DRM and Suicide Committed by Industries

[dewline]

I keep thinking this DRM stuff is going to be Very Bad Indeed for manufacturers, creators and customers alike.

antipope just reminded me of why that may yet be so. Give it a look-see.

More on other stuff later today...

Comments

[mariness.livejournal.com]

As a creator I like the idea of DRM. But as a reader/viewer I find DRM irritating. My first ereader was a gift from my parents, and came with gift certificates to the Sony store. The books I purchased there later went onto my Nook without a problem - but not the iPad. A friend later sent me some BN gift certificates, which I used to buy three ebooks -- and with two of these, BN continues to tell me that my computer is "not authorized" although with the third it is -- even though all three books were purchased at the same time with the same gift certificate on the same computer. This means that when I plug in my Nook to download library books, the computer deauthorizes those two books on my Nook and I have to download them -- on the Nook - all over again. Yes, the process only takes a second or two, and yes, once I get the new computer I'll be calling Barnes and Noble to clear up the activation issue on that computer, but it's still irritating. If I'd actually paid for these books I suspect I'd be still more irritated.

My personal guess is that even with the popularity of ereaders, this issue is helping and will help the sales of at least some traditional books on the basis that they can always be opened.

I found myself using Weightless Books (http://weightlessbooks.com/) for a couple of recent books by friends, and I have to say, the ability to get those into both the Nook and the iPad was a selling point.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Interesting linkage there. Food for considerable thought.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how well Weightless is doing. The advantage they had was that they were initially financially backed by the established Small Beer Press. The disadvantage is that their site is not all that attractive or easy to navigate (the same is true for Wizard's Tower Press), and of course right now they are only working with small press publishers. I have no idea if they have any plans to change this in the future.

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

Amongst the things to consider about Digital Restrictions Management (because it ain't about rights) is that no matter how hard they try, the DRM schemes are usually broken in no time at all, and tools made available for scraping the cruft off of tainted purchases. I think the only one to still be functional at all is Apple's Fairplay, and that only on books.

Attempts to restrict how one can use digital purchases have often had bad results (with consequences for the bottom line at content providers) - the various schemes to protect CDs, which resulted in many CDs not playing in a wide variety of players, Sony's rootkit debacle, various autoboot options that were designed to prevent the CD being used in a computer in any way other than that demanded by the publisher, various games protection schemes up to and including World Of Warcraft's highly invasive monitors, assorted DVD schemes including region coding and agreements amongst player producers to produce units that wouldn't play burned discs of any type, the super-sized region coding schemes that were RC1 and RC2 that were meant to bypass any bypass and lock drives and players down, tricky schemes used by Warner Bros (on The Dark Knight and many other discs) and Paramount (on Star Trek, particularly) that resulted in computers having seizures when the discs were put into DVD drives -- not even played, or any attempt made to rip them. Just pop it in, and bingo...the computer would lock up and act weird. Not so good for those of us who play mot of our media on a computer these days.

I* had the same issues as Mari with the Sony eReader, where each new library book downloaded would deauthorize everything else. It was very frustrating. As I noted in an earlier post about this, I'm presently somewhat content with returning to paper books since the eReader broke, as they don't have issues with device volatility or battery life. They're just a little less convenient.