More on DRM and ebooks • Hacker News Board

Re: More on DRM and ebooks

#21

Post by lmm » Wed, Apr 25, 2012, 7:10 AM UTC

yuhong wrote: post #13

acabal wrote: post #7

I've been saying it for a while: the publishing industry right now is where the music industry was ~3 years ago. The cycle is going to be exactly the same. At one point big music figured out that removing DRM let them sell more songs, and they finally dropped it. It looks like publishers are starting to realize the same thing. About time, too--I have an ereader that I like to use but I refuse to buy DRM ebooks on pri…

So what led MPAA to create and lobby for SOPA?

The realization that while DRM doesn't help them, being able to rapidly take down pirate files on the internet does?

Re: More on DRM and ebooks

#22

Post by veidr » Wed, Apr 25, 2012, 8:23 AM UTC

Wow, that is a terriffic post, from the perspective of explaining the issue to a person who doesn't just intuitively get it why DRM encumberance is obviously bad for both consumer and publisher (e.g. 99% of readers here).

I wondered how long it would take the industry to get it that the only thing allowing Amazon to achieve its Herculean e-book dominance over book publishers was the DRM. The DRM obviously serves Amazon much more than the publishers -- and that would be the case even if the publishers' naive belief that DRM effectively prevents piracy were true.

Probably more publishers will start to get it after seeing the results of Tor's experiment.

Re: More on DRM and ebooks

#23

Post by lukifer » Wed, Apr 25, 2012, 10:16 AM UTC

nollidge wrote: post #6

I figure this is inevitable, since music downloads have largely gone DRM-free as well.

And yet, DRM-free movie downloads elude us (other than standup comedy). I find this deeply ironic, since eBooks and MP3s can both be trivially shared via email, and video files cannot.

Re: More on DRM and ebooks

#24

Post by so_says » Wed, Apr 25, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #12

so_says wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went with a Nook Touch instead of a Kindle, because it is very easy to get your hands on standard epub and load them at will. Loading e-books from outside the Amazon ecosystem can be done, but it is a cumbersome process at best. The Nook feels less tied to the B&N ecosystem than the Kindle is to Amazon. This is true for Sony and possibly Kobo as well, but I prefer the Nook as a device.

Cumbersome? I just select the epub in Calibre and press D. It could hardly be easier, in my opinion. Hell, the kindle doesn't even need to be plugged in...

I think needing software for conversion is a barrier to the common user.