4 ms·

No great fan of DRM myself, but I don't think the economic case is very strong here. If strong DRM so obviously reduces sales, then are the publishers just ign

No great fan of DRM myself, but I don't think the economic case is very strong here. If strong DRM so obviously reduces sales, then are the publishers just ignorant of that? Of course not. It's because DRM is mostly about legal licensing and legal hardware standards, as discussed exhaustively in the OP here [1] and comments. In my most cynical hours, I imagine that behind closed doors, the publishers are looking for ways to encourage piracy because of the boosts to overall enthusiasm that results (ie. free advertising), which is documented in the article. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110

wpietri 12y ago
> are the publishers just ignorant of that? My hypothesis: DRM is like magnetic healing bracelets. Do they work? No. Do people buy them? Yes. Are the purchasers just ignorant? No, not exactly. Ignorance isn't the problem, because telling them the facts doesn't change behavior. People who buy magnetic healing bracelets want particular feelings more than they want to know the truth. So they buy the thing that gives them the feelings they want. I suspect DRM is similar. Major media company executives like feeling in control. They don't like people "stealing" their content or doing "the wrong thing" with it. DRM gives them feelings of control, letting them turn the positive-sum game of entertainment back into a zero-sum dominance game. Ridiculous, but that's what happens when your raw building material is primates, and then you give all the power to the ones best at climbing the primate dominance hierarchy.
- Steko 12y ago
  Magnetic healing bracelets aren't a very good analogy. Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying. Does it stop informed/skilled people? No, neither do real locks but we keep putting them on houses and cars for good reason. Digital locks provide a non-zero level of actual security and a signal that the issuer intends to protect the content from unauthorized distribution. If I leave my belongings out in the street tonight, I can imagine anything of nominal value will be gone by morning. I think more people would enjoy having my electronics than the latest Corey Doctorow novel. This isn't because the electronics industry hasn't made TV's and electronics available to the people in my community. It's because people prefer free to paying if all things are equal. Instead I continue to keep my belongings in my house, with my doors generally closed and locked while I am out. When I am missing something, it's generally because I have misplaced it. Some people who do this do still get robbed but to say locks and doors and walls don't work is a bit silly.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    > Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying. Do they? Is it a significant proportion? My guess is no. If you've got evidence otherwise, I'd be interested to see it. Most people get their entertainment from convenient sources. Amazon, Walmart, Comcast, Netflix. They could steal it, but generally it's easy enough to get their stuff from licensed channels that they just pay up. That's not about digital locks. That's about legal versus illegal distribution channels, and the incentives distributors have in both instances. Those vendors I mention have all done a great job at making it easy, and they can afford to make those investments because the police won't be kicking down their doors for getting popular.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying. Do they? Or do they just stop some people from copy from the locked version and encourage them to instead copy from someone else's unlocked copy?
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  Publishers haven't come to terms with electronic distribution because they can't conceive of a world where the Publishers aren't needed for everything related to books. Are we better off with/without Publishers? It depends. Certainly, there is some value in having a publisher - editing, guaranteed distribution, payment, etc. - all the things that would be time-consuming and take away from the writer's first love, writing. Along with that, there are annoyances as well - dodgy DRM, outdated ideas about format, etc. It was easy when books were physical - a book was a solitary unit not easily shared. Now, not so much. An eBook can be easily shared - in theory, without DRM, the author would make the $7.99 cover price once, the book would hit P-bay and that would be it. To say that the problem is with people who don't value the author's work is an oversimplification, as well. Many people might value a work highly, but the electronic edition is easier or cheaper to get thru illicit means. There are those who say that sharing is not theft - true, to an extent. It's not so much stealing as it is just shitting on the work that an author has done. Which isn't to say that all authors are worth your time, either. Everyone has an opinion about what's good writing and what's not. Personally, I dig Terry Pratchett, but there are some who don't like his work. So to them, he's not worth the effort and expense of paying for to purchase a book. Now, you might ask yourself: self, why would you buy a book you don't like? In my case, I want reading material and there's not much way of knowing if the book is any good before I buy it (space military novels). I've gotten halfway thru a book and realized: I blew $2.99 on complete shite and that sucks. It's only halfway thru the book that I realized that the work of the author hold no value for me (and maybe a bit of negative value). However, the publisher is the one who got me - they set the price, they wrote the summary, they even sourced an attractive piece of art to cover the book. Ostensibly, they even edited it (though that's often rather spotty with self-published authors). So, a publisher still has some value to bring to even a crappy author. It's a complex problem and one not likely to be solved because no one really likes to think about how they can make their own job redundant, at least not without getting a reward for it. For publishers, it's a losing game.
pdkl95 12y ago
Unfortunately, belief systems that rely on the Just Worth Hypothesis[1] is are very common. Once consequence of this is the very common belief that if a change is made to the legal definition of what is "good/moral" vs "evil/immoral", then <i>reality will conform</i> or otherwise adjust itself such to maintain some sort of "balance". You see this at the core of many political and arguments: baning abortions "obvious" stops people from having sex, restricting drugs "obviously" causes people to stop using them, so banning copying and restricting the legal (meaning "moral") methods of use to a DRM scheme "obviously" prevents people from viewing that data for free. Unfortunately, this suggests that it will be very difficult to convince anybody to reverse these beliefs, because it would require them to accept that some particular type of justice is not an inherent property of nature. TL;DR - It is way too common for people to believe that because [they think] reality ought[2] to work in a particular way, they end up blind to what reality actually is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
lordbusiness 12y ago
There is a strong belief in what is considered "right"; despite evidence to the contrary, "the system" is still very much in favour of enforcing an unenforcible law. In other words, it is demonstrably true that some would pay for Downton Abbey Season 5 if it were available for them to do so in their country, but it's not, so they torrent it to keep up with their friends in other countries. By the time it comes out where they live, they won't need to pay for it anymore. A significant amount of TV and movie piracy would be eradicated if media conglomerates and film studios realized they had a global audience, and released content globally as opposed to clinging on to some now artificial segmented distribution model. In the past, a movie studio only made a given number of reels, so movies had to release piecemeal; likewise it took time for the cargo ship to move the physical books to various places around the world, in our digital connected age these things are no longer true, but the foundation of media distribution models remain the same.

wpietri 12y ago

> are the publishers just ignorant of that? My hypothesis: DRM is like magnetic healing bracelets. Do they work? No. Do people buy them? Yes. Are the purchasers just ignorant? No, not exactly. Ignorance isn't the problem, because telling them the facts doesn't change behavior. People who buy magnetic healing bracelets want particular feelings more than they want to know the truth. So they buy the thing that gives them the feelings they want. I suspect DRM is similar. Major media company executives like feeling in control. They don't like people "stealing" their content or doing "the wrong thing" with it. DRM gives them feelings of control, letting them turn the positive-sum game of entertainment back into a zero-sum dominance game. Ridiculous, but that's what happens when your raw building material is primates, and then you give all the power to the ones best at climbing the primate dominance hierarchy.

Steko 12y ago
Magnetic healing bracelets aren't a very good analogy. Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying. Does it stop informed/skilled people? No, neither do real locks but we keep putting them on houses and cars for good reason. Digital locks provide a non-zero level of actual security and a signal that the issuer intends to protect the content from unauthorized distribution. If I leave my belongings out in the street tonight, I can imagine anything of nominal value will be gone by morning. I think more people would enjoy having my electronics than the latest Corey Doctorow novel. This isn't because the electronics industry hasn't made TV's and electronics available to the people in my community. It's because people prefer free to paying if all things are equal. Instead I continue to keep my belongings in my house, with my doors generally closed and locked while I am out. When I am missing something, it's generally because I have misplaced it. Some people who do this do still get robbed but to say locks and doors and walls don't work is a bit silly.
- wpietri 12y ago
  > Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying. Do they? Is it a significant proportion? My guess is no. If you've got evidence otherwise, I'd be interested to see it. Most people get their entertainment from convenient sources. Amazon, Walmart, Comcast, Netflix. They could steal it, but generally it's easy enough to get their stuff from licensed channels that they just pay up. That's not about digital locks. That's about legal versus illegal distribution channels, and the incentives distributors have in both instances. Those vendors I mention have all done a great job at making it easy, and they can afford to make those investments because the police won't be kicking down their doors for getting popular.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying. Do they? Or do they just stop some people from copy from the locked version and encourage them to instead copy from someone else's unlocked copy?
drivingmenuts 12y ago
Publishers haven't come to terms with electronic distribution because they can't conceive of a world where the Publishers aren't needed for everything related to books. Are we better off with/without Publishers? It depends. Certainly, there is some value in having a publisher - editing, guaranteed distribution, payment, etc. - all the things that would be time-consuming and take away from the writer's first love, writing. Along with that, there are annoyances as well - dodgy DRM, outdated ideas about format, etc. It was easy when books were physical - a book was a solitary unit not easily shared. Now, not so much. An eBook can be easily shared - in theory, without DRM, the author would make the $7.99 cover price once, the book would hit P-bay and that would be it. To say that the problem is with people who don't value the author's work is an oversimplification, as well. Many people might value a work highly, but the electronic edition is easier or cheaper to get thru illicit means. There are those who say that sharing is not theft - true, to an extent. It's not so much stealing as it is just shitting on the work that an author has done. Which isn't to say that all authors are worth your time, either. Everyone has an opinion about what's good writing and what's not. Personally, I dig Terry Pratchett, but there are some who don't like his work. So to them, he's not worth the effort and expense of paying for to purchase a book. Now, you might ask yourself: self, why would you buy a book you don't like? In my case, I want reading material and there's not much way of knowing if the book is any good before I buy it (space military novels). I've gotten halfway thru a book and realized: I blew $2.99 on complete shite and that sucks. It's only halfway thru the book that I realized that the work of the author hold no value for me (and maybe a bit of negative value). However, the publisher is the one who got me - they set the price, they wrote the summary, they even sourced an attractive piece of art to cover the book. Ostensibly, they even edited it (though that's often rather spotty with self-published authors). So, a publisher still has some value to bring to even a crappy author. It's a complex problem and one not likely to be solved because no one really likes to think about how they can make their own job redundant, at least not without getting a reward for it. For publishers, it's a losing game.

pdkl95 12y ago

Unfortunately, belief systems that rely on the Just Worth Hypothesis[1] is are very common. Once consequence of this is the very common belief that if a change is made to the legal definition of what is "good/moral" vs "evil/immoral", then <i>reality will conform</i> or otherwise adjust itself such to maintain some sort of "balance". You see this at the core of many political and arguments: baning abortions "obvious" stops people from having sex, restricting drugs "obviously" causes people to stop using them, so banning copying and restricting the legal (meaning "moral") methods of use to a DRM scheme "obviously" prevents people from viewing that data for free. Unfortunately, this suggests that it will be very difficult to convince anybody to reverse these beliefs, because it would require them to accept that some particular type of justice is not an inherent property of nature. TL;DR - It is way too common for people to believe that because [they think] reality ought[2] to work in a particular way, they end up blind to what reality actually is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

lordbusiness 12y ago

There is a strong belief in what is considered "right"; despite evidence to the contrary, "the system" is still very much in favour of enforcing an unenforcible law. In other words, it is demonstrably true that some would pay for Downton Abbey Season 5 if it were available for them to do so in their country, but it's not, so they torrent it to keep up with their friends in other countries. By the time it comes out where they live, they won't need to pay for it anymore. A significant amount of TV and movie piracy would be eradicated if media conglomerates and film studios realized they had a global audience, and released content globally as opposed to clinging on to some now artificial segmented distribution model. In the past, a movie studio only made a given number of reels, so movies had to release piecemeal; likewise it took time for the cargo ship to move the physical books to various places around the world, in our digital connected age these things are no longer true, but the foundation of media distribution models remain the same.