People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Music lost DRM because it was just too easy to buy the CD and rip it to a DRM free electronic version.

If you were going to buy the CD why would you even look at mp3?

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by Catlady

The vast majority never had any intention of stealing books in the first place, so DRM has no influence on their behavior. They only learn about DRM when it stops them from accessing their own books on a different device. So the very existence of DRM results in more people learning how to circumvent it.

Park your vehicle in a very public parking lot with lots of people, leave a $10 bill on your car windshield so it is nice and visible, leave for an hour. Is the money there or gone?

While I trust most people to do the right thing most of the time, odds are someone will take that cash because they either feel entitled to it because you left it somewhere unprotected or because they simply need the cash. I would give to the latter person and do all the time, don't care what they use it for. But the small set in the first group are the ones causing the rest of us to deal with DRM.

No, I do not like or want DRM. I love Webscription. However I also see why publishers want it. To me though it simply adds to my cost. And I also wonder if many DRM companies are owned in whole or part via stock or other means, by the same publishers (the individuals or the companies themselves) who are using it??? But because of that why would a publisher want to end DRM?

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

Park your vehicle in a very public parking lot with lots of people, leave a $10 bill on your car windshield so it is nice and visible, leave for an hour. Is the money there or gone?

It depends where you are. Philip Zimbardo, of the Stanford Prison Experiment, performed an earlier deviance test:

Originally Posted by Zimbardo

In 1969, Zimbardo placed one 1959 Oldsmobile auto on a street across from the Bronx campus of New York University (a ghetto area), and one on a street in Palo Alto, California near the Stanford University campus (a rather affluent area). "The license plates of both cars were removed and the hoods opened to provide the necessary releaser signals (Zimbardo, 1969)." Within three days, the car in the Bronx was completely stripped, the result of 23 separate incidents of vandalism. The car in Palo Alto sat unmolested for over a week. Zimbardo and two of his graduate students decided to provide an example by using a sledgehammer to bash the car. They found that after they had taken the first blow, it was extremely difficult to stop. Observers, who were shouting encouragement, finally joined in the vandalism until the car was completely wrecked.

If you read The Lucifer Effect, he goes on to state that one nice old gentleman actually closed the hood on the Palo Alto car when it was raining.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

If you were going to buy the CD why would you even look at mp3?

Mostly because there's no slot to stick the CD in my iPod.

[HamsterRage]

Are we sure that the "Naughty 10%" is just 10%? That sounds like a cornerstone of the argument to me. If it's just a small percentage of the population, it's easier to characterize them as evil wrong-doers.

What if it's 70%? What if it's 30%?

What if a good chunk of whatever percentage the "Naughty" people are, are darknetting material because they're pissed off at georestrictions (or can't get the material any other way)?

What if a good chunk of whatever percentage the "Naughty" people are, are darknetting material because they're pissed off at what they perceive as price gouging?

Are they still "naughty" then? Or is it just a case of "the people have spoken"?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

Mostly because there's no slot to stick the CD in my iPod.

[CyGuy]

Quote: "Again, we look at our 10% who have an overbearing sense of entitlement."

As soon as someone makes a statement like this they prove that their opinion should be given virtually no weight at all. A sense of entitlement? Wow, just wow...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

If you were going to buy the CD why would you even look at mp3?

If you buy the CD, you get something that works with your car's CD player, use the CD with your home stereo and you can rip it to the format of your choice for use with your portable media player. So actually, in a lot of cases, having the CD is better then just buying the digital files.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you buy the CD, you get something that works with your car's CD player, use the CD with your home stereo and you can rip it to the format of your choice for use with your portable media player. So actually, in a lot of cases, having the CD is better then just buying the digital files.

The last time I looked at buying a CD v. buying the MP3 from iTunes, the CD was $14.99 and the download was $9.99. A blank CD costs about $0.25. So I went with the download and I'll burn a CD if I want to play it in my car.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

If you were going to buy the CD why would you even look at mp3?

CDs are convenient for physical devices. MP3s are convenient for small portable devices. I've found I actually prefer CDs for my car stereo, despite it having an MP3 player connector and a port for memory sticks (why I bought that model, in fact) because I don't have to think, dork around, or mess with a tiny display (it's a small MP3 player) to get whatever I'm in the mood for. If I want Metallica, I put in a Metallica CD. If I want Wagner, I put in a Wagner CD. Etc.

"DRM that works" (that is, that couldn't be removed) wouldn't solve the problem. It would still hurt the good people -- the ones who want to treat their ebooks like pbooks, use them on whatever device they have at the moment, keep reading them after the vendor dies (on which note, when we say "Amazon will always be there", do we really want to support only the largest vendors?), and not have to re-buy their whole libraries if they get a Kindle instead of a Nook. And it still wouldn't hurt the bad people -- DRM stripping aside, if anyone really wants to share the book, they'll just scan the pbook. No pbook? That's what screenshots are for. And remember, it only takes one person. Every person in that 10% doesn't have to do the work; just one guy in Russia somewhere, and all the rest just read the book.

As for Baen, they remind me of a couple of companies in the tabletop roleplaying game industry. One of the two made a big fuss about how everything they did was "for the gamer" and how their goal (even as they threatened their own customers, at one point, which got them boycotted) was to do what was best for gamers. Which, um, wasn't. The other company said, outright, "we're doing this to make money." The owner, who I knew, made no bones about the fact that he was in business to make money, and was going to do those things which caused people to give him money. One of those two -- widely believed to be only interested in profit -- hit bottom several times until it finally went totally broke, and has been bought several times subsequently. The other, despite things like collectible card games taking customers away from its core business, is still healthy and thriving today. Since this is a post about business honesty, I'll let you guess which one is which. Hint: the thriving one was honest.

(no bonus points for figuring out who they are; if you know the industry it's obvious, and if it's not obvious, the answer wouldn't have much meaning anyway)

[Hellmark]

The naughty 10% he speaks of, how many of them would buy it in the first place, regardless of DRM? You have some people that steal if they can, and don't bother with it if they can't.

[LCF]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

The last time I looked at buying a CD v. buying the MP3 from iTunes, the CD was $14.99 and the download was $9.99. A blank CD costs about $0.25. So I went with the download and I'll burn a CD if I want to play it in my car.

You forget the difference between mp3 codec and raw audio file on a CD. If you want a clear sound and want to listen to the music on a very good stereo, mp3 is just a no-no. And If you can afford the stereo, you don't mind the little extra for the CD, because you buy extra quality.

All that said, DRM is not the way to go.

Pirated books (scanned) were there long before ebooks, so the kind of people who want ebooks for free are fanatical enough to get them, no matter what DRM is out there. Ultimate software just doesn't exist.

DRM prevents mommy from sending the cool new book to her best friend, which actually prevents the author from being more popular. (the younger and poorer me has read almost all his favorite authors lent from friends whose parents had more money. Now I can and buy books from these authors, which is profit for them that would never occur if I had to buy these first books.)

DRM has never, and never will stop the people who want free stuff from getting it. Fact.

Finally, DRM is a bomb with a timer. When years from now people start shifting (for whatever reason) from one DRM system to another and discover it impossible to read their books on the new device... I can only speculate what will happen, but it won't be beautiful.

[JSWolf]

DRM has been such a hassle in computer games that a lot of people went and downloaded them just to get them without DRM. So what did DRM do in case of a lot of computer games? It just caused people to download them when they would have paid otherwise.

I think DRM & agency pricing are driving people to the net to get free eBooks. Why sabotage what is a successful product? The Agency screwups are doing a good job at sabotaging their product. They are driving customers to the library or the net. So what happens is buyers end up with a free copy one way or another and the publisher & author get nothing.

People want their digital content to be reasonably priced and easy to use. DRM takes away the easy to use and the agency mess is taking away reasonable prices.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by LCF

..

Finally, DRM is a bomb with a timer. When years from now people start shifting (for whatever reason) from one DRM system to another and discover it impossible to read their books on the new device... I can only speculate what will happen, but it won't be beautiful.

What will happen most likely is they will have to re-purchase them. Just like most people re-purchased music when it moved from LP to CD.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

The naughty 10% he speaks of, how many of them would buy it in the first place, regardless of DRM? You have some people that steal if they can, and don't bother with it if they can't.

Yep. There are people who obsess about other people who are not their customers, and never will be their customers. Unbreakable DRM would not make them into customers; they'd just watch a movie instead. Unless they are somehow costing you customers (um, sounds like DRM!) they're not part of the equation.

Imagine a universe of 100 people, and two ebooks, Book A and Book B. The publisher (a term of convenience for publisher, author, agent, etc.) makes $5.00 per book sold.

In the case of those two books, we have that 10%: there are 10 people who will pirate the book if they can. And there are also 10% of the people who will buy the book. Now, our publishers (A and B are published by different companies) focus on two different things:

The first publisher sees its problem as those 10 people sharing copies of Book A, and works to prevent them from doing so. They invent an ideal DRM system which is totally transparent to legitimate owners but utterly shuts down piracy. They now have 10 people buying Book A and 0 people pirating it. The publisher makes $50.

The second publisher sees its problem as those 80 people who are not reading Book B, either legitimately or illegitimately. They put their money into promoting the book and making it easier for people to buy and read the book. They ignore the pirates. They now have 20 people buying Book B and 10 people pirating it. The publisher makes $100.

That's why Baen is doing so well: not because their customers are somehow special people (although the customers do think well of a company that doesn't seem to be trying to figure out how to dick them over at every turn, perhaps because that is so rare) but because they've made a business decision to focus on the people who are their customers, and the people who might become their customers, and let the people who never will be their customers go hang.