Book Publishers Abandoning DRM

tmalone writes "The New York Times is reporting that book publishers are beginning to phase out DRM-protected audio books. This month the world's largest publisher, Random House, started offering DRM-free mp3s; Penguin has announced that it will follow suit. Their logic? DRM just doesn't work. 'Publishers, like the music labels and movie studios, stuck to DRM out of fear that pirated copies would diminish revenue. Random House tested the justification for this fear when it introduced the DRM-less concept with eMusic last fall. It encoded those audio books with a digital watermark and monitored online file sharing networks, only to find that pirated copies of its audio books had been made from physical CDs or DRM-encoded digital downloads whose anticopying protections were overridden.'"

Audible.com not allowing non DRM books

[DKlineburg]

I understand this was originally causing quite a stir with Audible.com [audible.com]. Audible stats that it will not allow any non DRM books to be placed on there site. Even if the author requests that they do so. I know of one author mentioned on TWIT - This Week In Tech [twit.tv]. (I believe was John C Dvorak, but can't remember) that we was not going to put his book up on Audible.com just for the reason he wanted it not DRM'd. With all the major book companies shifting to a none DRM format, I wonder if sites like this that are smaller will change there attitude.

Are they even listening?

[Gareshra]

I realize almost everyone here knew this back when this whole thing began, but I fear that the music and movie industries will largely ignore this, or, worse, try to improve upon it somehow. The current models are failing, but they don't want to admit it. They'll probably continue investing more into an arms race they can't win. Maybe a mixture of diminishing sales and wasted money will cripple them enough that others can rise up and take their place.

Re:abandon ebooks too

[Rolgar]

Wrong

1. Searching: An index is nice, but I can think of times that I'd rather be able to search.
2. Portability: With an ebook reader, you can carry your entire library in a device the size of a piece of paper. Sure you have have to charge it, but you've got to sleep some time, right?
3. Commenting: The ability to markup the book without damaging it book in some way.
4. The ability to make as many bookmarks as you want. I don't know if any reader has instituted this yet, but this would be a killer feature that would allow you to mark all your favorite pages/passages so you can jump to any of them in a second.
5. Portable bookstore: Decide you want to read something but don't have the time to go to the bookstore, download the book to your computer or directly to your reader.
6. Unlimited selection: Everything ever published will eventually be available to be loaded on my ebook reader, but I have real difficulty with the selection available to me at local bookstores, especially with the lack of older titles available.

What is stopping me from getting into the ebook game now are the cost and features of the readers available. I never pay the early adopter tax, but within five years, I'll probably get a reader. I'm also not interested in paying the same price as I would at the bookstore for a new hardback, because the bookstore and it's share of the price shouldn't be necessary any longer, but as long as I can wait a year and get the book at half of the paperback cost, I'll be sold.

Re:Audible.com not allowing non DRM books

[Alon Tal]

It was Cory Doctorow who complained about Audible's mandatory DRM, in TWiT 124 [twit.tv], around the 43 minute mark.

Re:abandon ebooks too

[Eivind]

As you just pointed out, Ebooks -are- infact superior to wood-pulp books in some ways, and inferior in other ways.

As long as that remains so, they will suceed in some uses and fail in others. Notice how wood-pulp books are unlikely to improve much over the next few decades but Ebooks are certain to do so though, this likely means that ebooks will get more popular over time.

Advantages:

• Can be read in darkness
  
• Saves space physically.
  
• Free when the content is. (there is much free content)
  
• Cheaper than paper to buy content.
  
• Search, bookmarks, annotations, integration of errata
  
• Instant availability of content wherever there is a net-connection.
  
• User-selectable font-sizes (good for people with poor eyesight)
  

Disadvantages:

• More expensive reading-device (~$400 versus ~$0)
  
• Reading-device requires batteries
  
• Less durable
  

Re:Is it not ironic...

[ta bu shi da yu]

Can someone please mod up that post?

Don't listen to ebooks in the car folks. It's distracting.

There's just no way to concentrate on the book when you are dodging traffic and other drivers.

Won't someone think of the publishers?

Re:abandon ebooks too

[Nathanbp]

I'd like to point out that at least one book publisher gets it. Baen [baen.com] sells their titles as eBooks in plain, DRM-free HTML as well as a variety of eBook reader formats (with infinite downloads) for a somewhat reasonable price ($4-6 for a book, $15 for selected bundles of 4). In addition, a selection of their books are online for free at the Baen Free Library [baen.com], in the same formats.

(I have no association with Baen beyond being a happy customer.)