DRM debate: Library tech guru Peter Brantley vs. Adobe’s Bill McCoy
A DRM debate has started between digilib guru Peter Brantley and Adobe’s Bill McCoy. Both sit on the board of the International Digital Publishing Forum, some of whose member companies want an interoperable DRM standard.
Peter, executive director of the Digital Library Federation, argues that DRM isn’t worth messing with. Bill undoubtedly will be talking up DRM as useful technology for libraries and other loan-related apps. I just hope he won’t be as gung ho about DRM for retail purposes—DRM is a sales toxin that penalizes honest book-buyers without stopping piracy. Bill himself has written the following in the past: "I would like nothing more than to have DRM technology just fade away." He didn’t say Adobe should stop doing DRM for publishers wanting it, but even he recognizes its major negatives.
Small publisher vs. DRM
Others go further. My publisher, Lida Quillen of Twilight Times Books, successfully urged eReader.com not to DRM-hobble her books. And that reflects the commonsense of many a small publisher. I just hope the big boys will wake up about DRM’s downside, especially in retail. People want to own books for real, a point that Peter himself has eloquently made.
You can read Peter’s first shot, in the O’Reilly TOC blog, and Bill’s reply will follow there. Ahead is one of the best arguments in the Brantley post:
DRM systems do not age gracefully. Because they are tightly coupled systems — a series of protections that must all be aligned in order to permit proper functioning — DRM is particularly sensitive to technical obsolescence. Thus the value of content secured by DRM is inherently reduced compared to its unrestricted use state, because its anticipated future value is less. In turn, that reduces the ability of a DRM protected system to maximize revenue generation over the content’s lifecycle — and for books, the potential value should last more than my lifetime, but be able to be handed down to my daughter, now 7 years old, and generations beyond that. Libraries are not just about access, but preservation for the ages. DRM breaks libraries.
To Bill’s vast credit, he has acknowledged that social DRM could be a useful alternative to traditional DRM. From his past writiings:
Adobe is committed to continuing to supply DRM technology in our solutions as required by our publisher partners. We will continue to work to make DRM as seamless as possible for end users, while also protecting rights holders from piracy or unauthorized use, and we are poised to deliver some innovative new capabilities in this regard.
Yet, I would like nothing more than to have DRM technology just fade away. After all the main challenge we have in digital publishing is to get it adopted by mainstream consumers. And the main challenge 98% of book authors and publishers have is to get people to be aware of their books, not to prevent piracy. So my challenge to print publishers and authors: why not support ’social DRM’, rather than heavyweight DRM? If that’s a direction you are willing to go, Adobe will back you up, 1000%.
Hmm. Isn’t it possible that Bill should be encouraging Adobe, the IDPF and its corporate members to check out social DRM for real? And what happened to idea of the IDPF doing a logo for DRMless ePub? Let’s not forget the main show, e-book standards. If the IDPF even loosely links ePub with DRM, it will be a setback for a far-more-important cause.
At one point I was reluctantly open to interoperable DRM, but more than ever these days, I wonder if the IDPF shouldn’t spend its limited resources on more useful activities. Even without DRM, e-book standards over the long run will be a challenge to maintain. DRM, given its vulnerability to technical obsolesce, just adds to the complexity. Do publishers really want to spend millions over the years on a so-called DRM standard? I’m a writer, and even a "standard" could mean some money out of my pocket—not just indirectly in the cost of the technology but in lost sales to DRM-hating readers. Forget all this hype about "seamless DRM." Sooner or later, given DRM’s complexities and inherently closed approach, there’ll be ugly gotchas for publishers and consumers.
Leave a Reply