No, David Pogue, Ebook Piracy Is Not a Given
adamengst writes "David Pogue recently wrote a widely read blog post in which he explains that piracy is the reason he doesn't make his books available in PDF format. But in this article, TidBITS publisher Adam Engst disagrees strongly with Pogue's opinion, using sales numbers from the Take Control series of ebooks (150,000+ copies sold since 2004 with virtually no copying) as proof that making electronic versions not only doesn't necessarily lead to piracy, it may be the best way of preventing illicit sharing."
I cant help but wonder if the lack of ebook piracy is more down to the fact that old fashioned paper books are still much more prevalent that eboook readers, and can be had for a reasonable cost. I'd say the day ebook readers go the way of the iPod, piracy will explode.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I have a PSP and thanks to all of the rediculous DRM to prevent people from enjoying various media on the device of their choosing I have no choice but to pirate eBooks that I already paid for to remove the DRM so I can read them on the PSP. I found that hacking PDF's is impossible, but eBooks are easy to remove the DRM then convert to PDF so I can read them on my PSP. Because of their rediculous paranoia it actually encourages people to pirate to avoid all of the lame restrictions. Same with iTunes. I looked all over for a song and could only find it on iTunes. So I had to buy it there, then burn it to cd, then rip it back to mp3 so I could play it on my PSP. DRM is stupid. It just encourages people to download it without paying.