2 ms·

Perhaps, but then I am left wondering about newly written books -- why are the authors continuing to endorse DRM? Why are the authors continuing to do business

• shmerl 13y ago
  It's not about new vs old books, it's about forward thinking vs backward thinking publishers. I.e. the story goes like this: When authors write books, and want to publish them, most of the time they has no means to do it. So they look for publishers to fund that. If publishers are thick-sculled and backward thinking (i.e. afflicted by DRM Lysenkoism), or otherwise somehow crooked, they demand DRM to be part of the deal. Authors might not like that, but they think they have no choice etc. If publishers are normal on the other hand, they don't care about DRM. Crowdfunding often helps to prevent all this mess, and it's starting to play a bigger role in publishing, not just for books, but for other media (video, games, etc.) which also is often afflicted by DRM because of the legacy publishers. Notably, practically no self publishing authors ever use DRM. As with many areas, old publishers for some reason most of the time are afflicted by DRM. Newer ones - less so. I can't explain the exact correlation, since DRM is really such a stupid thing than anyone with common sense would know that it's bad for business. More than often my feeling is that DRM is used for stupid (Lysenkoism) or side sinister and selfish reasons (covering one's incompetence, controlling technology progress, spying on users or what not).