People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by toddos

They (Apple) already have the open format (epub), they just need to kick the DRM.

In addition to making use of said epub format instead of twerking around with it.

[Xenophon]

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.

For the basic background, read my post over in this thread. In fact, Apple did own the DRM scheme (their "FairPlay" DRM, whose terms were considered unbelievably permissive back when it was originally introduced). Apple favored dropping DRM from the start because they viewed it as an added expense for them and an added hassle for their customers. Remember that Apple is all about making money by providing a better experience for the customers. Also remember that Apple isn't a music label, so they're interested primarily in how to sell more Apple hardware. I make no claim that they were motivate by anything other than profit.

Xenophon

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

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.

Amazon won't release absolute numbers. And the big publishers don't tend to say much either, although there might be something in their annual and quarterly reports.

The AAP and IDPF do provide figures, although they are limited. They report wholesale income from 12 to 15 trade publishers in the US only, excluding library, educational and professional sales.

With these caveats, the numbers are interesting.
http://idpf.org/about-us/industry-statistics

Their graph fitting is terrible though — they seem to trying to fit to a quadratic polynomial!

I attach a better graph, with wholesale income shown on a logarithmic scale. Note that ebook income is increasing at a greater than logarithmic rate (otherwise it would be a straight line). The fit shown is a double exponential curve.

Note the odd drop in income in Q2 of 2010. I wonder what happened then. Oh! Agency pricing...

I also attach a graph with a linear dollar scale.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

My Google-fu is clearly better than yours. I put "girl with the dragon tattoo" ebook download into Google and my first hit was an illegal download site. So were several others on the first page of hits, all loudly proclaiming they were free. I think our hypothetical pirate can manage to type "ebook" and "download" if needed to get to the illegal ones.

I think that was deliberate. Without "ebook", most of the search results are for the film version and you're several pages into the results before you even see a legitimate ebook version never mind an unauthorised copy. Therefore confirming the OP's claim that the unauthorised copy is too difficult for "normal" people to find. But that supposes that people looking for an ebook won't think to include the word "ebook" in their search and won't notice Google's suggestion of the word "ebook" (or in fact the word "free").

[Worldwalker]

Here's another way to look at the question:

What color dog do we, the posters in this thread, have in this hunt? In other words, why do we oppose DRM?

Is it because DRM inhibits our ability to buy what we want to buy? Not in the least. I could go to Amazon this moment and buy any ebook they sell.

Is it because DRM inhibits our ability to use what we buy in the way we want to use it? Not in the least. I could strip the DRM off that ebook and do whatever I want with it.

Is it because DRM inhibits our ability to get or give ebooks illegally? Not in the least. I know how to use Google too.

While DRM has affected some of us in the past, there is not a single person in this thread that I've seen who expects DRM to hamper them in the future; the ones who were affected in the past learned from the experience, and the ones who weren't learned from other people's experiences. DRM is not going to interfere with our ability to obtain or use any ebook whatsoever. So whatever dog we have in this hunt, "DRM is going to hurt me personally" is not it.

Now, consider also the fact that we're not just readers but voracious readers. I would venture to guess that any person here reads more ebooks, or more books in general, than any ten "ordinary" people. It is in our best interest for there to be a continuing, and increasing, supply of books for us to read. Even for people who read primarily public domain books, an increase in overall ebook readership means a greater interest in PD books, and hence more people volunteering for PG, the Distributed Proofreading project, etc., and therefore more and better PD ebooks. There is nobody in this discussion who would benefit in any way if book authors became unable to make a living writing books, and therefore no new ebooks were available. I say again: nobody.

There are people who would like to see the book industry as a whole fail. They're the people who are in competition with it: the sellers of movie tickets, the manufacturers of fancy clothes, the owners of night clubs ... all the people whose products are competing with books for consumers' entertainment dollars. Those people are not us. We're the ones who want the books.

Also, we are not idiots. We are not fools. We are not stupid. We are aware of our reliance on the book industry. We know we want books, more books, additional books, and a few extra books besides. We're the people who were derided for being "bookworms" in school. We're the people whose relatives gave up on Christmas presents long ago and just give us bookstore gift cards. We're the people who can't do anything in our houses without moving the books out of the way first. Even those of us who write for a living can't write as fast as we can read. We utterly depend on authors to write books for us, and we're fully aware of that fact.

So, given the facts in evidence -- that we rely on the book industry, that we are aware of that reliance, and that we are not stupid -- why would so many of us be advocating something which would be totally, utterly, and completely contrary to our own interests?

Remember, the existence of DRM does not harm our interests personally; we can circumvent DRM, or find people to do it for us. If you really want to put it that way, we are the "technorati" who can get any book they want DRM-free, and if we were in favor of distributing ebooks without paying for them, everyone we know could also get any ebook they want through us. Whatever dog we have in this hunt, it's not that one.

So why would we advocate hurting ourselves?

Either we don't rely on the book industry, we're unaware that we rely on the book industry, or we're bloody stupid. Since I have disproved all three of those assertions, and everyone else in this thread is evidence of the same, then the only possible conclusion is that we don't advocate hurting ourselves -- that, in fact, what we advocate is something that would be beneficial to ourselves.

How would DRM-free ebooks benefit us?

Would we be able to buy ebooks that we can't buy now? Aside from the weirdos like me who refuse to buy DRM-locked ebooks, no. Not a one. We can already buy any ebook we want.

Would we be able to use ebooks in a way that we can't use them now? No. Every person in this thread can strip DRM or knows someone who can do it. For us, ebooks are already effectively DRM-free.

Would we be able to get free ebooks that we have to pay for now? No. We can all use Google. If we are willing to download illegal ebooks, it doesn't matter if they shipped without DRM or that DRM was stripped by the person who put them on the darknet. They're still available exactly the same way to us.

So what's the difference?

The long-term health of the book industry.

Yes, we want authors and distributors of books to thrive. We don't want this from some diffuse altruistic motive -- we want it for a very simple, straightforward reason: we want them to write books for us. We need those books. We need those books like an addict needs his drug. When we hear Thomas Jefferson's line "I cannot live without books," we wonder who could. We need our books, and the sources of those books. And, not being stupid, we know authors are not going to be able to write books for us if they have to work digging ditches. If we want them to write books, we know they need to be able to make money from books.

Other people may be stupid. The posters in this thread on MobileRead are not. Other people may prefer forms of entertainment that are not books. The posters in this thread on MobileRead do not. Other people may not think about where their entertainment comes from, or how to keep it coming in the future. The posters in this thread on MobileRead do.

And I have not yet seen an argument in favor of DRM that would explain why so many of us think it is an anathema which does not presume that we are either malicious, ignorant, or utterly and irredeemably stupid.

That's the dog we have in this hunt: the one that wants ebooks available to feed our addiction, now and in the future. The one that wants authors to write more books so we can read them. The one that, driven by realpolitik, wants to see the book industry thrive so that we can have more ebooks.

That is why your arguments are not working, stonetools. You're arguing as though we wanted to destroy the book industry out of either greed, malice, or stupidity. None of those is true. We don't see ourselves in our arguments, so they pass right by us. Print this out and put it on a little card on your keyboard:

WE WANT MORE BOOKS.

That's really the bottom line.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by toddos

The problem right now is that everybody has their own device and wants to lock in the customers. Amazon isn't going to be helpful this time around because they want closed, locked down formats to keep people buying Kindles, and they're expanding their market not by opening up their ebooks and letting anybody use them but instead by making Kindle apps available virtually everywhere (iOS, Android, and WP7 smartphones and tablets, PCs, Macs, etc). Ironically, Apple might be our best hope for ebooks because their iBooks store is not doing so well. If they realize they could sell iBooks to Nook users, Kobo users, Sony users, Aldiko/Stanza/FBReader/BlueFire/etc users as well as iBooks users, they might come around. They already have the open format (epub), they just need to kick the DRM. And preferably the agency pricing model, but Apple got us into that mess in the first place.

Well, a couple of things here:

1) While Amazon is obviously heavily invested in the Kindle, they're primarily a book vendor. The Kindle is an e-book kiosk, not the main event for Amazon. They care about lock-in because they would prefer you don't have the option to buy from other vendors from your Kindle, not because they don't want you buy any other device to read your Amazon e-books on. It would suit Amazon just fine if you bought your Kindle e-book and read it on a Sony Reader. What they don't want is for you to buy from the Sony Reader bookstore and read it on your Kindle.

2) Apple's not going to be the savior this time, any more than they were last time. Apple's support of e-books seems half-hearted, at best. The iBooks store, from what I understand, hasn't kept pace with the Kindle or Nook stores. And books don't seem to be a part of Apple's iPad strategy. Were there any improvements to the iPad 2 that made it better for e-books than the original iPad? The only possible difference I saw was that the iPad 2 is lighter. Apple just doesn't seem to be going after the e-book market very hard (which would make sense, given what Jobs had said about the Kindle initially).

Originally Posted by toddos

DOC is certainly not an open format, and TXT has limited formatting capabilities. Epub is already a standardized, open format based on standardized, open technology that anyone can easily implement, so that's step one.

Doc isn't an open format, per se, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a flexible (in terms of text formatting options) format that more people could read. Do you think more people have DOC reading software on their devices, or ePub reading software, overall? Anyone who has the free version of Docs to Go on their mobile device can read DOC format, and I'd hazard a guess that virtually every laptop and desktop on the planet has the ability to read DOC format when it's shipped.

Originally Posted by toddos

I'm not sure I'd worry too much about derivative works any more than I'd worry about people remixing or sampling mp3s. It happens (videos get pulled from youtube all the time for music-based copyright violation), but it's certainly not big business.

99.995% of the people just want to consume, not create. Those that do want to create generally want to create on their own, not steal. There will always be the odd bootleggers and counterfeiters (China is notorious for this), but dropping DRM from ebooks is not going to increase that type of theft, just as DRM doesn't diminish it today.

Most of the videos I've seen get pulled from YouTube for copyright violation have that fate befall them not because they changed the music or video, but because they used copyrighted music or video without altering it (e.g., using copyrighted music as a soundtrack for unrelated (and sometimes, in its own right, copyrighted) video. The Antoine Dobson-type stuff doesn't get taken down. I think your basic point is sound, but I think derivative works fare better on YouTube than you're imagining. And Mr. Dobson apparently seems to have profited from it (which is okay in my book, since he was the "star" of that particular show).

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Well, a couple of things here:

1) While Amazon is obviously heavily invested in the Kindle, they're primarily a book vendor. The Kindle is an e-book kiosk, not the main event for Amazon. They care about lock-in because they would prefer you don't have the option to buy from other vendors from your Kindle, not because they don't want you buy any other device to read your Amazon e-books on. It would suit Amazon just fine if you bought your Kindle e-book and read it on a Sony Reader. What they don't want is for you to buy from the Sony Reader bookstore and read it on your Kindle.

-snip-

Good point.

Also, Amazon provides DRM as an option for publishers and authors who want it, but it appears they (Amazon) are happy to not use it, otherwise.

I know Konrath was pleased by their attitude, and another author recently blogged that Amazon was "thrilled" that he chose to avoid DRM.

It makes sense, because without DRM, they can sell to epubbers without having to go through the headache of offering another format.


ETA: Great post, WW.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

In other words, why do we oppose DRM?

Because it tries to restrict what I can do with legally bough content. I tries to limit the devices on which I can read that book I bought. I tries to prevent me from sharing a book I enjoyed with my wife. It tries to not let me modify my files as I see fit.

I could strip the DRM off that ebook and do whatever I want with it.

Sorry, what kind of argument is that? It's like saying that hole in my shirt is not a problem because I can always patch it up if it really bothers me. It's an inconvenience, to say the very least. It's an intra-family support nightmare, too.

While DRM has affected some of us in the past, there is not a single person in this thread that I've seen who expects DRM to hamper them in the future; the ones who were affected in the past learned from the experience, and the ones who weren't learned from other people's experiences. DRM is not going to interfere with our ability to obtain or use any ebook whatsoever.

Even if it's useless shit (pardon my French), it still stinks.

It is in our best interest for there to be a continuing, and increasing, supply of books for us to read.

No argument there. It's just that I don't think DRM furthers that cause in any way whatsoever.

WE WANT MORE BOOKS.

Yep. And pay for them, too, so authors can continue writing books.

[EowynCarter]

It makes sense, because without DRM, they can sell to epubbers without having to go through the headache of offering another format.

Even drm free, my reader can't read mobi. Yeah conversion.... But it sometimes works badly. And I'm not going to bother with amazon when there are so many shops offering books my reader can read.
Format shifting is more a problem than taking off DRM imho..

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Because it tries to restrict what I can do with legally bough content. I tries to limit the devices on which I can read that book I bought. I tries to prevent me from sharing a book I enjoyed with my wife. It tries to not let me modify my files as I see fit.

While I liked WW's point (which I think was that we aren't just a bunch of belly-achers wanting DRM gone so we can have what we want, and don't care about The Industry), I agree with this, too.

On a practical level, DRM doesn't impede me much, since removing it is so simple. The only practical hindrance is that I can't listen to TTS from books I download directly to my kindle from Publishers who disable it. (curses on them for that)

That doesn't mean I don't resent the heck out of being treated like a criminal, since it is technically illegal here, although I don't think it would stand in court.

I don't like all the legalistic (hello amazon customer discussion posters) finger-waggers scolding people for stripping it.

And I really don't like how Mobileread is forced to whisper about it.

And I don't like that those who've given us the tools to remove it could get into trouble.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Even drm free, my reader can't read mobi. Yeah conversion.... But it sometimes works badly. And I'm not going to bother with amazon when there are so many shops offering books my reader can read.
Format shifting is more a problem than taking off DRM imho..

I know it can be, for some highly-formatted books. Still, at this point, there are few enough that suffer from the conversion to make it worth switching, I think.

I too prefer epub, but I can understand their position: they chose to use mobi before epubs were a choice, and by now, dumping mobi or even offering both would be a pain in terms of backwards compatibility or CS.

At this point, I'd consider it to be a bigger PITA than just skipping DRM and letting people convert.

The point is, they don't use DRM to lock us in to their device. If that was their goal, they wouldn't be handing out K4x aps and they wouldn't be happy to skip drm if the author or publisher allowed it.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Piper_

Good point.
Also, Amazon provides DRM as an option for publishers and authors who want it, but it appears they (Amazon) are happy to not use it, otherwise.

I know Konrath was pleased by their attitude, and another author recently blogged that Amazon was "thrilled" that he chose to avoid DRM.

It makes sense, because without DRM, they can sell to epubbers without having to go through the headache of offering another format.


ETA: Great post, WW.

I hadn't even remembered that. Amazon is happy to sell you a non-DRM'ed e-book. I have a couple of short stories on the Kindle store that have no DRM. It's the format that Amazon is married to, not the DRM.

[Worldwalker]

Not to their device, but to their bookstore.

Why are they giving away Kindle-for-whatever programs for just about every platform? Because people buy their books. Amazon is giving the razor away for free and selling the blades.

Rogue, I don't disagree that DRM is, or at least can be, highly annoying. But there is a big difference between "damn, this is annoying" and wanting to destroy an entire industry over personal annoyance. As an example, I'm highly annoyed by ice cream companies putting less and less ice cream in their boxes and selling them for the same price -- I'd like to shout at the people who made that decision. But I have no interest in destroying the dairy industry. The contention being brought forth by my opponent is that the people opposing DRM want to destroy the publishing industry, either through malice or through stupidity. The basic point of my post was to disagree with that, and explain how wrong it was.

Sure, a world without DRM will be somewhat more convenient (it won't fix the ice cream boxes, though). But it wouldn't be as much more convenient as a world without ebooks would be inconvenient (I grew up in that world). Ebook readers, especially the early-adopting and utterly voracious ebook readers who populate MobileRead, want more ebooks, and want more ebook buyers, not fewer. It's in our own best interest.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Piper_

Also, Amazon provides DRM as an option for publishers and authors who want it, but it appears they (Amazon) are happy to not use it, otherwise.

Last we were able to track down, Amazon allows self-publishing individuals to go DRM-free, but publishing houses are still required to apply DRM. The reason Baen's ebooks aren't available through Amazon is that Amazon won't let them sell without DRM.

Or at least, that was the story for the last few years. Things have been changing fast; it's possible something has changed. Or it's possible that Amazon will allow publishers to go DRM-free, but not allow them to tell customers to ignore the Amazon EULA, which is a lot more restrictive than copyright law requires, and a lot more restrictive than Baen's terms of use for their ebooks.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Last we were able to track down, Amazon allows self-publishing individuals to go DRM-free, but publishing houses are still required to apply DRM. The reason Baen's ebooks aren't available through Amazon is that Amazon won't let them sell without DRM.

Or at least, that was the story for the last few years. Things have been changing fast; it's possible something has changed. Or it's possible that Amazon will allow publishers to go DRM-free, but not allow them to tell customers to ignore the Amazon EULA, which is a lot more restrictive than copyright law requires, and a lot more restrictive than Baen's terms of use for their ebooks.

Well, taking everything we know into account (e.g., who is cool with things like: adding no DRM, encouraging TTS, allowing Lending, lower prices vs. who is fighting or disabling those customer-centric offerings) I'd be more likely to conclude that it's the publishers who are most strongly insisting on the DRM and the EULA. At this ponit, anyway. As you say, things might have changed.