Interesting, but will the experiment's results be generalizable? Wouldn't SF readers be considerably more likely to be DRM-sensitive consumers than the broader market?That's not the point. People in general might not think much about it, and anyway sci-fi readers are already buying tons of eBooks, with DRM.
I wonder how long it will take Amazon to figure out a way to sell DRM-free books on the Kindle? They claimed that it was just 'too hard' when it was only a few authors (most notably Cory Doctorow) asking for it; maybe now they'll reconsider.There was an author in here earlier saying his books were DRM free. When you publish, you apparently have the option of not enabling it. Supposedly you can copy kindle books off your Kindle if it's not enabled.
But we shouldn't have to convert ebooks in order to enjoy the benefits of being DRM free. Especially if the same amount of effort could be used to strip the DRM in the first place.That's like saying you should be able to play CDs in your tapedeck. Not everyone needs to use the same technology. In theory, conversion can be done on the fly when you transfer your files over.
I didn't really follow the politics behind digital music essentially going DRM-free a few years back, so I'd like the hivemind's input on something. Do you think DRM on e-books is at all analogous to DRM on music? And even if it turns out that we get the same end result, will it happen for different underlying reasons?I think one of the major reasons why DRM was pulled from music players was that it just didn't work. You couldn't take music and put it on any device. Microsoft came out with a system called "PlaysForSure" and then they came out with the Zune, which couldn't play audio with that protection, and had it's own.
Oh... Amazon has all of this figured out already (except the DRM part)? Amazing that I continue to give them my money.Amazon's system works fine with non-DRM content.
Um, delmoi? People do that already. DRM is the tiniest of speedbumps."People" may do it, but what would happen if every single person were able to do it? I think you're vastly over-estimating how good the average person would be at DRM stripping.
Also, "..there was a lot of demand from consumers for DRM free music.". If by "consumers' you mean a tiny segment of the market who actually did more then click buy and then listen to their ipods/iphones then sure. I think "a lot" probably rates under 1%. They have sold over 10 BILLION songs.Apple sold over 10 billion songs. I specifically talked about Apple as an exception. Also, 10 billion songs in 10 years at 99 ¢ each isn't all that much compared to the business they were doing with CDs. Not by a longshot. Remember, each CD sold for $8-$14. A billion songs equivalent to maybe 100 million CDs? In 2005 they sold 300 million CDs in the US, 750 million in the top 20 nations. In one year.
I still don't get where all this consumer demand for DRM free is.Like I said, customers might not have understood the concept of DRM completely, but they did get that if they got music from somewhere other then iTunes, it was going to huge pain in the ass to get it to play. On the other hand, they understood that if they got an MP3 off the internet, it really would "Play for Sure" on pretty much any device.
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I think this is a great move, and I hope this expands across Macmillan, and that other publishers follow suit.
posted by jabberjaw at 12:37 PM on April 24, 2012 [1 favorite]