People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

What they are more likely to "trained" to do is to type "<book title> torrent" into their Google search bar.

You are right about that.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Oh - and there's the CyberRead ebook store closure.


And then there's all the DRMed music that's become unusable, or threatens to become unusable....


When we say that DRM might prevent you accessing your books in the future, this isn't just a theoretical possibility, it has happened several times in the past, and will probably happen again. But next time, many more people will be affected.

Don't forget when Paperback Digital went out of business and all the people who needed to update the DRM to add/change the Mobipocket PIDs was unable to do so. DRM bit them big time. When people change OS and/or change computers, the DRM like Mobipocket gets a new PID and the old PID is useless.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

1. "I bought this ebook, I own it, I should be able to do what I want with it". Er, no you didn't. I know making this observation is about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool, but according to the law, when you "bought" an ebook, you did not receive an absolute transfer of -title in an object in exchange of money: rather, you bought a license to access a copy of the digital file.

That depends on the terms of sale. Plenty of ebook stores don't say "buy a license to read this book;" they say "buy this book." And the difference between "sale" and "license" in the US isn't based on what words the seller uses; it's based on the terms--and if there's no time limit or terms of return, it's almost always a sale. Permanent permission to use is a sale, not a license.

Sales are known economic transactions; we have a huge body of law describing how those work. Licenses require the terms of the license to be spelled out in detail; attempting to hide some of the terms is fraud.

Saying "buy this book" when what they mean is "license use of this book under limited conditions" may well be grounds for a class-action lawsuit with refunds granted to every buyer ... or just a ruling that those books were actually bought, not licensed.

3." The use of DRM treats the buyer of ebooks like a criminal". I'm sorry but this is horse#### (to put it delicately). Storeowners have every right to take precautions to protect their goods.

As long as they own those goods, certainly. Store owners don't have the right to tell me how to use those goods once I've paid for them. Their right to protect their goods ends at the point of sale.

A landlord, who's renting me an apartment, has the right to protect his property while I'm using it--but there are extensive renters' rights; the landlord doesn't have the right to videotape actions inside my home (Amazon recording Kindle users' reading habits), nor to change the locks on the doors and charge me for new keys every few months (changing DRM servers; refusing to re-validate older purchases), nor to cancel the lease if I file complaints about the property not being up to code (canceling Kindle accounts of people who return defective items). And my renting has a 14-page contract with the exact terms & obligations spelled out.

Nor does it say that the terms can change at any time at the landlord's whim. License agreements are fixed at the point of purchase.

No ebook seller offers the terms of their license spelled out in detail, nor will they discuss them. Nor will they *honor* them... books purchased from Amazon are *not* always available later, and while they'll grant refunds if pressured enough, that's not what the contract says: it says if you buy it, you have unlimited license to use it, as many times as you want.

THe attitude of the digerati appears to be that publishers and boooksellers can take whatever precautions they like to protect their goods against theft, but no right to take measures to prevent the theft of ebooks,

They can take whatever measures they want to secure unpurchased ebooks. Secure servers, credit card authentication measures, downloads that don't work without the right passwords and permissions, and so on. The issue is how much control they're allowed to retain AFTER PURCHASE.

Now what could convince the PTB? Some ideas:
A. Some big time author puts his book out there without DRM and it becomes a best seller without large scale casualsharing/piracy.

Why, "without large scale piracy?" What difference does it make how pirated his book is, if it's a bestseller? There's no financial reward for not being pirated.

B. Lots of regular folk become incensed about DRM and stop buyiing books as a result. Right now, they're buying DRMED ebooks hand over fist, and seem OK with DRM .

Give it a couple of years. They're already muttering about not being able to transfer their Kindle books to Nooks; a couple of OS upgrades, and they'll be making more noise. When the shiny wears off the ebook industry, and people realize that they can't give the books they bought four years ago to their college-age kids because their kids have a different account, there'll be more yelling.

Or maybe before that, one of the Agency Six will decide its books can only be downloaded 4 times, and change the terms on existing books--and that'll trigger a lawsuit that kills the current "license" arrangement.

If you can think of some other ways, suggest them. The purist arguments (publishers ashould give up on DRM, because its somehow morally wrong or its against publishers' long term intersts in ways that that the publishers can't measure) aren't convincing.

I don't need to convince you. For that matter, I don't need to convince the Agency Six. I just need to convince enough authors & publishers that I'm kept in enjoyable reading material for the rest of my life, and my kids can find stuff to read when they want. That part's covered.

While I'll wince at the Agency Six's slow downfall, with the same kind of screaming the RIAA is doing, it's not going to affect my reading habits.

How do you imagine the DRM/Agency system is sustainable for the next couple of decades? What indication to you have that a seller's ability to lock customers away from their purchases is going to be acceptable for an entire industry for the next fifty years or more?

(And hey. In less than a decade, new non-gov't works start entering the public domain in the US. What about those ebooks--will publishers be offering DRM removal kits for the works that are now free to share?)

[stonetools]

Thanks for your responses, Xenophon, pdurrant and all. Almost you have persauded me, but I'm not convinced just yet. I think one thing is clear:

repeat: The hard data are inadequate to give a conclusive answer

NOw everyone else on this thread thinks the anti DRM argument is a slam dunk. I think its 50/50 at best. A lot depends on where you put the burden of proof. If you think DRM is morally wrong, then you want 100 per cent proof that it would hurt the book industry-evidence that's not available beforehand. The publishers, of course, want 100 per cent proof that it WON'T cost 10/50 per cent losses. Of course, there is no certainty in the business world. But the authors and publishers, who are betting their livelihoods on this, would say (correctly) in my view, that they would need clear and convincing evidence that going no DRM would not cause the kind of big losses we saw in the music industry. Put it this way, if the publishing industry goes no DRM and revenue falls 50 per cent, the folks here will just say , "Oops! Guess I was wrong" and go on with their lives. Folks in the publishing biz won't have that luxury.

[CyGuy]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...bal-future.ars

As for the music industry comment, did you read this article?

[queentess]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Put it this way, if the publishing industry goes no DRM and revenue falls 50 per cent, the folks here will just say , "Oops! Guess I was wrong" and go on with their lives. Folks in the publishing biz won't have that luxury.

You keep saying that, and others keep pointing out that that hasn't happened with DRM-free digital music. But if you say it a few more times I guess it may make it true.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem comes when you then need an internet connection to be able to get at your content. That is unacceptable. What if my net connection is down. What if I have no net access? They would be forcing everyone to be on the net. That's not always possible. Also, I want to be responsible for storing my eBook. I don't want to risk my content to some cloud somewhere that I have no control over. I understand about the cloud, I just don't like it.

As someone who lives behind a dialup connection, with little chance of getting broadband anytime soon, the Cloud is pretty worthless to me and my neighbors.

If was forced to have all my books in the Cloud I would be very upset.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by stonetools

NOw everyone else on this thread thinks the anti DRM argument is a slam dunk. I think its 50/50 at best. A lot depends on where you put the burden of proof. If you think DRM is morally wrong, then you want 100 per cent proof that it would hurt the book industry-evidence that's not available beforehand. The publishers, of course, want 100 per cent proof that it WON'T cost 10/50 per cent losses. Of course, there is no certainty in the business world. But the authors and publishers, who are betting their livelihoods on this, would say (correctly) in my view, that they would need clear and convincing evidence that going no DRM would not cause the kind of big losses we saw in the music industry. Put it this way, if the publishing industry goes no DRM and revenue falls 50 per cent, the folks here will just say , "Oops! Guess I was wrong" and go on with their lives. Folks in the publishing biz won't have that luxury.

You are, once again, conflating two different things.

(1) Availability of free unauthorised copies of ebooks
(2) Presence of DRM on ebooks that are sold

If the availability of free unauthorised copies of ebooks is going to cause the same problems for the publishing industry as it seems to have done to for the music industry (10%-50% decrease in revenues over a decade), then it will do so even if publishers apply DRM to the ebooks they sell. The music industry applied DRM to the music they sold from 2003-2008 and it did them no good at all

We can't say whether the music publishers would have done better to sell DRM-free music from 2000 onwards, instead of DRM-encumbered music from 2003.

We can say that if the big book publishers take the same approach that the big music publishers took, we can expect a similar outcome.


Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is not a sensible strategy.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...bal-future.ars

As for the music industry comment, did you read this article?

That was really interesting, thanks for sharing.

"Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero," the authors flatly concluded then. "Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period."

But a later 2010 meta-study by the same authors concluded that piracy did, in fact, account for a bit of the decline in music sales—around 20 percent. The other 80 percent could be chalked up to the sale of digital singles rather than whole albums and the rise of other media options like video games.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...bal-future.ars

As for the music industry comment, did you read this article?

Yes, he did, which is why he's now using the 10%-50% range for losses to the Music Industry Income. IMO, the actual losses are much more likely to be towards the 10% end than the 50% end of the range.

"But a later 2010 meta-study by the same authors concluded that piracy did, in fact, account for a bit of the decline in music sales—around 20 percent."

Note that's 20% of the decline, for which 50% is probably an over estimate, so the estimated loss in revenue is 10%.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

This observation holds equally for my position (it's a sale, dammit!) and yours (it's a license, you fool!).

Can't it be both? The sale of a license.

There's compelling (and educational) arguments from both ends. My confusion is due in part to the "it" referred to when people say "I own it." You didn't purchase that file, you created it. When we say "send a file," it's merely a useful shorthand for what really happens, because digital files don't actually move from one place to the next (do they?). "Send" a file by way of ethernet, with no device at the other end. Unplug the cable from the source. The file isn't stuck inside. All you did was pay someone to communicate instructions on how to manufacture something using your own equipment. You can do this yourself with a scanner, a computer, and a printed book you purchased, albeit more laboriously. But there are restrictions governing that-- restrictions that state that what you created still isn't quite "yours" to do with as you please, even though you own the equipment used to do it.

Purchase of that communication comes with certain terms, the spirit of which is prevention of you providing that same communication to someone else, because you don't own that right (which is why some people can charge for it, and others cannot..legally). Don't like the terms? Don't pay for the communication. Being that the buyer is a complete stranger, and considering the ease of re-manufacture and distribution once the cat is out of the bag, as it were, the seller has tailored that communication to prevent violation of those terms (with varying efficacy). If the mechanism used to do this is unreasonably oppressive, well that's one thing. The spirit of it, and its very existence, is reasonable. Hence, I find arguments for "reform DRM" sympathetic, more so than "abolish DRM."

[CyGuy]

I have this feeling that what stonetools is trying to say is: If authors/publishers agree to drop DRM, they are somehow saying it is okay to pirate content, they are condoning it. But what everyone is trying to make you see is: DRM only affects regular paying customers and does nothing to those who pirate.

[BillSmithBooks]

Publishers say they need DRM to prevent piracy.

Because that's the major problem the industry faces.

Yet, today's story at Ars Technica (Only 9% (and falling) of US Internet users are P2P pirates) notes that only 9% of Internet users are actually "pirates."

(Also picked up on Slashdot.

(To be US-centric), the 91% of the US Internet population that's willing to play by the rules and get their products legally is stuck with DRM-crippled books, the hassle of begging DRM vendors to authorize devices, hoping the company selling those DRM-crippled books doesn't go out of business because then they lose their books -- and maybe even unauthorized spyware and rootkits -- all because of a tiny minority?

"Only 9%," you say. "Nine percent is a lot!"

Perhaps.

But remember, the publishing industry is perfectly happy with the print business model...which often sees 40-50% of its product unsold, returned or destroyed. That's after the publisher has already incurred the costs of printing, shipping and warehousing those unsold books, too.

Maybe the pirates aren't the industry's biggest problem.

[stonetools]

When Amazon "delivers" an ebook to you, it copies a file on its server and sends the copyto your device. The original file stays right where it's at. Needsless to say, that's different from a store clerk handing you a pbook . The law really hasn't caught up to fully describing that that transaction was.

Also instructive is this, from the Amazon Kindle LICENSE AGREEMENT page:

The Kindle Store. The Kindle Store enables you to download, display and use on your Device a variety of digitized electronic content, such as books, subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, journals and other periodicals, blogs, RSS feeds, and other digital content, as determined by Amazon from time to time (individually and collectively, "Digital Content").

Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

Restrictions. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

[JSWolf]

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

You've bought an eBook in Mobipocket format from Amazon. Amazon stopped selling Mobipocket eBooks via Amazon.com. So what you have is what you have. You now have a new computer. You have a fresh install of Mobipocket Reader. But wait, why doesn't this legally purchased Mobipocket eBook work with your new computer? Oh yes, the method of calculating the PID is such that when you do install Mobipocket Reader on a different computer, you get a different PID. Now, this EVERYTHING to do with DRM. The DRM in this case is preventing someone from being able to read 100% legally purchased content. How isn't this problem about DRM? Amazon stopped selling the eBook. So the customer is no longer able to go back to Amazon, add in the new PID and be able to read the eBook.

You tell me how DRM is not a problem when you need to update the DRM and cannot because you no longer have access to do so.