No DRM Results In No Change In E-Book Piracy

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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No DRM Results In No Change In E-Book Piracy


Sci-fi and fantasy publishing label Tor U.K. says that one year after it removed DRM from its e-books, nothing much has happened.

In April 2012, publishing imprint Tor U.K. announced [http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/tor-uk-e-book-titles-to-go-drm-free] that it would remove the DRM from its e-books, saying that not only readers but also many of its authors wanted it gone. One year later, it's looking like a smart move: customers are happy, authors remain supportive and, most important of all, the rate of piracy of its titles hasn't budged.

"Having been in direct contact with our readers, we were aware of how frustrated many of them were by DRM. Our authors had also expressed concerns at the restrictions imposed by the copyright coding applied to their e-books," Tor U.K. Editorial Director Julie Crisp explained. "For us, we felt a strong sense that the reading experience for this tech-savvy, multi-device owning readership, was being inhibited by DRM leaving our readers unable to reasonably and legally transfer e-book files between all the devices they had. DRM was an irritant taking away the flexibility and their choice of reading device and format, the very things that made the e-book so desirable a format to begin with."

"Protecting our author's intellectual copyright will always be of a key concern to us and we have very stringent anti-piracy controls in place," she continued. "But DRM-protected titles are still subject to piracy, and we believe a great majority of readers are just as against piracy as publishers are, understanding that piracy impacts on an author's ability to earn an income from their creative work. As it is, we've seen no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles, despite them being DRM-free for nearly a year."

Books are books and games are games but the similarities are obvious, and while this is just one more anecdotal tale of "DRM serves no one," you have to hope that also makes it one more step toward recognition of that fact by the major publishers in all relevant industries.

Crisp also confirmed that Tor U.K. will continue to publish all its e-book titles DRM-free.

Source: The_root_of_all_evil [http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later] for the tip.


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Boris Goodenough

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I wish every company would learn from this, also when they do drag people into court (and win) the artists sadly don't see many pennies of the millions that are won.
 

Fappy

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Come to think of it, I don't know a single person that has ever pirated an e-book. Fancy that.
 

Formica Archonis

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Fappy said:
Come to think of it, I don't know a single person that has ever pirated an e-book. Fancy that.
I've known a few. DRM doesn't stop them. Hell, to the dedicated, a dead tree book doesn't stop them. The most dedicated will unbind the book so they can scan the pages flat, then rebind them. (Lazier ones just cut the book up, but I'd never have the heart to do it.)

When the pirating scene is small and built around a core of guys who will spend days performing the insanely tedious task of scanning and OCRing a real book, what hope does DRM have?
 

thesilentman

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Andy Chalk said:
Source: The_root_of_all_evil [http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later] for the tip.
Root? He's still active? That guy's awesome. I kind of wish that he stayed...

OT- Well, all you fancy piracy is killing our business haters please go away. It doesn't change anything because you simply took off the DRM. Now, offer incentives on the DRM free products, and then we're talking profit. :)
 

Calcium

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Considering it stayed equal, I'm not sure whether to take from this that:

1. DRM does not stop piracy.
2. DRM does not cause piracy.

In any case, no DRM benefits both the business and the customers so woop woop!
 

Tisiphone1

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Dec 27, 2011
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I wonder how much this comes from the fact that Baen has been DRM free for quite some time.

But yeah, it's strange, I never really think to pirate a book unless it's an insanely priced academic one. I actively choose not to pirate music, movies, and TV, but naturally don't pirate the printed word. Weird. Maybe because there was never a point at which I felt like I couldn't afford to buy a book as long as I was willing to wait for the paperback?
 

Vegosiux

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If DRM does not lead to any change in piracy at all, then it's superfluous and an objective waste of resources.

In other words, if the piracy rates remain unchanged after you removed the DRM, there's reason to believe the DRM wasn't working against piracy.
 

schtingah

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ccdohl said:
How do they know that the piracy rate has stayed the same? How do they track something like a piracy rate, which is an activity that people do in secret?
Nothing you do on the internet is a secret :p.
 

Sean Kay

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Fappy said:
Come to think of it, I don't know a single person that has ever pirated an e-book. Fancy that.
I did, but thats largely because I was forced to. I wanted to buy an ebook but was told I couldn't because I lived in the UK. So I found a torrent in less time than it took to write this post. This is why people pirate folks, its a better service
Its also why e-books get pirated less, they're very easy to buy
 

Aeshi

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I'm sure the fact that on average (e-)books are much much cheaper than games has nothing to do with it.
 

Something Amyss

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Fappy said:
Come to think of it, I don't know a single person that has ever pirated an e-book. Fancy that.
According to Comcast, someoned pirate the Harry Potter series using my wireless. Well, they didn't say my wireless, but it seems unlikely someone broke into my apartment and downloaded it while I was sleeping.

Even if they had the wrong account, that's one person who did it.

Not that I entirely blame anyone who would seek to get Harry Potter in ebook form. This was back when Rowling as still a holdout on ebooks because her works were meant to be experienced on the printed page. Which explains the movies and audiobooks, MIRITE?

(Not condoning piracy, mind, just saying that I understand why someone would want to pirate the unavailable).
DVS BSTrD said:
I guess we ain't all criminals waiting to happen after all. Or maybe Pirates don't read.
Gotta be hard with them eyepatches.

wombat_of_war said:
irronically its alot of gaming sourcebooks for rpgs that end up being pirated
Oh God, I was so pissed when Wizards removed their ebooks from Drivethru because someone had been caught distributing their watermarked PDF.

Glad they're back now, but yeah.

Aeshi said:
I'm sure the fact that on average (e-)books are much much cheaper than games has nothing to do with it.
Sarcasm aside, it probably has little to do with it. You'll notice that they didn't say there was no piracy, but rather that things didn't change because they went DRM-free.

Why are people so quick to defend DRM?
 

Fappy

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wombat_of_war said:
Formica Archonis said:
Fappy said:
Come to think of it, I don't know a single person that has ever pirated an e-book. Fancy that.
I've known a few. DRM doesn't stop them. Hell, to the dedicated, a dead tree book doesn't stop them. The most dedicated will unbind the book so they can scan the pages flat, then rebind them. (Lazier ones just cut the book up, but I'd never have the heart to do it.)

When the pirating scene is small and built around a core of guys who will spend days performing the insanely tedious task of scanning and OCRing a real book, what hope does DRM have?
irronically its alot of gaming sourcebooks for rpgs that end up being pirated
Actually... that makes a lot of sense. While most of the rules are online for free anyway (thank God for the Pathfinder SRD!) I do know a lot of people who pirate tabletop books. In fact, I think most the people I have gamed with have owned a pirated PDF before. I know Paizo and White Wolf don't actually care that much since a lot of people find hardcovers easier to use and only pirate the books as a way to demo them.

Personally, I like working with hardcovers and SRDs as source book PDFs are generally clunky as shit.
 

PoolCleaningRobot

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I wish others would follow suit. I use Netflix for most of my movie and TV watching but I would rather buy TV shows and watch them on my devices. Of course, this means I would have to pick a video service to stick with and I can't think of any that would work on all my devices and it would be another fucking accountto keep track of. I'd be more than willing to drop like $50 on a season of a TV show if they would they would just give it to me as a bunch of mp4's. My alternative would be to rip dvds but I don't want to own a bunch of disks and boxes