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Why eBook DRM Has To Go
Sci-Fi author Charlie Stross was recently put in the position of offering his thoughts to book publisher Macmillan on why eBook DRM is a terrible thing — not just for consumers, but for publishers, too. He makes a strong case that the removal of DRM, while not an immediate financial boon, will strongly benefit publishers in years to come through increased goodwill from users, greater leverage against Amazon's near-monopoly on distribution, and better platform interoperability. "Within 5 years we will be seeing a radically different electronic landscape. Unlocking the readers' book collections will force Amazon and B&N and their future competitors to support migration (if they want to compete for each others' customers). So hopefully it will promote the transition from the near-monopoly we had before the agency model, via the oligopoly we have today, to a truly competitive retail market that also supports midlist sales." Users have been railing against DRM for years, but it appears the publishers are finally starting to listen.
You can't be serious.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
But it's interesting to see what some of the authors have to say about it. Here's a comment from Jim Butcher (Dresden Files, Codex Alera):
I literally receive notices every single day about available free downloads of books I put months if not years of work into, and that's from a simple Google alerts search. Over a three month period, I tracked over 22,000 total pirate downloads of my work, using the stats available from the various file-sharing sites which include a counter stating the number of times the files had been downloaded. Actual sales of e-copies during that same period? Just over 2,500. That's sales information taken from the sales reports I get from the publisher.
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,26233.msg1117676.html#msg1117676
He also has some interesting comments about the publishers and how they're being dragged into eBooks kicking and screaming. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
...Project Gutenberg has had more money from me (a few hundred Pounds in donations by now, easily, plus time spent volunteering as a proofreader and space and bandwidth given over for distribution which has got to be worth something) than Amazon, B&N or any other major online publisher/distributor ever has. Why? Because their ebooks aren't locked down to fuckery.
Call me cynical, or a pirate, or whatever you want to call me, but I'm not about to buy something I can't use. IF DRM PREVENTS ME FROM TRANSFERRING FILES FROM AN OLD DEVICE TO A NEW ONE WITH NO FURTHER OUTLAY REQUIREMENT THEN I AM NOT INTERESTED.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
At Bean (http://www.baen.com/) the books are drm free and in all sorts of formats. When I buy a book I make shure it will be readable in the future on any new device I own no even when the store drm server crashes or the publisher goes belly side up. The books I buy at Bean don't have to be cracked in order to do this. One little confession: only 2 books and 1 monthly bundle were bought at Bean by me (I still buy books because for reading pleasure, not DRM free-ness).
I think one factor which has really changed publisher's views in the past few weeks on this issue is the success that J.K. Rowling has had selling Harry Potter online. She deliberately waited a long time before allowing eBook versions, as much to get things settled out, but the result is very clean: even Amazon just directs to the Potter site, which then links back to all the DRM'ed eReaders as well as providing direct downloads in ePub.
So she's getting most of the money (well, her and her publisher), not Amazon, she dictates the price, and is no longer affected by the Amazon Monopsony that Amazon has gained by being the most common (but not universal) ebook platform. While a buyer no longer has to worry about DRM lockin: the books they buy will read anywhere, painlessly.
Test your net with Netalyzr
The only guarantee I want is that regardless of the DRM method used that the original provider of the material does not have to exist for me to continue to access the books I purchased. This would most likely require some form of public repository for the encryption keys.
Real books have their own DRM which is simply, whomever has it has access to it. Digital copies are simply to easy to give away. How can that one property physical copies have be replicated in the digital world without inconveniencing the end user and opening the publisher to loss by copying? Water marking doesn't seem practical, let alone enforceable.
I do wish that DRM protected works were a lot cheaper.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
In the 90's, the distinction was popularly called Knowledge in the World vs. Knowledge in the Head. As our communication and recording systems improve, we externalize more of our knowledge. First we recorded knowledge in books rather than memorize poetry. Now we rely on Google instead of memorizing facts.
Every book we read, therefore, constitutes a portion of our externalized knowledge. Some of what we read might get memorized, but most of it gets absorbed as an awareness where we know we can look it up again in the future (moves knowledge from DK-DK to K-DK). By agreeing to DRM, eBook users place control of part of their knowledge -- part of their mind, if you will -- in the hands of corporations. The corporations are practicing mind control with DRM.
I am from Asia-Pacific region. The books over there are dirty cheap. The same book sold in US for $100 could be listed ~$6. Even with $6, many simply download "free" bootleg version.
IMHO, cheaper books means lower barriers in obtaining knowledge. Lower such barriers will benefit a country to improve their competitive edge.
Given that US is not dominating the technology frontier any more, it is inevitable to systematically lower down the barrier to knowledge at least from society and government level.
If he priced his stuff at $6 a pop I would have read the catalog. But $12? Now you're taking advantage.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
between amazon and apple there will be no more B&N soon
even though i have 2 iphones and an ipad i still buy all my books in kindle format. it's the closest standard there is that works across a lot of different hardware from different manufacturers
I sense a mix-up between DRM and open/standardization of format. DRM alone doesn't create the kinds of problems outlined in this post. Perhaps we should be more uncomfortable about the lack of inter-operability or portability between purchased eBooks and apps that can display them. I think that DRM would be fine if it was implemented in an open/universal system.
You can't be serious.
Well, to be fair he doesn't say how much it increases.
Let's look at examples where this has already worked for me: Bandcamp. From the start they offered music with no DRM at various qualities of lossy and lossless downloads. As a result, for a while I was trying to make it a point to only purchase my music through bandcamp or directly from the little guys. Because the option was there with a large enough volume I could actually do this.
Oddly enough I can stream all the music on Bandcamp when I'm connected to the internet through my computer and phone and I constantly send out links to friends via e-mail and social media sites (free advertising, more goodwill). So you might ask why I would ever pay anything for the music on Bandcamp but I do because sometimes the music is so good that I want something physical as well or I just want this unknown band from Sweden to have enough gas to make it to their next gig.
Am I a typical consumer? Probably not but Bandcamp posts their numbers so I know other people are using it:
Now, does this goodwill offset someone sharing all of Bandcamp's MP3s? Apparently you don't think the goodwill is worth anything compared to that piracy. Maybe you're right but I would be thrilled if there was a Bandcamp site for ebooks where I could read most if not all of the book before purchasing it. Apparently Stross agrees that something less encumbering than the current model will be a better situation than what they have. Unfortunately, there's no sure way to measure this or to speculate if it will work for small time authors but not for big authors nor can you tell if it will be similar to the music anecdote I listed.
So, he actually is serious, it's just the magnitude and trade offs that are unknown and scare publishing executives.
My work here is dung.
See, what you need to do, is go on the lecture circuit, offer support services, and write a book on what you did and sell thatFree and open is the way. There are plenty of examples of folks who made it big this way.
You're just stuck in an old outdated business model and you just want to legislate to keep you business going the way it was in the past.
> Butcher prices his Dresden files books at over $10 a pop
I don't know if it's at the link that I posted, or somewhere else in his forums (search through the "WOJ" -- "Words of Jim" -- I believe it's in his Amazon comments) ... but Butcher actually has an emphatic reply when someone says that to him. HE doesn't set the prices, the publisher does, and he rails at Amazon's pricing on EBooks all the time. :)
By the way, I should also point out a different view, namely from Eric Flint (www.ericflint.net), who successfully lobbied for the Baen Free Library. Flint is a leader AGAINST DRM and insists that free distribution actually *increases* sales.
Also, to be fair to Butcher, if you read all of his comments, he's not particularly enamored of DRM. He was just commenting on how the *publishers* view it.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
The only reason that Amazon might have an eBook monopoly is that it sells the books using a closed DRM format that only their reader (which is very popular) can decode. Couldn't the publishers break this by simply insisting that Amazon sell their books with an open (DRM or not) format? That way the consumer could decide which reader to use irrespective of where they buy the content and Amazon would be unable to use vender lock-in to dominate the market. Or am I missing something?
I like the Rockfax solution for downloadable rockclimbing guides. You buy one for a few euros, and they generate the pdf on the fly, with 'registered to Bart van Deenen' in the footer of every page. Works for me.
Bart
I've been downloading ebooks for years. No drm, no hassle. Sure, these books were OCR'd and have mistakes sometimes, but I don't care.
Yet the publishers want DRM, want to charge the same prices for paper books, etc.
Fuck you, you want my money? Do the shit right.
Be seeing you...
e-books will not seriously take off until they are suitably cheap. Once they're like iOS "games", selling for $1-2, people will start to buy them when selling portals are integrated into the various ereaders.
That won't happen for a very long time, book publishers are terrified of losing control of the entire distribution and "scarcity" control.
That won't happen soon because of Amazon's pricing model. If you price a book for under $2.99, you only get 30% royalties (as opposed to 70% for $2.99 and greater if you organize your account right). If it were 70% all the way down, more authoris might be willing to price lower, but who wants to write a book just to give Amazon 70%?
You might as well go with the old guard publishers in that case (well, not really, they pay even less, but still, at leat they'll give you an advance, and some distribution muscle.)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
DRM held me back from purchases. Books, music, videos, movies .... When I can use the electronic version "like a book on any current or future device I want", then they have a win.
I'd like to loan out my "book" to a friend for a few weeks, or better, sell it to them in a 2nd hand market - you know - just like a book.
We haven't purchased a DVD and do not own a Bluray player due to DRM. I don't think we will ever own a bluray player, at least as long as the DRM is not trivially cracked.
We have never purchased eBooks that weren't DRM-free. I've taken pride in deleting those books when I've sold them to friends later. The backups took 90 days to be removed. I would be happy if my personal details were included in the pages of a purchased book to discourage piracy - full name, address, telephone number and email address(es).
Our local library loans out eBooks, audio books, movies, etc., which is very nice. Our tax dollars at work.
We have never purchased music that wasn't physical. Ripping a CD isn't a big deal to have it in a format that WE prefer, not something mandated by an outsider that limits the way we can use the content inside our homes.
I've also read lots of free books from many different sources. Sometimes those are excellent, but I will admit that books going through publisher filters and edits are more enjoyable, if only due to the lack of typos.
More and more, I enjoy free scifi podcasts with stories. These are entertaining and who doesn't like "free?"
Convenience is why most people pay for content. Doing the "right thing" works for people with the money to do it too. I've felt that I needed to pay for content since college graduation. If I couldn't afford it, then I didn't need it. I honestly believe 90% of people in the USA feel that way, but I also know that in certain parts of the world, those views do not work. People will never pay for something they can get "for free." It is against their cultures.
I recently purchased the novel Triggers on Kobo's website. On the book's page it listed both Smartphone and Kobo eReaders as compatible devices. Clicking on the Smartphone it shows Blackberry, clicking on Kobo eReaders it shows my 1st Gen Kobo eReader. So I purchase the book, the first book I had purchased in about a year. The book automatically shows up on my Blackberry but I can't open it. It shows up in my Kobo Desktop software where I can read it and when I plug in my eReader it says it has finished transferring it to my eReader but it isn't there after the sync. I ended up needing to use Adobe Digital Editions to transfer it over. This was kind of frustrating as there were scant instructions at all. And I was never able to read it on my Blackberry. (The Blackberry is from work)
See the difference?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The book would still be protected by a key but the key could be revoked by one owner and transferred to another. I would still hold a copy of the book as a file but in the absence of the authorizing key it is no longer readable. If such a system were carefully designed it could enshrine concepts such as destroying content, lending it, renting it, selling it and donating it in much the same way as any physical item. Not just books, video, music and any other form of platform neutral data.
I'm kind of surprised the EU isn't pressing for something like this. Ultraviolet demonstrates the industry can agree around some kind of cloud based key system and it needs governments to legislate that such a system should be fair to users as much as it is for providers.
I've read a bunch of comments and there are two things that I keep seeing:
1) "I hate DRM and I won't pay if there's DRM on a book! I'm definitely just going to download it!"
2) "DRM is so easily cracked, anyway! Why do they think it's going to stop anyone?"
Bonus:
3) "With DRM, how will I move my books to a new platform?"
We all know DRM is, at best, an inconvenience. I agree that it should be removed, and publishers should face up to the reality that people are willing to pay a fair price--even an inflated price, honestly--for a product as long as it's convenient. Piracy is only more appealing when it's easier than buying.
But if you're using DRM as an excuse to not pay for the book, you're full of shit. Seriously.
You should buy the book anyway and send an email to the company explaining why their system is counter-productive. Downloading books without paying shortchanges authors. These are the people that you're ostensibly trying to support.
iTunes ended up DRM free because the middleman (Apple, obviously) was convinced by consumers that DRM wasn't necessary, and encouraged the labels to drop DRM as a requirement. It became obvious to everyone that people are happy to spend their money to support artists they enjoy. I'm sure there's still quite an active music trading scene, but there's money changing hands, too.
Your positions on downloading and trading are inconsistent with your positions on supporting artists and convincing companies to remove DRM. You have to show them that the market is there and willing to pay (assuming they're not fleecing us) to convince them that DRM is unnecessary. In the meantime, you're just entrenching them further and making it harder for your favourite writers to do their work.
Buy books. Pay for them. If you can, buy from a publisher that's already DRM free and thank them for their decision. If you can't, buy the book and remove the DRM afterwards if you like and stop falsely complaining that you can't device-shift your collection. Then get off your lazy ass and write the publisher and remind them that you ALREADY paid for the book and that you'd appreciate it if they considered changing their policy.
Baen Publishing has been DRM free for its ebooks for more than a decade. And even gives some books away free via the Baen Free Library. Here are Eric Flint's arguments for that model from 2000: http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp DRM free texts from Baen have encouraged me to try authors I may not have otherwise and Flint, Ringo and Weber are all authors whose hard back books I've purchased after I've started reading a series via their ebooks. In fact, in the case of those 3 authors I tend to own both the physical & ebook version of each of thier books. I refuse to purchase either Apple or Amazon players/readers because I want to own the books and music I purchase, not pay for just a license to use as long as those corporations maintain servers to authorize my access. I have moved my ebook purchases from Baen across 5 personal computers running different versions of Windows & Linux, across 3 different portable reading platforms Palm Vx, Windows mobile & now Android.
I am seeing it happening. But I don't know if it's very widespread.
You mean like this one http://www.baen.com/library/ ?
That seems to be some sort of mix. First book that caught my attention I can't even buy let alone read online ... The possible free books appear to be a very small subset and the books that are listed as "Baen Books" are closer to what I'm talking about but the selection is small and the topic is very narrow (sci-fi fantasy?).
... even bands like fun. that "graduate" to big labels keep their first releases up on Bandcamp.
Thanks for demonstrating goodwill in this exact situation to counter the OP's "seriously?" comment.
There's only ever been a few cases I've found out of hundreds where music has been discontinued on Bandcamp and the one instance I know of is a French band Malajube
You assume that Amazon is committed to developing a version of their "reader" that is compatible with future devices, operating systems, etc.
I'm not suggesting there is any problem nor definitely will be any problem, only that the potential most definitely does exist.
I wouldn't care that much if DRM allowed me to actually use the files I purchased.
As an ex-member of Audible, in order to actually listen the books I bought, I'd have to get an mp3 converter, get it to accept the codec I pieced together from Audible's software, which then would change every few months, rendering the old "hack" useless. Now I just pirate everything and save myself a few hours of work.
I'm not that much into piracy and I wouldn't mind paying $15 for the privilege of having someone read a book to me, but going through all the hassle just so I can open the files on the OS I want in the player I want doesn't sound like a worthy investment of time.
Same principle applies to ebooks. When I want to re-read the tome on corporate marketing I bought seven years ago, I head over to the study and pick it up. If I buy an e-reader with its own proprietary format now, will I still be able to read the book after a decade has passed? I'm not too sure, I kinda envision myself browsing the web for a kindle-to-google-glasses-converter.
I had the same issue. Book one is $10 on amazon. Paperback is $6. Used is 40 cents. Why the hell would I pay $10 for a 12 year old book, than I can't loan to a friend when I'm done. It's pricing models like this that drive people to just download it.
For musicians, I feel that downloaded music should be free (as in beer). Why? Because performers should earn their money from PERFORMING, not some artificial product that can now be gotten for free.
Same argument for movies. The valuable product they sell is the movie theater experience. But the downloads should be free.
But for authors? That's tough. What is their valuable product? The words on the page are their sole item, and if those can be had for free, then the only real way authors will be paid (long term) is a patronage model? Voluntary payment? Neither one is much good for the bulk of authors.
So does that mean authors will be a dying breed? Possibly, and quite possibly a good amount of literature won't be written as a result.
Publishers selling on Amazon can decide to add DRM or not. There are many ebooks on Amazon without DRM. Those books are easily converted to other formats if you don't like using Amazon's software to view them.
DRM exists because the costs of the ebooks are outrageous and people know this.
I dont buy Hardbacks because I can wait a half year or more for the paperbacks. They have moved to 10.99 or so now for some large Paperback books and the ISBN number actually had the price in it. So, then I would go to used book stores and buy the books sometimes 3 to a dollar, etc.
But lets talk first purchase here. Cost for ebook delivery? minimal. Someone tell me how its more than .25 cents and explain it. So delivery costs is gone, so its basically labor + editing + idea + profit margin (name recognition). So then lets go with a good 1.99 cost and sell 100,000 copies of a book is 174 gross per book.
There is a reason why books are 24.99 on Apple or Amazon? pure and simple: It forces them to do DRM and whine and bitch and claim author X's book did not sell because of piracy instead that it sucked.
I have literally hundreds of paperbacks (more like over a thousand) in ziploc bags in my garage that I was planing on using for retirement. You know, the old Bookstore by the beach. Well thats a shot deal, so... do I trash them, scan them in, re-get the ebook, or just keep them stored until electricity runs out for someone to find and claim they are the Coptic scrolls of our day.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
Just wanted to give a nod to GOG.com and point them out as an example. They sell games that are only DRM-free, and they seem to be doing just fine. I've been one of their customers since they started a few years ago, and I've only seen them grow. I haven't heard anything about their games being stolen and redistributed. I see no reason why it'd be different for (reasonably priced) ebooks.
Since almost all major publishers use DRM, it's a fair bet they are. Yet they are pirated. How would removing the DRM make any fucking difference?
Our 3-year-old happily sits watching Dora & other shows in the back seat with my old iPod Touch on longer car rides. Same thing will probably happen with our iPad after it gets replaced. Plenty of room for video, durable, and the battery life is better than any portable DVD player. Back to Dora - the first handful of DVDs were worth their weight in gold, but per-episode cost way more than buying sets off of iTunes, and while the discs auto-play, they also auto-play all the ads (whether you want to or not - Disney gave up this practice, I wish Nickelodeon would...) If she's happy watching on our iPad, Mom & Dad can watch whatever we want on the big screen TV. :) If not, they're all dumped in iTunes and streamable by our Rokus.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Allcaps works fine for emphasis as far as I'm concerned. It's a webforum...manual markup is so last decade. If you want people to use formatting, give us a WYSIWYG edit box.
Not only that, but look at the collections. Books 1-6 are sold as a collection and priced at $59.99. That's still $10 per book. If that price were lowered, the number of people pirating his stuff would be reduced.
Until ebooks match emusic I'll be sitting on the sidelines. All my music I can keep the cd's or put them on my digital player of choice. I don't even have to prove I own it. Head to the library and rip a cd, borrow from a friend, record it myself. Until I'm allowed to easily put a book I possess on an ebook reader, I'm not buying one. Scan a barcode, take a picture of the dust jacket, or whatever gets decided to prove I have a copy in my possession and lets me get the digital version.
And planning to make it even harder to deal with and more lock-in to their 'store'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How to crack Amazon DRM
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I recently wanted to read Stephen King's first novel. Published some 40 odd years ago. I'm sure the proofreading and the marketing and the layout have all been bought and paid for. Ebook price? $7.99.
End result, I opted to pick up some free classics (and a couple of cheaper indies)
Just sayin'. I'd even sign up for Amazon Prime, if they'd realize that I can read more than one book a month. BTW, MY books are sold without DRM. Has anyone pirated a copy?
There they insist that they buy games REALLY CHEAP. I.e. $100 for about 30-40 titles.
Yet, AT THE SAME TIME, they will show that they have a title range of hundreds of Steam games as PROOF that Steam helps sales.