DRM Thoughts

[ebartley]

I mentioned in an earlier post that Amazon had lost a lot of sales to me by using DRM. Yes, I've bought ebooks from Amazon: when that was the only source I knew of, or when very pregnant/on maternity leave and didn't want to leave the house, or when I was sure I wouldn't want to reread the book, or when I just plain wanted the next book in a

Comments

[osewalrus]

Not that I object to all DRM. When I'm leasing content (e.g. Netflix view-on-demand, or a library book, or arrangements of that type) I think DRM is entirely appropriate, to enforce the temporary nature of your usage rights.

As you note, there's lots of different flavors of DRM. Most of us who object to DRM tend to object to DRM mandates -- particularly because the content industry has discovered that the market continues to reject DRM without mandates.

DRM also can have the effect of customer lock in, which turns out to be bad for the content industry. The case of iTunes is a useful warning here. iTunes continued dominance is in part a function of the inability to export the music library to other players/formats. As Jobs points out, this is a condition of his license from the music industry. But it also keeps iTunes at about a 70% share, which is how Jobs has kept the price of licensing singles at 99 cents for so many years despite efforts by the music industry to increase the licensing fee.

[ebartley]

Just discovered Once Upon A BookStore.