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Lulu Introduces DRM
An anonymous reader writes "Print-on-demand publisher Lulu recently announced that they're offering 'eBooks.' Since they've always offered downloadable books as PDFs, that takes some decoding to figure out what part is new: it turns out that it means now they're handling more formats, they've significantly increased the share they take out of the purchase price ... and for an additional fee, they now offer DRM. I have a few items published through Lulu myself; nothing forces me to buy the DRM, but I'm considering taking my business elsewhere on principle. This isn't what I expected from the people who, when I first signed up with them, were solidly endorsing Creative Commons."
Already there are a lot of comments like this in the general form of "just because company A, whom you do business with, starts to do something B that you find objectionable doesn't mean you should inconvenience yourself, especially if B doesn't directly affect your business dealing with them." It quite frankly baffles me.
What if the objectionable thing B was using slave labor for a product you do not use or buy? Does it suddenly become okay to continue the business relationship? I know there are huge differences in the offense, but the underlying argument is the same for both buying from a DRM encumbered goods provider and a slave created goods provider: "I don't directly deal in those products, so I will continue to buy other products from them and let the ones who DO buy them deal with the consequences."
Obviously—I hope—refusing to buying from a company with some products manufactured by slaves, even if the products you would be interested in aren't, would be a reasonable action. It is therefor clear that what people using the argument really mean is that they don't care about DRM enough to stop purchasing on priciple and don't thing you should either, and not that they actually think their argument really applies. In which case, they should really stop making the "boycotting is hard so don't do it" argument.
No. I was not. Since you are the third person to have misinterpreted what I was saying, I must conclude it is my fault.
I was trying to point out that the reasoning behind opposing boycotts based on a company's support of DRM was flawed, by applying it to something damn near everybody is opposed to vehemently.
I don't think they are in any sane way comparable. I was using that fact to show that what the people who opposed boycotting because of DRM really meant was "this doesn't bother me enough to boycott and inconvenience myself" and not "you shouldn't boycott if it inconveniences you" as was implied by the wordings of many of the posters who thought that boycotting because of DRM was silly.
I really don't give a damn if anyone boycotts Lulu for any reason. My only goal was to point out the flawed reasoning being used.
Oh, please. Booksurge (CreateSpace) and Lulu do the same thing. They charge a publishing fee (base + page count), and add after that. Perhaps you could give a side by side comparison instead of a rant?
The book I have in my signature is an example. Written by a friend, he kept a specific track of all the copies sold. The company didn't buy the book to resell. The company appeared on Amazon selling a book that wasn't bought. My friend was one copy short and the company that showed up on Amazon had a copy that appeared to come out of nowhere.
Onda Technology Institute