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Book Publishers Abandoning DRM
tmalone writes "The New York Times is reporting that book publishers are beginning to phase out DRM-protected audio books. This month the world's largest publisher, Random House, started offering DRM-free mp3s; Penguin has announced that it will follow suit. Their logic? DRM just doesn't work. 'Publishers, like the music labels and movie studios, stuck to DRM out of fear that pirated copies would diminish revenue. Random House tested the justification for this fear when it introduced the DRM-less concept with eMusic last fall. It encoded those audio books with a digital watermark and monitored online file sharing networks, only to find that pirated copies of its audio books had been made from physical CDs or DRM-encoded digital downloads whose anticopying protections were overridden.'"
the blindingly obvious usually will win out in time.
I understand this was originally causing quite a stir with Audible.com. Audible stats that it will not allow any non DRM books to be placed on there site. Even if the author requests that they do so. I know of one author mentioned on TWIT - This Week In Tech. (I believe was John C Dvorak, but can't remember) that we was not going to put his book up on Audible.com just for the reason he wanted it not DRM'd. With all the major book companies shifting to a none DRM format, I wonder if sites like this that are smaller will change there attitude.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
I disagree. I rarely if ever will pick up book anymore. I can't do it while I'm driving, while I'm jogging, or while I do a host of other things. Living in the greater Seattle area, a commute that takes an hour is common place. If you can figure out how to get back a useless hour of your time, I think that it is very profitable.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
How often does a company actually get the queue and do something right? The fact that they tested their assumption and made a move based on evidence is praise worthy. Not that they will give up, but at least they figured out how they aren't going to win.
Maybe these books that everyone talks about actually do make you smarter.
Since the only ebooks I've purchased are Role-Playing Game modules, I'd have to disagree. Going cover to cover: yes, I enjoy physical books much more. But searching for a tidbit of information (for school projects as well, in which Google Books is quite the useful tool), I prefer the ability to search through an entire text for a single word instead of flipping through a book for the page I need.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Actually, the main problem with ebooks now that paper-like displays are seeing some progress is the cost. $400 for a Kindle is just nasty. When the cost comes down, people will snap those up like crazy, because it's all the benefits of ebooks without the eye strain that kept them away from the concept before. I know I want one, and I've always hated reading stuff on a screen.
that so many people listen to audiobooks in their cars? Who would have thought that poor transportation and urban sprawl lead to appreciation for literacy? Then again... automotive accidents are always on the rise, and surely most of them are due to distractions. Yet if we fix this problem, the economy fails! Efficiency is a bitch...
1. Searching: An index is nice, but I can think of times that I'd rather be able to search.
2. Portability: With an ebook reader, you can carry your entire library in a device the size of a piece of paper. Sure you have have to charge it, but you've got to sleep some time, right?
3. Commenting: The ability to markup the book without damaging it book in some way.
4. The ability to make as many bookmarks as you want. I don't know if any reader has instituted this yet, but this would be a killer feature that would allow you to mark all your favorite pages/passages so you can jump to any of them in a second.
5. Portable bookstore: Decide you want to read something but don't have the time to go to the bookstore, download the book to your computer or directly to your reader.
6. Unlimited selection: Everything ever published will eventually be available to be loaded on my ebook reader, but I have real difficulty with the selection available to me at local bookstores, especially with the lack of older titles available.
What is stopping me from getting into the ebook game now are the cost and features of the readers available. I never pay the early adopter tax, but within five years, I'll probably get a reader. I'm also not interested in paying the same price as I would at the bookstore for a new hardback, because the bookstore and it's share of the price shouldn't be necessary any longer, but as long as I can wait a year and get the book at half of the paperback cost, I'll be sold.
Publishers really need to pull their finger out and adopt a common book file format with no active DRM. The consequence of not doing so is ebooks languish. People who want books in an electronic format will just grab them them anyway through P2P, IRC or wherever and the publishers will get nothing at all. Once an industry standard format appears, the format has a good chance of taking off.
I also think the experience of ebooks and music should be a lesson for digital video downloads. People would have to be stupid to *buy* digital movies from Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix or whoever when the content is locked to a handful of supported devices and you are at the mercy of the provider to manage your collection. I don't want to have to own two or three software players, or only be able to play some movies on some devices. Just like with ebooks most people will just turn to P2P instead.
Drop the DRM. Piracy happens whether DRM is there or not. Dropping the DRM just means more people will buy their direct download videos rather than get it on P2P or copy it from DVD.
Actually, $400 is basically free, if you are a heavy reader. Kindle books seem to be uniformly, and significantly, cheaper than the non-Kindle editions. A heavy reader will make up that $400 in a year or so, and then start pulling ahead.
One of the big lessons we all need to learn is this: People are different!
Some get addicted to drugs; others don't.
Some have their health ruined by alcohol; others drink like fish yet remain fairly healthy.
Some get sick when they eat certain foods; others thrive on them.
Some lose weight by exercising; others don't (true; look it up).
And some will never give up paper books, while others will be happy to do so.
It makes life more complicated, but also more fun.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
As the unwilling DRM expert in the school district I work for, I've told all the Librarians to NOT buy from either the Apple iTunes store or Audible.com, to instead buy the books as CD's or even Cassette Tapes and then make their own DRM-less MP3 files for use on the players the district checks out to students.
We don't do this to get around copyright law, we buy as many copies as are made available, but it is simply NOT WORTH THE TIME AND TROUBLE to deal with DRM.
What the publishers need to do is make an agreement with a few distribution channels to get their books out there in PDF format incredibly cheap. If I could buy a typical $8 paperback book on the iTMS and sync it to my iPod Touch for $3, I'd buy a lot more books. Not only that, but if you got it down to around $3, the publisher would have much fewer worries about piracy because it'd be clearly discounted for internet sales. One of the things that is just asinine is that most ebooks cost as much as the printed copies!
I've debated a few IP expansionists on a subject that would do much more to hamper piracy: bringing IP under state property laws. You catch someone making a business off of your IP without you releasing it for free? How does grand theft sound instead of "copyright infringement" if it's really property? You want to get rid of serial piracy, especially the for-profit kind? Throw the punks in with the guys who commit real felony property crimes.
Of course that's assuming IP is real property...
I've made a three-stage theory on DRM:
1) DRM is introduced, many bold claims are made about it, manufacturers are very excited about it, cracking efforts begin.
2) The DRM starts to get cracked, new schemes are introduced with equally bold claims, many legal threats are made, but it starts to become clear that this isn't working.
3) Investigations are done into how beneficial DRM is, and the results aren't favourable to DRM. The DRM is deemed to be costly and useless, and is promptly abandoned.
e-books seem to be moving towards stage 3 right now. Of course, there is the possible stage 4 to be concerned about.
4) Stage 3 is somehow forgotten, DRM is re-introduced, many bold claims are made about it...