I don’t think they are advocating going back to papyrus or clay to slow this down, are they?

You continue to act irrationally, your businesses will be damaged, and quite possibly fail.

If after many years of explanation of this they still do not understand, then that particular group is likely doomed. Or at least in a far weaker position than they should have been, so vulnerable.

But if they want it said :- books in html = good. Excerpts in html = good. (making your ADVERTISING HARD to access is basically CRAZY). Or, if you make it easy and enjoyable to use you will MAKE MORE MONEY.

Here’s an example. Allen Steele’s Coyote series has a website. There’s a short story not in any of the books made available, but only in FLASH. Doesn’t turn up in ANY of the first dozens of results in google, as a result. ADVERTISING FAIL.

Protected/encrypted/images/blocked/etc. makes it impossible to find in that sense. Can’t find it, can’t buy it, can’t read it. Won’t notice other stuff they have, as won’t go there.

Possibly some of the management there have never used a search engine, but primary school kids could tell them this.

The way I read this post and the embedded link is that you seemed to be in favor of making it hard to “rip” ebooks on the web. I felt that I should point out that your attmept to do so was a total failure. It was not clear that you offered other ways to download content nor is it clear to me how your website pays people who put things on it. Perhaps I should take another look.

Anyway the way to stop people ripping your work is to not rip them off and not treat them like potential thieves. Example of non-ripoff publisher: baen

You want people asking permission? Who’s going to answer the 10,000 emails asking is it ok to download a copy, in that case? You, or the author?

This of course ignores the fact that on the internet, you have to make copies with your computer to look at it to start with.

The best (and only) means of protecting content is not to display it at all. Not very profitable though.

We’d like publishers and authors to realise this, and stop wasting their money and time and our money and time on such ludicrously quixotic pursuits.

We’ll also like them more.

They’ve caused themselves considerable economic damage already, speaking of being, err. Gluttons for punishment.

Seems to me the focus should be on quality books.

I’ve been saying that for a while now, I wish they would hear me.

End of story.

When I buy a book, it’s because I expect to be able to keep it. I won’t buy DRM’d books, not now and not ever. I’m certainly not paying for something that I can’t even take offline.

I’ll wait. The music industry went through contortion after contortion, and threw away sale after sale after sale after sale, trying not to sell music to customers in the format the customers wanted to buy it in. I never bought DRM’d music. Finally, years later, I get my music by buying MP3s online.

In this case, the situation is not entirely analogous. There’s an unhappier, and not unlikely, outcome waiting in the wings: that a standard DRM’d format does emerge, and is tied to one particular company’s successful device.

Who has control then? Who has pricing power?

The publishers?

They’re not thinking very clearly.