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DRM as tech that only Rube Goldberg can love
November 24, 2007 | 6:55 am
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By David Rothman
A nasty conundrum plagues DRM in an e-book context.
The iPoddish-simple kind of “protection” means there’s a good chance that one company will dominate the whole scene in time (well, unless standards for DRM interoperability materialize). Even Steve Jobs isn’t so confident about the iPoddish model for music and now actually prefers no DRM.
So what’s the alternative to the obnoxious one-company-in-charge approach that some think simplicity could require? Well, we could continue the present anarchy, where you suffer DRM technology so complicated that only Rube Goldberg could have loved it.
In a hilarious post on DRMed e-books as they exist now, Rory@Napoleon.com compares the five easy steps of buying a paper book (put on clothes, go to store, find and buy the book, return home and read it) with the 19 steps of e-book usage. Very realistically Rory figures in activation-related woes.
Needless to say, comprehensive e-book standards could help address the various issues, maybe even DRM; but I guess Newsweek and the rest are too busy gushing over the Kindle to care. (Spotted by Mike Cane.)
Addendum: Needless to say, social DRM is far, far better than regular DRM. In a somewhat related vein, please see Greg Schofield’s thoughtful comments.
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Comments:
DRMed ebooks is a monopolistic solution that cannot last. It squeezes out small publishers out of the “protection” of profits that only the big players can enjoy.
Strike one against it . It could only really succeed in the long term if one publisher became permanently top dog, and its particular DRM scheme became universal and for all time. Not likely, the point, however, is this is the actual assumption behind it – its logic.
The ambition to bind the consumer to the publisher, will work for a while while the technology is new, but it has no future, in fact, it is hopelessly naive.
The real problem is not the copies handed around friends and family, but piracy for commercial gain, or even by some who feel strongly that literature should be free. Both groups are capable of cracking DRM if not soon then sometime later.
What would motivate piracy and produce its (black)market is if the value of ebooks was perceived as onerous, unjustified and oppressive.
The long term solution, because I believe very strongly that authors, editors and publishers should get returns for their labour is twofold. A form of payment that allows for direct disbursement of what might be on an item to item basis, very small. A form of payment that is easy, safe and open, the customer must find it easy to pay, and know what is going where to whom. This is the area of micro-cash which is fundamental to ecomerce, but missing in action at this time.
The other solution is a fair business model. Vendors/retailers for ebooks deserve their cut of the price, selling an ebook once – but not forever, if I buy one and decide to sell it, or a copy, I am the new retailer. The problem then is ensuring the various copyright owners get their share.
This is where standards can be very useful, along with cryptographic technologies, not of the text, but as something more useful. Who has not bought a second-hand book and found the previous owners “ex libris” declaration pasted inside its cover. We are all familiar with this as we are with the receipt we receive.
Combine this with a required signature. All the software has to check is that it is present, all it need to record is the royality payments along with unique identity of the last person to purchase it. Pay the amount due and a new signature is assigned for the identity of the new owner. No need to cripple the software, there are dozens of legitimate reasons for reading something that has not been paid, the reader need do nothing, but make it clear that it is not owned, no biggy, not very complex and nice and open.
Provided the value accords with the item, the vast majority of people will pay. I would not give a present of an ebook without paying for the copy, nor would most people. I may well borrow a book to look at, but if the price was reasonable and wanted to read it, especially if I liked it, paying the copyright holders seems just good manners.
That excercise of good manners, combined with a reasonable price, the funds going to the people who actually contributed in producing it, that is reliable and workable in the long term. It is not absolutely relaible, of course, there will always be those who enjoy getting something for nothing, but in reality if we were all into theft as a way of getting things, nothing would operate at all, no matter how many police were on the job.
Just a suggestion of a different approach, for if I am sure of anything it is that DRM does not work and cannot in the long term be made to work.
Well, on that note, I guess Ford should collect a profit every time one of their cars sell. Why do authors expect another tithe every time someone reads their book. Libraries would have to charge for checking the book out. I think this idea of paying an author over and over for the same book is equal to paying for the second run through the cow.
Al,
How about checking the facts first? A lot of public libraries (San Jose, New York City, Seattle to name a few) allow their patrons to borrow PDF books for free and in most cases they would not be able to do it if these books were not DRMed.
“[...] if I buy one and decide to sell it, or a copy, I am the new retailer. The problem then is ensuring the various copyright owners get their share.”
Not quite. First sale doctrine says that you have the right to transfer (give away, barter or sell without retaining a copy for yourself) your legally made copy without the permission of the copyright holder. In effect, a copyright holder’s distribution rights over a specific copy end at the first cash register.
Making a new copy and transferring it without distribution rights makes you a pirate.
– C
Cerebus “Making a new copy and transferring it without distribution rights makes you a pirate.”
It is changing distribution rights that I am talking about. Digital distribution changes a lot of things. Reproduction is simple, unlike republishing a pbook. The premise of digital devices is communication. No traditional means of distribution of anything.
DRM cripples the object, it means possessing it relies on having the right glasses, produced by a single manufacturer, that may go out of business at any time. The “glasses” themselves cannot be kept because they are tied to another object created by a another manufacturer who is in the habit upgrading often.
Then might it not be argued that current DRM ebook distributors commit a fraud. I am not buying an ebook, but the right to read it, a right that may be withdrawn unilaterally at any time in the future?
What I was sketching out was a model of unDRMed ebook production that preserves the copyright of the artists, and is compatible to the means of communication in which the item resides. How the actual rights of distribution and redistribution is worked out on a technology of communication (no actual items being transferred, copies are always kept in the act of communications, reproduction is thus unavoidable and inherent in the technology itself).
Having dealt with software distribution in the hands of a distributor who on-sells through private contract to Amazon.com how much is sold and what gets paid relied on the honesty of someone who did nothing but scoop their profits from our work. It does not work. Piracy, is widespread, but they are not usually bedroom hackers, the worst offenders wear suits.