I agree with many of the above that DRM only really hurts users. No digital pirate worth his salt is stopped for more than a handful of hours by any existing DRM method, and that is likely to remain true. I'm a computer programmer, and I currently have the knowledge and skills I would need to crack the DRM on most software available today. I've never studied it, and I'm not interested in furthering piracy of any kind - it's just that the knowledge is neither specialized nor particularly arcane.
We also need to narrow our definition of piracy a tad, I think. People copying an ebook to give to their friends may be illegal, and is technically piracy, but it's not the kind we need to be worried about. We need to worry about the true digital pirates, the ones who are in it for profit. These people not only pirate works of all kinds, they make them available for sale to others at a cost that usually undercuts the market price. This sort of thing is rampant in south Asian countries especially.
These 'true' pirates are not stopped by DRM. It's a matter of a few hours for an experienced cracker to confound even the most advanced rights system. DRM even agruably helps them, as it makes property harder to use for the honest consumer, and pirates offer versions free from those troublesome systems.
On a tangent from my point here, Micheal brought up a good point about digital book lending in that it should mimic physical book lending - any purchased instance of a book is only available to one person at a time.
We also need to narrow our definition of piracy a tad, I think. People copying an ebook to give to their friends may be illegal, and is technically piracy, but it's not the kind we need to be worried about. We need to worry about the true digital pirates, the ones who are in it for profit. These people not only pirate works of all kinds, they make them available for sale to others at a cost that usually undercuts the market price. This sort of thing is rampant in south Asian countries especially.
These 'true' pirates are not stopped by DRM. It's a matter of a few hours for an experienced cracker to confound even the most advanced rights system. DRM even agruably helps them, as it makes property harder to use for the honest consumer, and pirates offer versions free from those troublesome systems.
On a tangent from my point here, Micheal brought up a good point about digital book lending in that it should mimic physical book lending - any purchased instance of a book is only available to one person at a time.