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Book Piracy — Less DRM, More Data

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-bring-logic-into-this dept.

macslocum writes "Ambiguity surrounds the real impact of digital book piracy, notes Brian O'Leary in an interview with O'Reilly Radar, but all would be better served if more data was shared and less effort was exerted on futile DRM. 'The publishing industry should be working as hard as we can to develop new and innovative business models that meet the needs of readers. And what those look like could be community-driven. I think of Baen Books, for example, which doesn't put any DRM restrictions on its content but is one of the least pirated book publishers. As to sales, Paulo Coelho is a good example. He mines the piracy data to see if there's a burgeoning interest for his books in a particular country or market. If so, he either works to get his book out in print or translate it in that market.'"

3 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. The real problem with ebooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The other major problem with ebooks is that the selection outside of the US is shocking. Most stores refuse to sell to us, the others will have something like "This book is not available in your region" for most of their titles.

    1. Re:The real problem with ebooks by lahvak · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When I got a nook for christmas, I was looking forward for buying bunch of books from the country where I grew up. I would like to read some of the books that are being published there now, but shipping them across the ocean is pretty expensive. I was extremely disappointed by the small amount of ebooks that are available. In addition, when I tried to buy some, it turned out I would have to have a mobile phone number in that country. The only books that are available to me are either free out of copyright books that were digitized by libraries or volunteers, or pirated and illegally digitized books.

      --
      AccountKiller
  2. Re:I love my Kindle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But just like with Apple and the itunes, Amazon is never going to convince me that the DRM they use is for my own good. It's about control and monopolies and always has been. (And yes I know itunes is DRM-free now that the ipod dominates the market).

    It seems like revisionist history to imply that Apple put DRM on iTunes because they wanted to. What evidence we have indicates the contrary - Apple wanted to be DRM-free, but the record labels wouldn't allow it.

    Then please stop trying to revise histroy. Apple always wanted DRM (their whole OS is DRMed on a hardware level. Want to install OSX on non-Apple hardware? Lots of cracks needed. The OSX DRM is to check to make sure its Apple only hardware.) Apple only got rid of its DRM in its music because Amazon was in the final steps of getting the labels to agree that they would be able to sell DRM music on Amazon.com (look when Jobs wrote that letter declaring 'Oh we don't like DRM, we were strong armed...' a few months before Amazon started selling DRM free music). Apple had to drop the DRM in response to the threat Amazon was about to cause. Because if Apple really didn't want DRM they would remove it from every other digital product on iTunes. They just don't though because they love DRM, helps lock you to them.