TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Henry Melton on digital pirates, DRM

By Chris Meadows

Henry Melton, whom I have covered here a few times in the past, has made a pair of posts to his blog talking about the Pirate Bay decision and the prevalence of DRM. He has also announced a special offer to those who have bought his e-books in a DRM-restricted form.

Usually when “luddites” are mentioned in connection with the digital piracy problem, the term is applied (in the “afraid of technology” sense) to the information industry who has lagged behind the emerging market for digital products, not providing what the public wants and allowing the copyright violators to take the initiative. But in his blog entry, Melton compares the Pirate Bay operators to the original Luddite movement, in that both are groups of people who cling doggedly to ideas that are past their time.

We are shifting from an economy that makes physical objects to one that buys and sells IP. The rules about theft that applied for apples and bolts of cloth have had to change rapidly to allow for nano-cost duplication of digital objects of value; songs, movies, ebooks, etc. It’s not strange that many people don’t realize that yet. It’s sad that the Pirate Bay people, and a lot more like them, will go to jail because they don’t get it.

In his other post, Melton compares DRM to the child-proofing that protects children from injuring themselves when they are too immature to be responsible. DRM, posits Melton, protects the marketplace from consumers who are too mentally immature to behave responsibly toward intellectual property.

In an adult world, people would buy, or otherwise ethically acquire, the digital media they want and then have no DRM to manage what they do with it because they would be wise enough to understand the economics of media production. In their own self interest, they wouldn’t participate in the unethical secondary duplication arena. Neither would they, while walking through a farmer’s market, swipe an apple off the table and eat it without paying. Five finger discount is something kids do, until they learn better.

I do have one quibble with this idea: to be effective at protecting the marketplace, DRM would have to be effective at stopping people from misusing it. However, the DRM on every major e-book format (not to mention DVD, HD-DVD, most computer games, etc.) has been cracked, and the cracks can be found with about five minutes of Googling.

Furthermore, as Cory Doctorow pointed out, encryption can never be made uncrackable as long as the recipient of the message and the unauthorized "attacker" are the same entity. If you provide the user with the key to the automatic-unlocking-gadget along with the locked-up message, smart hackers will always be able to figure out how to turn the lock on their own.

To the people really determined to get around it, DRM might as well not exist—the only people it stops are the ones who aren’t smart enough to figure out how to download the cracks. Oddly enough, the e-book companies have known for years that their DRM has been cracked, but they have made no move to reinforce it. I wonder why that is?

Melton concludes his blog post by noting that, even though his Kindle e-books are (as far as he knows) DRM-free, his Mobipocket e-books’ vendors won’t sell them that way.

But here’s my private offer. Starting now, anyone who bought one of my ebooks, regardless of format and DRM, can email me a proof of purchase and I’ll give you a DRM-free copy of the same title, just a grateful acknowledgment for people who have demonstrated their maturity. Currently I have mobi, pdf and epub formats.

And that is an offer that readers should appreciate whatever their views on the inevitability of DRM. Kudos to Mr. Melton for making his works easier for honest people to use.