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‘DRM or not? A debate that won’t be over anytime soon’
July 29, 2009 | 9:34 am
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By David Rothman
“My hunch is that the biggest authors will continue to insist on DRM and that they are sensible to do that. And that lesser authors will often be comfortable without DRM, and they are probably sensible to do that as well. But as the establishment stage of ebook adoption continues, I’d also expect that the ‘viral effect’ of non-DRMed titles will stop being healthy for sales. This is an argument that still has a long time to run.” – Mike Shatzkin, a leading maven in the publishing community.
The TeleRead take: I’m pressed for time, but ideally some TeleBlog community members will take the time in our comments section to parse Mike’s post in greater detail than I am here. Like Mike, I believe in social DRM as a compromise, despite such issues as the privacy risks, and I’m curious if “the biggest authors” will see the merits here rather than insisting on traditional DRM.
Meanwhile remember that authors aren’t the only people making decisions. Contrary to my wishes and my publisher’s, Amazon has a DRMed version of my novel online.
On the issue of non-DRMed files helping or not helping sales, there is one particular detail on which I’d strongly agree with Mike. The better e-book tech gets, the less chance for e-copies to promote the paper variety; will bonus services from paid buyers or subscribers really take the place of paper? Hard to say.
Cloudy future for fair use?
In a related vein, note what Mike has to say about accessing files “from the clouds”—the servers of, say, Google or Amazon—rather than on our hard drives.
Do you fear the Orwellian ramifications of Amazon remotely deleting files from Kindles, despite promises not to sin again? Well, the risks are nothing compared to trusting corporations—subject to the power of politicians and bureaucrats—to curate your so-called personal libraries. I love the idea of cloud couputing if Google or Amazon also will offer the local-storage option. My fear is that they won’t. The current DRM mess could be just a preview of bigger outrages to come.
Related: Past TeleRead posts on e-book museums—in other words, cloud-computing, as applied to e-books.
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Comments:
Hard to argue with anything he says.
He may be overly optimistic on the prospects of cloud computing and social networks, whereas I by default discount by 90% any predictions about future tech and paradigms; there are a lot of luddites out there, especially in places of power.
I think he understates the value of DRM, even now, because DRM is essential to online libraries.
I think he correctly points out that a lot of folks over-value DRM-free and for the exact reasons he states; we are still in the early adopter phase of ebook evolution and we have not yet reached a situation where the ebook buyer demographics reflect the at-large population.
He correctly points out that the bulk of DRM-is-evil resistance is coming from people who are not representative of the general population and that if ebooks do become a mainstream form of publishing the resistance to DRM will perforce be reduced, not grow.
And, above all, he points out that there is DRM and then there is DRM.
The real issue as has often been point out is not DRM vs zero DRM, but rather obnoxious, intrussive DRM versus reasonable, flexible DRM.
Examples of the latter can be found all over but one that has recently been in the spotlight comes from the videogame industry where XBOX is supplementing their DVD-based distribution system with an online od-demand sale system. Their licensing terms, for all purchased content (as opposed to their rentals–they do both) as straightforward.
Purchased content is licensed at a dual level:
- the user identity has license to the content on any console.
- alternately, any user identity on the console that bought the content has access.
Add in that the licensed identity can redownload the content at will on any console and you pretty much cover all user needs with minimal inconvenience.
Games are not books but similar arrangements can be crafted, *if* the (ultimately) fruitless absolutist campaigns can be ended and rational discussion engaged in what are reasonable usage models for ebooks and what are reasonable terms for licensing them.
Mr Shatzkin’s column might even be a good place to start a true dialogue between publishers and readers.
I sure hope there are more like him out there…
Thanks, Felix. I greatly respect Mike, and he comes MUCH closer than many in the book business to understanding users. But the longer they use e-books, the more they’ll appreciate the importance of genuine ownership. Because DRM is so proprietary, and because companies may go out of business or change plans or otherwise surprise customers, the “protection” does seriously reduce the value of books. I don’t think customers will be oblivious to this, especially in the future. Of course social DRM is different since it isn’t really true DRM and can work on a variety of devices.
Thanks,
David
Sorry but a lot of Mike’s post boils down to DRM isn’t that bad so customers will just learn to live with it. That’s true in some ways, but what he’s glossing over is that DRM limitations result in less value to customers and lower ebook prices for publishers and authors. I’m down with DRM when the price is right. I don’t think publishers and authors are happy about current ebook prices, however.
DRM also means less competition in the ebook and ebook reader device markets. Mike deals with lock-in by saying it’s a win for the devicemaker. It’s a loss for everybody else, though.
I also think his points about the need for DRM to avoid catastrophe are overblown or wrong given what happened to music. DRM has been removed, prices have been raised, sales are still strong (at least that’s what we’ve heard so far). Digital music files are worth more without DRM! Has piracy increased? Pretty sure it’s on the decline.
I think that DRM discussions are dishonest and pointless to a large extent since everyone hates drm, nobody downloads illicit ebooks or music or whatever and nobody knows how to crack drm…
The big issue and the one that drm obscures is if you can make money from e-content without a physical container; some money, sure, big money unproven so far and whatever the music industry does, their revenue still is going down on a fast slope, same with newspapers while books so far resist since they are mostly print and movies have theater releases as main revenue with the big size of the files against current internet speed still offering some protection but once a 1GB will be downloadble as fast as 1MB on broadband today that will change…
I just do not see how the revenue downwards spiral will be stopped until there will be an equilibrium at a much lower point than today. How this will shake out who knows, but content will still be there as long as society is prosperous…
The issue of cloud data – I think that Mr Shatzkin is way too utopian for various reasons in the near term future, while in the longer term we are all dead as the saying goes so who knows…But I strongly doubt we will see the cloud computing as envisioned there within the next 20 years so it truly does not make sense to plan for it
So publishers gotta pray that Kindle and the like do not become cheap and widespread enough and movie makers that really fast broadband does not come, while music and newspapers are done as they are constituted now – this of course does not mean we won’t have them, just that right now it is unclear how, maybe as subsidiaries of future Googles and such, maybe on afar less revenue scale…
The most annoying argument in this piece is that DRM is meant for honest people. He is not the first person to use this argument, nor will he be the last. What everyone of those people seem to miss is that it is incredibly patronizing. Basically we are told that they know we are honest, but we don’t trust you. In other words, corporations are treating consumers like children.
Another argument he makes that really holds little water is the interoperability argument (i.e., we can’t play records on our tape players or use 5.25″ floppies in modern computers, so why should we complain about not being able to read books accross devices.). The basic problem here is that in most of the examples he gives, there are infact legal methods of transfering the media to a format that can be used. If I am really in love with Word Perfect 5.1, I can still load it on a computer running MS Windows and it will run (or I can use an emulator on other systems). Likewise, if I have a record I want on CD, there is technology that will allow me to do that. In contrast, DRM prevents transfering between book readers.
What is also interesting is that he admits that the younger generation, the generation who have not yet adopted the Kindle are the most likely to illegally download files. Ultimately, that is the group that publishing must convince of the value of buying books. They are the customers of the future. The publishing industry would be wise to do all it can to lower the cost of entry into ebooks for them, and to give them as few incentives as possible to pirate books. If the industry doesn’t recognize in the next year or two that their current models are not working, then they will never bother to opt into the system.
Maybe he also thinks major authors should include “magic rocks” in their books to prevent bears from eating their children? DRM is that effective at stopping piracy.
The utterly absurd and discredited idea of DRM being “for honest people”? I can’t believe this canard is still being put up after it’s been shown in other DRM-loving industries such as music that it’s *not the honest people* you have to worry about!
DRM *makes* honest people into dishonest people all the time, it encourages them to break the (letter of the) law, because of the disadvantages it forces them to put up with vs the much friendlier, more useful (and free!) pirated versions of the same digital works.
Many people use DRM crackers simply to remove the restrictions on works they have purchased legally (most DRM cracker software only works with the legitimate decoding key(s) for the work in question, you can only unlock what you’ve already bought) and don’t intend to distribute it to all and sundry via filesharing networks or anything like that. They just want to be able to move their purchased content to devices they choose in the format they choose instead of being restricted by the seller’s list of approved devices and continuing support, always wondering if one day the seller will simply yank their property away from them, or go broke and closedown their DRM servers making the customer’s legally purchased product suddenly unusable.
The idea that as ebooks become more mainstream people will just accept DRM’s restrictions is sheer fantasy, it didn’t happen with music and it won’t happen with books either. In fact persisting with DRM will simply ensure the growth and mainstreaming of e-books will be restricted and e-books will never achieve their potential (I’ve always suspected that’s what many major publishers really want – they just want the whole e-book, internet, computer thing to go away and leave them alone in their comfortable 19th century world of paper and ink). Long term, as the publishing world’s traditional print customer base die off and are replaced by a generation used to getting their entertainment and information from the web on their computers and handheld devices, that’s simply suicidal.