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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."
DRM is a tool to create artificial scarcity. Scarcity, virtual or real makes the scarce item more valuable, or so is thought. Only one (1) person needs to crack the 'scarcity' and the whole (economic) system comes tumbling down. Let DRM be implemented, and let it be cracked, it will lead to yet another market-crash. However, if the DRM can not or isn't cracked it will lead to the loss of the item, destroying the information locked by its DRM inside forever. An information black-out will be the result in our history.
Its a very strange thing that DRM is hailed upon by the biggest players in the 'free market'. All for profit and profit for all as they say. Money seems to be more valuable than anything else. This to me is a very freightning attitude. But reacting upon angst is even more freighting. We need to look at the root cause of the issue here, authors/creators feeling they're not duly compensated for their work. If we solve this issue there is no need for DRM.
A lot of research is being done in the field of new media and especially its distribution, but these reports don't seem to hit home (the publishers/law makers/etc).
Need an example on how stuff can change? Watch this lecture,1st part is a dull intro to bittorrent, after that it really gets interesting: pt1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCoCTc3T5Q pt2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIqG7WgqQ-w