image The gory details are at paidContent.org. So what does this mean for the e-book business? Plenty.

While Spore‘s DRM restrictions are unusually onerous, even gentler versions of traditional DRM can crimp sales—more than canceling out the anti-piracy benefits.

DRM as a pirate’s friend

In fact, as the Spore debacle shows, people turn to pirated copies when DRM inhibits their use of legitimate ones.

DRM standards: They could help, but still are not as good as either no traditional DRM or else the use of social DRM—both of which let books be read on the widest variety of machines. More and more, this flexibility will matter. In a forthcoming piece, Ficbot will tell how her new iPod Touch fits in with the rest of her collection of e-gizmos.

Related: Clueful words from Pan Macmillan exec on her house’s DRM-shedding efforts and other TeleBlog items on the Spore mess.

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