That's the title of an article in The Digital Shift.  Here's a bit of it: The decision on Tuesday by Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen imprints, to make its entire list of ebooks available DRM-free by early July 2012, caused a tremendous amount of discussion in publishing circles with little reference to the library market. From a librarian perspective, such news is secondary to the ongoing battle to convince publishers such as Macmillan, which is the parent of Tom Doherty Associates, to make even DRM’d content available to the library channel.  Something Macmillan has steadfastly refused to...

That's the question Michael A. Stackpole asks on his Stormwolf website.  His answer is that for the average person it probably isn't, and I tend to agree with him: Those of us who are early adopters, who are computer savvy, who are interested in digital books are at risk of forgetting some simple truths about readers in general and people who have bought dedicated e-readers. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had conversations with people about what I do, who profess to be Star Wars® fans, who profess to have read the novels, and who even tell me...

On blog e-Learning Stuff, an unidentified blogger writes about a recent conference he or she attended at which discussion was had of the “Kindle Problem”—the Kindle is the most popular e-book platform, but not all e-book platforms and formats are compatible with the Kindle. And thus, there was a problem “with the Kindle.” The blogger points out: Blaming the user is indicative of an industry that fails to understand its users and is an industry that dictates how users should do things, over trying to meet the needs of the user. The...

In what must be some of the least surprising news ever, one day after Tor’s US imprint, Tor/Forge, announced it was going DRM-free by July, Tor UK has just made the same announcement. It’s pretty clear they were planning this all along; I expect the reason they staggered them was to try to get two separate news bumps from it. At any rate, this should at least satisfy the folks asking about it in the comments thread on Charlie Stross’s blog post yesterday....

Yesterday was a day for reactions to the Tor DRM-free announcement, for sure. John Scalzi has a post in which he applauds the move, while featuring a quote from Patrick Nielsen Hayden in which pnh indicates that Tor will in no way be scaling back its efforts to fight piracy just because it’s dropping DRM. Scalzi feels this is a victory for people who “just want to own their damn books” and suspects that other publishing houses will be following suit. Charlie Stross has another lengthy post to his blog, following up on his post last week about Amazon’s...

Well, that didn’t take very long. The first major publishing imprint has announced it is going to go entirely DRM-free. Tor/Forge has just posted a press announcement to Tor.com that its entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free, both through the current vendors and through retailers that can only sell DRM-free e-books, by July 2012. “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in...

TOC Latin America was held last Friday in the beautiful city of Buenos Aires. Kat Meyer, my OReilly colleague, and Holger Volland did a terrific job producing the event. As is so often the case with great conferences, part of the value is spending time with speakers and other attendees in between sessions and at dinner gatherings Last Thursday night I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Kat, Holger and a number of other TOC Latin America speakers. We discussed a number of interesting topics but my favorite one was asking each person this question: What happens if DRM goes...

We’ve heard a lot of people arguing that publishers should fight Amazon by dropping DRM. However, in The Scholarly Kitchen, Joseph Esposito has written a long and thoughtful piece looking at the possible drawbacks of this approach. Esposito first looks at the question of whether unauthorized sharing of e-books increases the market for them. His own guess is that infringement helps sales when there is sufficient friction—i.e. the free copy is harder or more annoying to use for some reason—but hinders them when friction approaches zero. And since free e-books are getting easier and easier to find, publishers...

From DefectiveByDesign: On May 4th, members of the Defective by Design DRM Elimination Crew all over the world will join together at local events to protest Digital Restrictions Management. Events in Boston, Madrid, London and Toronto are already coming together, and more are on the way. See http://dayagainstdrm.org/ for the latest events. Let us know where you are located, so we can contact you about events in your area! While DRM has largely been defeated in downloaded music, it is a growing problem in the area of ebooks, where people have had their books restricted so they can't freely loan, re-sell or donate them,...

From AfterDawn: Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said the entertainment industry is "shooting themselves in the foot, or maybe worse than the foot" by trying to push anti-piracy legislation. Brin said the recently killed PIPA and SOPA legislation would have led to the U.S. becoming more like Iran and China, who censor their people. Even more importantly, Brin hit the nail on the head in regards to piracy, saying the industry cannot understand the simple concept that users will continue to download unauthorized content as long as it remains easier to acquire than authorized material. "I haven't tried it for many years but when...

Ever since the Department of Justice first made noises about suing over agency pricing, interest in Amazon’s, the publishers’, and Apple’s pricing practices has revived, with everyone and his brother expressing an opinion. Just over the last few days, I’ve starred a couple of dozen commentary posts on my Google Reader trawls, which is a bit much to cover here, at least all at once. But I’ll hit a few high points. First of all, John Scalzi is a little grumpy about “consumers who apparently think the current drama surrounding e-books is like a football game.” He reminds readers...

As long-time readers know, we carry plenty of stories about how DRM is harmful to consumers, preventing them from fully using the products they paid for. (And we have plenty of commenters ready to go even farther about how terrible DRM is!) But one thing you hear about less often is how DRM can be harmful to e-book stores as well. Ruth Curry, chief operating officer of independent e-bookseller Emily Books, has written a piece on PaidContent discussing the effect that DRM has had on the store she runs with her friend Emily Gould. Major publishers were not willing...