No DRM Results In No Change In E-Book Piracy

[Grabehn]

BTW I didn't know what to think from the title, I thought they had implemented DRM.

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!

It's actually quite simple, people that pirate stuff will pirate stuff anyways. It's when DRM affects the actual customer that it also affects the number of illegal downloads. Why pay for something full of restrictions when I can get it for free and with no restrictions at all? Just like how some versions of games don't work properly but their pirated counterparts do.
Not being able to get access to something causes piracy, restrictive DRM too. But I'm not saying in any way that these are the only causes of it

 

[LetalisK]

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.

If these downloads can be traced, I wonder why we don't see just thousands of people getting fined or arrested every day for it. Does no one give a shit or anything?

 

[Agayek]

Some developers can name drop, Chris Roberts, Lord British, Tim Shafer, Chris Avollone, Chris Taylor, Cliffy B to just name a few. (A lot of big name game devs are named Chris, hm..)

The problem is most AAA games aren't the children of a single mind trying to bring it all together the way they see it in their head the same way a Director or a Writer does for a movie or book.

As it stands there really isn't one person on most AAA games that has a solid direction they want a game to go or vision they want to get across, it is design by committee just to find what will milk the most people for the most cash.

Right now the AAA game industry is busy making McDoubles instead of signature dishes like you would get at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant. No one knows the names of the people who designed the McDouble.

See, the problem with that is that it's blatantly untrue. See Cliffy B for the most obvious example. He's the face of Gears of War, the first 3 at least, and publicly known as the lead designer of them.

Every company, except maybe Valve, has a lead designer that ultimately calls the shots. They are the ones with the ultimate vision and they are the ones that approve/deny changes to the game.

These people need to a) get more credit, and b) be held accountable. That way, they will be more invested in the game and more interested in making a good game.

Plus the customer can follow them if they enjoy that designers work.

 

[LetalisK]

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.

If these downloads can be traced, I wonder why we don't see just thousands of people getting fined or arrested every day for it. Does no one give a shit or anything?

Back before I had a good paying job and I pirated things I only got one CnD letter from my ISP, funnily enough it was for a game I already owned that had the disk snap when someone stepped on it.

I refused to pay EA 30 dollars to replace a disk that was damaged so I just downloaded a new disk, they took exception to that.

Most of the time it isnt worth it for them to go after so many people, because then they risk a massive class action lawsuit against them that would end up costing them more than the supposed amount they lost to pirates.

I get the civil side of stuff, but what about the criminal side of things? If the information is just there with the ISP, I don't see why a governor couldn't get a wild hair up his ass and decide to go after pirates. I know on the one hand they'd probably need a warrant to get the information, which I can see as next to impossible considering the nature of pirating, but I wouldn't put it past some ISP to do a little wheelin' and dealin' with the government and doing some trades. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. Perhaps the public backlash would be too much for the company to handle? I don't know, it always seemed like pirates were such low hanging fruit and I never figured out why they weren't pursued.

Edit: Though I am reminded of the megaupload controversy, maybe they'd be worried about another scandal of having so many government computers involved in piracy? XD

 

[LetalisK]

The reason megaupload got fucked so hard is because they were profiting off of copyright infringement, which is a criminal matter, where as if you or I were to download something, we are not profiting from the download, which makes it a civil matter, not criminal.

But wouldn't we be profiting? I mean, if someone downloads a game illegally, they just saved $60 and are $60 up on the guy that bought it legitimately. Couldn't that be seen as a profit? Or is that too abstract for the legal system?

 

[Strazdas]

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!

DRM does not stop piracy. it never did. best it can do is... delay it for 2 days?
DRM did not cause the piracy in this case, i know it did in AC2 case where DRM meant you cant play the game, wheras pirated version played fine.

Funny that this articled showed up today, as i saw over 50 GB of e-books drop into a torrent site this morning..... oh the irony.... not that i dontload them or anything, but that site has awesome forum, the one of tho (second being this) that i frequent often.

But wouldn't we be profiting? I mean, if someone downloads a game illegally, they just saved $60 and are $60 up on the guy that bought it legitimately. Couldn't that be seen as a profit? Or is that too abstract for the legal system?

No. no matter how much companies want it, not meeting expected profits cannot be illegal. If i have never bought a game and downlaoded it, i profited a 0 since i didnt save anything as i wouldnt ahve spent anything. and if i would have bought the game, then i would buy it to begin with.

If these downloads can be traced, I wonder why we don't see just thousands of people getting fined or arrested every day for it. Does no one give a shit or anything?

Profit. If you were an ISP, woudl you rather:
1. invest millions into tracking servers and report your costumers to police, resulting in them having to pay fine and canceling thier subscription
or
2. advertise high bandwitch plans so your pirating costumers would pay you more money because they want to download those movies in 1 minute instead of 5.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Considering that DRM doesn't hinder pirates but rather the people who crack it (a tiny amount of people compared to the pirates) you'd have thought that more companies would have cottoned on to this fact a lot earlier.

 

[mooncalf]

It's important to recognise that the customers who support your stuff with legitimate purchases are on the side of the creators without it being expected of them to jump through hoops. They've put the money down, you shouldn't give them any trouble. Hopefully piracy will become a thing of the past as availability and price point attack piracy at the root of it's motivation > convenience and cost.

 

[Dahaka27]

I'm am going to admit that I have pirated a couple of e-books, but only because the publisher of the books refused to let me buy them in the UK, same goes for some things from the kindle store not available in the UK, but they are elsewhere.

On the other hand, I have paid the Black Library alot of money simply because their stuff is easy to buy from their website, same goes for publishers that decided to remove their DRM and let Amazon release their later books in the UK.

 

[oliver.begg]

It's not like ebook DRM is hard to beat: My ebook library program has a drm stripping plug-in,(because certain providers like to not tell you if a specific book has drm and goddamn I just paid 20 dollars for this thing, I'm using it on my e-reader of choice regardless of how hard you want to fellate the kindle/kobo.) It basically ignores DRM with contemptuous ease, I stick it in the library and the DRM gets removed as part of the uploading.


Anyways, this isn't new, Baen figured this shit out more than a decade ago, and then they went the extra step of making huge chunks of their catalogue free and it not only didn't cost them money, but they made more. Turns out a massive back catalogue has a shit profit margin, but paying $100-$200 to get into an authors stuff turns people off. Removing that impediment makes more people more likely to give you money in the future. Go figure.

Here don't take my word, go read Eric Flint's explination:
http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp

Hell they go beyond the stuff there. Buy a first edition hardback and you often get a disc with all/most of that authors releases through Baen, with not only the go ahead, but the explicit encouragement to share it around.

Seriously:

Within this electronic transfer medium you will discover a universe of adventure, delight and astonishment. All who venture herein shall be transported beyond these sad, tawdry, mortal realms and into a world of wonders. Rejoice! Rejoice! Thou art saved from the mundane.

So stick the %^&* CD in your computer! We don't do these things for our health!

And make many many copies and give them away to your friends. We don't mind. Really. We think of it as multi-level marketing with reader crack.

Repeat after me:

You willlll copy this CD and give it away... You willlll copy this CD and give it away... You willlll copy this CD and give it away...

Ohm... addict people to Ringo/Taylor books... Ohm... addict people to Ringo/Taylor books... Ohm... addict people to Ringo/Taylor books...

You may now have your mind back. But if you don't follow our instructions, the puppy gets it.

And we'll know. Oh, yes, we'll know...

Edit: Oh and they also sell e-arcs for a reasonable price and well ahead of release if you don't mind a slightly flawed copy. Reeeeally want to read that new book, but it's not due for a few more months? Well you can!

and by god does it work, only 5 USD for a book? i regularly buy the entire months EARC collection, then never read it...

 

[redknightalex]

Ummm there are whole DRM systems specifically designed around facilitating time limited loans for libraries ( an actually reasonable use). I know a number of people who have used them and none have had any issues with it.

I am curious about how without a system to render a loaned e-book unreadable after the loan period expired you would propose a sensible system would work?

I actually work in an Interlibrary Loan department (lending/borrowing books from other institutions) and, from what I know working just recently with Kindles (we don't normally deal with e-books for our patrons), it's a big hurtle for us. We can't lend or borrow e-books, even when an item in question is only in an e-book format, which may have more to do with insane copyright laws than DRM. This is where I see the problems, not in general usage of borrowing e-books which has, for the most part, been adopted mainly by public libraries.

In regards to public libraries and keeping DRM there to make sure people keep up with the loan period, I don't know. I'm just sure that there is a way to get rid of that restriction, just like I could with my mother's audiobooks when she wasn't finished. Maybe there really is no need to be sure that people keep the loan period? Reading the link someone provided with an opinion from Eric Flint, I must agree, this is all sort of foolish and hurting the people who want to read.

 

[halfeclipse]

And when everyone stops creating content because you can't make money doing it, we'll finally see the ramifications of piracy.

Except when they removed DRM, they didn't lose any sales. Piracy rates remained the same, and purchases remained the same.

GASP, no copy protection, and people are still making money? HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE?!

And then you read the web story about the piracy rates of Game Dev Tycoon, a game I quite like, and realise that this is an exception to the rule.

Books =/= video games. For several reasons,(Being out 10 bucks for a bad book vs being out 80 for a bad game for example) but it largely boils down to piracy has little practical effect beyond that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost (Libraries, used book stores, loans from friends, etc), while any losses the publisher suffers are small enough to be more than offset by the free publicity.

Provided the industry as a whole doesn't start dicking over their customers like the games industry or trend towards stupidly high profit requirements somehow, pretty much any book publisher will see similar results.

 

[Da Orky Man]

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?

They can check the number of uploads on popular sites, as well as number of downloads.

 

[Amir Kondori]

"the rate of piracy of its titles hasn't budged."

Doesn't everyone think that most content industries know this already? I think DRM is more about platform control and limiting second hand sales. Piracy is the bugaboo that publishers trot out to justify this stuff but I think that is all a deliberate smoke screen.

Look what happened to Ubisoft once they ditched always online and went to one time activation. Their earnings are way up and they've hit all time high revenues of 1.1 billion euros.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

Surprise surprise, DRM doesn't work.

All you get is unsatisfied customers. Which is not good for any business. Though unsatisfied customers seems to be surprisingly healthy for EA and Activision, so maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the secret to being a business is to upset and exploiting your customers as much as possible? I don't like DRM.

Nothing you do on the internet is a secret .

It is a good thing I love attention and lots of it.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

And when everyone stops creating content because you can't make money doing it, we'll finally see the ramifications of piracy.

Because the invention of the printing press stopped people from writing books, and the advent of a camera stopped people from painting, and camcorders stopped the creation of movies, boomboxes stopped musicians from creating music, the VCR stopped people from making TV shows.

Wait, none of those rampant copying things actually stopped any sort of creation?! Are you saying that artists create for the sake of creating something and that those worth giving money to will still eat?! Shocking!

 

[infohippie]

I get the civil side of stuff, but what about the criminal side of things? If the information is just there with the ISP, I don't see why a governor couldn't get a wild hair up his ass and decide to go after pirates.

Because piracy isn't a crime. It is a civil infringement, and up to the copyright holder to enforce.. Which is yet another reason it is incorrect to equate piracy with stealing - theft is a criminal act, copyright infringement is not.