Skip to main content

The Futility of Digit Rights Management

Friday, June 15, 2012
... why I don't bother with turning on DRM for my e-books...
W
hen I was in high school, a bunch of years ago, one listened to music from a radio or a turntable. You know those machines with a needle on the end of an arm that went round and round. Yeah, there were tape cassettes and some still had 8-tracks but mostly it was vinyl. Pirating was about B movies at the Saturday matinee. There was bootlegging, something about secret recordings of concerts, but I was never part of any in-crowd so I only heard a few words from a distance.
Fast forward a few years and the digital world turned the music business upside down. Pirating took on new meaning and things haven’t been the same since. The book business was slow to see the effects because people weren’t willing to read books on their computers nor were they willing to spend a small fortune for a portable device. Enter Amazon and its Kindle. They sold it at a loss to create a market. It’d say it’s worked because in the last three years we’ve seen a revolution in the book business. No going back.
One aspect of downloading e-books to your e-reader is DRM or Digital Rights Management. BigAl gives an account of it on his blog here.
I won’t repeat this thoughts, but add a couple of points.
DRM is too easy to circumvent. It does not limit pirating.
Anything digital can be copied. It doesn’t matter what hoops you put in the way. If you think DRM is protecting you from lost sales, then you don’t fully understand what is going on.
I can go to a legitimate download library for e-books (part of my local public library) and sign out a load of e-books for use with Adobe Digital Editions. It’s set up to allow me to view them for one, two or three weeks. I can load them on my Kobo and use it with the same time constraint. All legit. After the expiration date, I can’t view the files on my computer or reader. But I could run some software and within seconds the DRM is gone. The time restriction is removed. I can now view those files next month or next year or send it out into the world for others to use.
DRM for e-books is a failure. It doesn’t work.
The only saving grace is in places like the US where there are laws against cracking DRM. But what is gained? Does the FBI go around to people’s home checking their computers and e-readers?
As well, if you have a download from Amazon (MOBI / AZW format) you can easily convert it to EPUB format for use on a Kobo or Nook or any other file format like PDF, TEXT, Word .DOC and so on. The same is true if you are starting with an EPUB file.
I don’t use DRM on my books because it doesn’t work and I don’t feel I’m losing any revenue. If people are passing along copies of my book, not likely, it is helping to build my brand, such as it is.
Posted 2012/06/15 at 15h50ET in E-books.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read
2 comments
Read more

Days 9-108: Writing a Novel—The Deep Blue Hold

November 25th, 2016 to March 5, 2017 Note: Unedited writings from my notebook for this novel. Square bracket items represent added comments. At 15:53 Office ... And so began a three month odyssey away from writing this novel, The Deep Blue Hold. ... W herein I try to explain why I stopped working on this novel. The shortest answer is I gave up. The short explanation is I struggle with mental health issues (MDD, GAD, PTSD) that paralyse me at times. When it happens, I’m not able to do much of anything. Don’t want to do anything and that includes things one might expect to enjoy. For a while I spent time trying to create some thirty-second videos that would play a word puzzle like a crossword. Here’s the clue. Here’s the blank spaces. And after an interval, one of the letters would appear until all the letters appear. A bit of a crossword puzzle in that sometimes you come to a word where crossover words give you certain letters and you have to fill in the rest. A
Post a Comment
Read more

Words: BONE—GONE—LOAN—BOAN

Friday, March 31, 2017 You’d think BONE would rhyme with GONE but no. This is the English language after all. But BONE does rhyme with LOAN so we’ll spell it BOAN. It will take some time to update all the existing writings but it can be done. Meanwhile, if you smash up your car, the insurance company will allow you to get a LOANER and if you happen to meet the right person you may get a BOANER. boan Post comments on facebook page Posted 2017/03/31 at 17h28ET in Words .
Post a Comment
Read more