That is the title of Mike Shatzkin’s latest post in The Shatzkin Files. It’s too long to reprise here, but suffice it to say that it is very thoughtful and definitely worth reading. Among other things Mike discusses the best defense against piracy:
… this post is not about DRM; it’s to propose what is the ultimate defense against piracy: ebooks that aren’t static; ebooks that change.
The secret sauce behind O’Reilly’s DRM-free policy is that when you buy an ebook from them, you are entitled to the updates to that ebook…forever. The implicit message there is there will be updates.
There is no better antidote to piracy than this. If the pirated or peer-to-peer edition of a book is yesterday’s, or last week’s, and the book is changing, then it’s yesterday’s paper
Mike even figures out how to do this with fiction!
Just imagine cross links between book citations or any other socially generated content applied to paragraphs, chapter titles, etc. What if every link of the pirate copy expired because its hash is deprecated and link resolver won’t allow you to surf between your copy and those books/content your links are pointing to? Does it make sense, IT dudes/dudettes? Hmm, well, maybe some smart guy would keep a server with all hashes for a given book, but that would still be quite resource-hungry
I don’t think this “constant updating” approach will ever result with fiction ebooks… I believe what most people involved in “pirating” fiction ebooks want is to be able to read the story, not some additional content not directly related to the story… and even if authors/publishers manage to update the story itself in some way, what is there to stop “ebook pirates” from “pirating” those new updated versions (not to speak of what to do of the paper versions – or won’t those be updated?) – in fact it’s what is happening now with the technical ebooks, one can usually find in the net, with more or less work, the different editions of them.
also, if there are people really interested on those updates they surely are the true fans of the authors or series, and those are the ones that really buy all the books (sometimes the different paper versions – hardcover and paperback – and also the ebook version – I know I did that more than once 🙂 )
also, I tend to believe that those authors that sell large thousands of books (or millions!) are the ones less affected by “piracy” – their books may be the ones sooner and more easily available, but they sell lots and lots of books all the same (best-sellers must mean something, after all :)) ; the not so well known authors are the ones who may complain, although maybe some of these authors even get to be more known after their pirated ebooks obtain a certain ammout of illegal circulation…
Let’s suppose we have a fiction book:
-People may feel like highlighting a paragraph and expose it to their friends or just everybody with their interpretations on a character etc, e.g. a Harry Potter spin-off story
-Scholars, amateurs etc, would come up with their knowledge on certain excerpts of books, and people would stick to their subscriptions just in case somebody brings about a new point of view/thesis about the author/work etc.
-People would like to meet others who share their interest in that given work/author, maybe a lesser-known one (thus, authors would feel compelled to get their works published on those social reading platforms)
I don’t want to turn this into a “reading vs. screening” fixation, but Google Editions fits into the description of such web service, and it certainly matches web 2.0 evolution pattern in that the added value comes from crowd-generated data