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‘Potemkin Village’ tactics used in DRM demos, says Cory Doctorow
August 14, 2007 | 9:59 am
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By David Rothman
The BBC and other clients of DRM vendors are victims of Potemkin Village-style demos—fakes that make “protection” seem more palatable to consumers than it really is.
So charges Cory Doctorow in the Guardian. True?
And does anyone know of Potemkinish examples from the e-book business? My general feeling—although I don’t have specifics to trot out, at this very second—is that both DRM vendors and publishers need to be more realistic. No magic bullets exist for protecting books online, except to sell them at fair prices and to consider forums, updates and other enhancements that add value beyond the original texts.
Peer pressure—making it uncool to rip off community-minded writers—would also help in some cases. So might charitable contributions by writers really hitting it big. Just how many houses can J.K. Rowling buy with her billion dollars plus from Harry Potter? J.K. would be more sympathetic if she donated a higher percentage of her money for charity. To her credit, she already is supporting good causes such as Heifer International. Hmm. J.K. as an OLPC benefactor someday?
Also by Cory in the Guardian: Copy Killers.
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Comments:
a related news:
Pirate (aka PirateBay.org) Party in Sweden
(from MobileRead)
Typical Cory. He’s 100% certain that all forms of DRM must be terminated with extreme prejudice, and he’s not afraid to bend a few facts or make a few unsupported generalizations in his quest.
Just a few things I noticed in his Guardian article:
1) Which vendors are staging these supposed Potemkin village stunts? Zero supporting data from Cory.
2) How did he come up with the figure “25% of licence-paying computer users don’t even have the right operating system needed to use it” ??
3) “the whole premise of DRM – that audiences want to pay a few pence every time they try to use their media in a new way.” It must be nice to be able to blithely put words in your opponents mouths – and get away with it. And he claims his opponents have nothing to back up this claim which they have not even made! That’s particularly rich.
Cory might even be right in all of his charges. I doubt this, but no one can ever really know, because as usual, he gives the reader no way to verify anything he says.
I agree with Bryan that Doctorow may be overstating for effect. I think the more basic issue, though, is that he doesn’t propose an alternative. Just doing away with DRM and assuming that everyone will share freely isn’t (in my opinion) a solution. If you believe in eBooks, you can’t believe that there’s a long-term model for giving away eBooks in hopes that some of those readers will buy paper, no matter how well that has worked for a few authors during the transition from paper to eBook.
If we don’t use DRM, what will we use to provide authors and publishers an income stream? You can say advertising, but if there’s no DRM, someone can strip out the advertising and offer an ad-free version–or even their own ads.
I have some hope for David’s idea of education and moral suasion limiting unauthorized copying and rights violation, but Doctorov doesn’t seem to favor this–he glories in copying and unlimited sharing.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com