer buy-in, it seems to be working.

Originally Posted by acidzebra

Hey, I am all for people getting compensated for their work. But ultimately we do have that right, although it is not divine in nature. That is why there are limits on copyright, that is why we have a public domain, and that is where all books ultimately should end up.

I disagree there. I do not have any right, divine or otherwise, to demand a creator allow me to buy, borrow or take his creation. It is the creator's right to bestow access to others, or to lock his creation away, or to destroy it three minutes after he's finished it.

Disney's situation is unique, in that their creations are already out there, and realistically-speaking, cannot be taken away. In fact, they don't want them taken away... they want them to continue to make them money. Theirs is really a battle for profit, not control.

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

You do realize you just came within a hair's breadth of describing the Kindle system, don't you? I believe that's exactly what Amazon is trying to do, and judging from the customer buy-in, it seems to be working.

Yes, and I take a dim view of the Kindle for exactly those reasons. That said, the Kindle also does mobipocket and you can load all manner of content on it yourself.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I disagree there. I do not have any right, divine or otherwise, to demand a creator allow me to buy, borrow or take his creation. It is the creator's right to bestow access to others, or to lock his creation away, or to destroy it three minutes after he's finished it.

Steve, maybe I misunderstand or maybe you do, but I was talking about copyright eventually expiring and ideas/books/content entering the public domain. This as far as I know concerns only published works (I think - IANAL). I view this as a good thing.

An interesting not entirely unrelated quote:

In the world of books, the indefinite extension of copyright has had a perverse effect. It has created a vast collection of works that have been abandoned by publishers, a continent of books left permanently in the dark. In most cases, the original publisher simply doesn't find it profitable to keep these books in print. In other cases, the publishing company doesn't know whether it even owns the work, since author contracts in the past were not as explicit as they are now. The size of this abandoned library is shocking: about 75 percent of all books in the world's libraries are orphaned. Only about 15 percent of all books are in the public domain. A luckier 10 percent are still in print. The rest, the bulk of our universal library, is dark.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/ma...pagewanted=all

[HarryT]

The problem with the present copyright system is that very often, in terms of individual lifetimes, copyright might just as well be eternal. Take an example we've been talking about in another thread - L. Sprague de Camp's SF classic "Lest Darkness Fall". It was written in 1939, but Mr. de Camp only died in 2000, so the book won't enter the public domain for most of us until 1st Jan 2071 - that's a copyright term of 132 years! I almost certainly won't live to see that book enter the public domain, even though it was written decades before I was born.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

Steve, maybe I misunderstand or maybe you do, but I was talking about copyright eventually expiring and ideas/books/content entering the public domain. This of course concerns only published works (I think - IANAL). I view this as a good thing.

Yes... if a creation is copywritten, it is implied that it will someday be in public domain, provided of course someone had the good sense to preserve it that long. I don't have a problem with public domain either, nor do I like to see companies "rewrite the rules" in their favor just because they have the cash to do so. They knew the rules, and they should be forced to abide by them, just like anyone else, or be punished for "public domain infringement."

Regarding the additional NYT quote: Yes, it's a good reason to make the effort to "free" those books, and a good argument against extending copyright. If only we could get someone to do it...

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I disagree there. I do not have any right, divine or otherwise, to demand a creator allow me to buy, borrow or take his creation. It is the creator's right to bestow access to others, or to lock his creation away, or to destroy it three minutes after he's finished it.

So then why as in a later post - agree that "orphan works" are bad and every effort should be made to make them available ??- which btw I agree with completely

If the creator has an absolute right than whoever bought the right to his creations has the same absolute right so if that entity so chooses to leave tons of works "expire", it's their absolute right after all...

This I think is the ultimate crux of dispute for me - I think that everyone agrees that authors - and others who enable their work to go public like editors, publishers and such - should be compensated, but once a book is offered to the public, the author' rights and by extension whomever holds them are not absolute anymore and the public has a stake