Eric FlintI first noticed these columns when Slashdot pointed out the most recent one (albeit with an incorrect writeup claiming Flint said “DRM causes piracy.” But then, that’s about par for the course for Slashdot “journalism”), but I had been familiar with Flint’s writings about so-called “piracy” from the days of his “Prime Palavers” back when the Baen Free Library and Webscriptions first started up. Happily, the years since then have only given Flint time to expand upon and develop his themes, and all six columns are well worth reading. The first three are an examination of copyright and term length, the fourth looks at the principle of Fair Use, and the fifth and sixth focus more closely on DRM.

In the sixth editorial in Flint’s column entitled “Salvos Against Big Brother,” Flint expounds upon the thesis that, by creating conditions of scarcity and inconvenience, DRM provides added incentive to otherwise honest people to download material illicitly. He points to the seven years that his first novel, Mother of Demons, has been available freely from Baen without damaging print sales, and arguably promoting them.

Embiid and Liaden

And although I doubt he was meaning to refer specifically to Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe novels, when Flint writes,

A DRM-crippled text is a royal pain in the ass for legitimate customers. First of all, because you have to have the right software (and often hardware) to use Product A as opposed to Product B—since the publishing and software industries can’t agree on a common standard. And, secondly, because you have absolutely no guarantee that next year those same industries won’t make the software you purchased from them obsolete and thereby make the books you bought unreadable.

it’s hard not to remember their cautionary example. The Liaden ebooks were originally available exclusively through the small ebook publisher Embiid, and books using Embiid’s proprietary encryption format could only be read in special programs available for PalmOS and Windows. Text could not be selected and copied, and requests in Embiid’s SFFnet newsgroup for reader clients for other platforms, such as Windows CE, or other programs like Microsoft Reader, were generally met with a virtual throwing-up of hands and “we can’t afford the license fees.”

And then, of course, Embiid went out of business, giving customers a window of a few months in which to download and archive all their Embiid books and the reader software for same before going offline for good—a warning to us all about the hazards of DRM-restricted material. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending, at least for Lee and Miller—their Liaden Universe books migrated to Baen Webscriptions, where the first five are now available for purchase in open formats with no DRM whatsoever.

Links to Flint’s columns

  • A Matter of Principle
  • Copyright: What Are the Proper Terms for the Debate?
  • Copyright: How Long Should It Be?
  • What is Fair Use
  • Lies, and More Lies
  • There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

    • RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

    5 COMMENTS

    1. “DRM provides added incentive to otherwise honest people to download material illicitly.”

      It is rather ironic that in the previous paragraph you mock the Slashdot’s editors’ standards, yet in this you commit the dishonesty of calling breaking the law dishonest. Honesty is a moral term, not a legal one. (One might argue that since laws are the agreements members of a society have made with each other, and that breaking an agreements is dishonest, and that therefore breaking the law is dishonest; but one can scarcely ever have heard of modern copyright law if one were to make such an argument with a straight face.)

      Honest people that download in order to maintain the level of rights they had before DRM are still honest. They may be law-breakers, but at least they are honest law-breakers.

      There is a very simple way to test if what I say is true; look at the people you deem honest. Have they ever broken copyright law? (The answer is of course: yes.) Have they somehow become dishonest because of this?

    2. Stealing and DRM

      I don’t like DRM. I’m a reader and I like being able to read on the device I’m using. On longer trips, I use my eBookWise. But my Palm is always in my pocket–and I read on it. Some day, I might convert to that sexy new Sanyo PC and want to read on Microsoft Reader. I don’t want to worry about buying a new PC and the keys getting screwed up. I want to be able to re-download my book when I’m visiting my friend and want to show him something.

      So, I think I’m in synch with Chris and Eric on this, for the most part. What I don’t do, though (and I note that Eric doesn’t either) is go on with any moralistic pseudo-libertarian BS about protecting my rights. If someone loads DRM on their product, the way to protest is–don’t buy it. That’s it. That’s the ultimate economic protest. Buy what you like, buy from people who support your values, buy products that you can use in ways you think are appropriate.

      Rob Preece
      Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

    4. My apologies for giving offense. The point I’m trying to make is that publishers respond to incentives. Buying books that lack DRM encourages publishers to produce more of these books. Hacking DRMed books doesn’t really motivate anything except stronger DRM.

      I’m not sure I get your point about adherence to copyright. Are you suggesting that DRM somehow violates copyright? If so, certainly a lawsuit is the answer, no?

      Rob Preece
      Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

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