4 ms·
How DRM can hurt sales (Steve Bellovin)
- dpapathanasiou 16y agoThis is terrific. I'm going to send it to every author that chose not to publish with us b/c our marketplace is DRM-free (and the reasons he enumerates is exactly why we're DRM-free as a matter of policy).
- pavel_lishin 16y agoAre you talking books, or software? I don't think any of the e-readers lock a book to a specific device.
- teamonkey 16y agoTired, anecdotal comments like this offer absolutely nothing new to the DRM/piracy debate and don't really belong on HN. We need experimental, quantitative evidence, with a data set large and broad enough that we have a good reason to dismiss many of the variables as irrelevant.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoThe plural of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "data". ( Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=246716 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=246716 )
- alecco 16y ago"How DRM can hurt sales." He didn't say DRM does hurt sales in general.
- motters 16y agoWell one thing is clear. If you put DRM onto your product then I, for one, will not buy it.
- wazoox 16y agoDitto. I avoided buying DRM'ed CDs, use only public domain e-books, etc.
- bryanh 16y agoWell, I know from experience that even small time producers of digital goods want some form of DRM, whether they know it or not. A common question I get from my BitBuffet.com customers is "How do I know they won't share the file on their website? Can't we lock it or something?". I never really know what the best answer is for this; I try the diplomatic "There certainly are technologies for this, but they are especially annoying to your paying customers and the tech isn't foolproof" but I really doubt there is enough demand in most cases to warrant an effort on combating piracy. It is difficult to convince them otherwise when its their hard work.
- wazoox 16y ago> Well, I know from experience that even small time producers of digital goods want some form of DRM Not all of them; only those who didn't yet understand that DRM won't help sales (on the contrary, for small players it certainly hurts much more than it helps).