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par Hadrien
The publishing industry is quickly embracing digital publishing and is basically facing the same issues that the music industry had a few years ago. DRM specifically, is a very complicated issue: publishers are afraid that without them, file sharing will ruin their business, but they should be equally afraid of how DRM can be anti-consumer and limit the adoption of e-books.
While I can understand the situation of the publishers, I do believe that the publisher-reader/customer relationship should be built on trust, rather than digital locks and artificial scarcity. One of the most common answer to this problem is what is commonly called “social DRM”. I see 2 specific components to social DRM:
- a technical component to identify the customer
- a social component to customize the media
The technical component is a digital watermark, that can link an e-book to a specific customer. Therefore, if an e-book is redistributed through file sharing applications, it should be possible to identify who originally distributed the book. Of course, none of these digital watermarks are perfectly secure, and some of the customers will probably get rid of the watermark. Normal DRM suffer from the same problem: LIT is currently a very popular format among the e-book community for this specific reason.
But the most important aspect isn’t this digital identifier embedded in the e-books: it’s the social component, and this is where you build a relation of trust. A watermark should be perceptible: it is even more important to tell your customer that you created specifically this file for them, than to track them if they made some sort of copyright infringement. Moreover, this component of the social DRM experience should be customizable and fun. To identify a customer, you need some sort of ID: it could be something standard such as an OpenID, or specific to a company such as the new Adobe ID system. We could imagine a service similar to what gravatar does for avatar, where customers could link to their ID a customized bookplate (ex-libris) that would appear on the second page of their e-books. This would appeal to collectors, and make the experience of tagging your book with your ID much more pleasant overall.
In a social DRM world, while we wouldn’t need any sort of gatekeeper to control the access to our content anymore, we would still need services that can certify that an ID is valid and a technology capable of identifying e-books that are illegally downloaded. This would ensure that even current DRM providers wouldn’t go out of business: they would get in competition with each other in an open market where the best user experience and safest watermark would win.
I’ve been wondering how the book industry was going to handle this. With the music industry, there are quite a few more things that an artist can sell that are finite (Most obviously concert tickets, but plenty of bands are showing that there are other options). But what can authors do? Sure, some can make money giving speeches and public appearances, but I doubt this is going to make a living for many.
I like the idea of Social DRM, but I think if it doesn’t offer any real additional value, it’s not going to really be accepted. By adding DRM of any kind, you’ve made the book less valuable. If you haven’t added anything of value except a sense of satisfaction at doing the right thing, you’re probably not going to reach too many people. And the people you DO reach probably wouldn’t have pirated the book in the first place.
Anyway, I’m always happy to hear about publishers working with infinite goods and trying to find a business model that works, but I don’t think this one is going to.
Jon, rather than discussing DRM vs Social DRM, you raise questions about the way publishers and authors can make a living in a “infinite goods” world.
It is true that while musicians can make a living out of something else than recorded music, authors are in a very different situations. Some authors (Dickens is a good example) can make money out of public appearances, but I don’t see why an author should necessarily be a good speaker to make a decent living: they require different set of skills.
I do believe that there is an added value to e-book: they’re easier to carry with you, you don’t need a second house to store them, anyone can read them, even those with a very bad eye sight, and in general they should be less expensive.
While I don’t think that it’s possible to stop pirated books, I really think that most consumers would rather pay for a good service, where they can easily find new books, get recommendations, easily access their content and without any form of access control making things much harder than what it should be.
In a purely digital world, it’s the service that’s valuable for the consumer, not the goods anymore.
That’s very true that there is a value for e-books – I can’t wait until there’s a method for buying and reading them that makes sense for me.
But we’re not talking about comparing e-books to paper books. We’re talking about the difference between Social DRM, “traditional” DRM, and no DRM. DRM-free is always going to be more valuable to the customer. Your Social DRM is an improvement over the “all customers are criminals” DRM that has been popular with content-producers before, but it still can’t touch the value of DRM-free content.
I think in order to succeed, we have to ditch the DRM completely and figure out a way to make money without it.
Sure, I agree that a move from DRM to social DRM is essentially a shift from “all customers are criminals” to “some customers are criminal”.
I’m not sure though that for most consumers, no DRM at all really is more valuable than social DRM. As long as DRM is non-intrusive (I don’t consider having your name on a page, and your ID in a watermark to be very intrusive), and doesn’t stop you from using the content the way you want (multiple devices, no activation process).
I’m with Jon in that I don’t think social DRM adds value over DRM free. Consider future ebook devices that allow you to pair with someone from work or just in the park and share the books you are reading. Social DRM would prevent this as the consumer would not want to break this trust relation with the author / publisher. The user would see this as a limitation and prefer no DRM. So even social DRM can and will be intrusive, even though not as intrusive as standard DRM.
It’s my opinion that any system that tries to limit the properties of information / a public good (i.e. non-rival and non-excludable) will reduce value for the consumer and thus ultimately fail.
I think profiting for ebooks should be viewed in a totally different setting. If a typical consumer would illegally download 30 books a months for a value of $30 a piece, the publishers would argue they lost US 900. But this is likely untrue, as the consumer would not have spent $900 if he would have had to buy each single book. This is because the $900 was far above his willingness to pay on books for that month. Instead of focussing on piracy, the publishing sector should focus on extracting the full amount people are willing to pay.
I think people are willing to pay, just not so much for the books themself. For example, people will pay for convenience. I think a huge selling point of the Amazon Kindle is that you can get a new book with just the push of a button. Make it easy to get books to your device with the click of a button. Also a intuitive UI and more titles available legally than illegally add value.
I think people are even willing to pay for the convenience of receiving the out of copyright books hosted on Feedbooks on their devices with a single click. That brings me to the point of the business model for your venture; I haven’t been able to discover how you intent to make money. You make the kindle wireless feed available without charge, while people would probably be willing to pay for this (convenience). I would seriously consider making money on anything that adds convenience for the user if I were you.
Ultimately, I would like the industry to adopt some sort of library system. For $30 a month, you can convenently download anything to your device with a single click and keep and use it if your subscription expires. The convenience alone should be able to justify the monthly fee.
Hadrien, your social exlibris is a good idea, but like Jan and Jon, i don’t think that DRM adds value.
I’m an author. I’m fascinated with eBooks, and exploring how my work may fit into this niche. I have several projects in mind that are especially well-suited for eBook format.
Now comes the issue of rights. I look at it this way. People who pirate things are not people who were likely to buy them in any case. There are plenty of people whose conscience will not allow them to steal anything, and these people always will pay for software, DVDs, ebooks, or whatever. There will always be a market for legit stuff.
As for the others, I think of it as being something like “any coverage is good coverage.” I’d rather people stole my book and read it than not read it. How different is that from checking things out of libraries? I’m delighted to see that my books are in lots of libraries, hopefully being read by dozens of people per volume.
Historically, let’s look back at the music industry. As soon as tape recorders came along, people began copying LPs and radio music. The music industry panicked. But music sales continue to this day, and so will eBook sales.
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