DRM is not evil – says the Digitalist
By Paul Biba
The Digitalist is the blog of the digital team at Pan Macmillan and is always interesting to visit. Michael Bhaskar has published an excellent article with the title above. It’s one of the few times that a publisher has actually penned a thoughtful comment on this topic. Because I consider his post to be important, I’m going to reprint it here without any comments from me. I think he deserves to get his point across. I know that our readers will have their own comments later on. Commenceth:
DRM Is Not Evil
At Pan Macmillan we are no great fans of DRM. For a while now we have been selling a limited range of titles DRM free from our website; these are titles where the authors have requested that we retail sans DRM. Many writers are in favour of this, and so we see as it as an important service. Recently we have added the novels of David Hewson to the non DRM stable and they can be found on the website.
Lets face it. DRM can be a nightmare – confusing, fiddly, prohibitively sensitive to basic uses of media. A couple of weeks ago I was setting up a friends Sony Reader and forgot quite how dis-orientating an experience setting up an Adobe ID can be. Ok, so most of us used to the web will not struggle. But what about all those other readers who get by without Twitter and Adobe IDs? No doubt, DRM isn’t perfect and makes life difficult for people legitimately using files they have paid good money for. Worse, it can lead to those files becoming unusable (a situation which is inexcusable).
However the anti-DRM lobby, as vocal as it is appealing, makes DRM sound like some cultural apocalypse. Culture, the argument goes, thrives on being shared and the modern mass media is a recent aberration that cuts against the grain of creativity and the natural flow of cultural production. Advocates like Cory Doctorow and Larry Lessig make a case that is compelling, persuasive and important. Yet in the hands of many acolytes this is converted to a simple outright denunciation of any DRM and the assumption that the presence of DRM provides a moral carte blanche for piracy. Google might not be evil, but DRM sure is.
The whole DRM debate is hardly a new one but it’s time someone in publishing said something positive for DRM. Yes, it often sucks, but it’s not evil. Why?
Firstly because paper is a form of DRM. If you buy a book you can lend it out to a few of your friends. Can you send it to all of them? No. You are inherently limited in the spread of that book. We don’t assume that it would ever be possible to distribute that book to everyone we know, only that we can do with it what we want. This is both sensible and sustainable.
Secondly and more significantly because mass culture relies on a mass business model undermined by piracy. An argument against DRM is that the web will engender a liberation and proliferation of culture free from the corporate bonds currently suffocating it; get rid of the suits and we end up in a grass roots web driven artistic utopia. This might be true. However in this scenario there will be no more Hollywood blockbusters, huge epoch defining albums and tours, door stopping bestsellers and all the other accouterments of mass culture that rely on a company infrastructure.
These require scale, a corporate scale, which requires direct and secure revenue which to date has existed in the form of unit sales. Last.fm, Spotify et al are pointing the way to a fantastic new business model, but alone it is not enough. DRM is one of the only tools available to prevent catastrophic loss of revenue.
My argument here is simple: if we want Harry Potter- the books, films, computer games, the whole phenomenon – then DRM has a role. While some of the web elite could happily do without this kind of mass market stuff, and while I believe the web is important in promoting material antithetical to it, I think most of us would not want to see it go away.
We all know that DRM is far from infallible and can be hacked. DRM is never going to be a final guarantor, rather it is a basic protective mechanism.
So DRM is not great, but neither is it evil. There are a few things that need to be done by publishers and others to ensure though that DRM really isn’t evil. People do hate DRM. We have to make this better. My suggestions:
- interoperable DRM is a must. Seriously, until we have decent interoperable DRM then it will always be a huge and unnecessary barrier to adoption of new technologies. Getting this in place should be a priority for everyone in the content industries.
- more flexible DRM. I should be able to lend my file to people – just not torrent it at will.
- more choices and granularity of DRM available. As a publisher we don’t always want to slap the heaviest DRM on all our titles. Yet this is what we have to do. Some titles could have lighter- or no- DRM while others have more restrictive controls.
- more social DRM. Watermarking and the like could be very effective, but as far as I am aware this technique is not yet widely used.
- an acknowledgment of the different uses and situations people might find themselves in. This means recognising that an inherent give in the system will make peoples experiences better.
- giving something back. If we are going to use DRM then we have to make sure that what we are offering really is great. This means harnessing digital delivery to add content and experiment with new forms of content to really make the offering attractive.
- be open to new business models. We cannot cling to just DRM; at the same time we should start earnestly evaluating other alternative means of distribution.
This might not make everyone turn round and start liking DRM, but it should make life easier for the most important people of all: our readers.
Editor’s Note: the original post includes a number of links that I have not reproduced here. PB
July 15th, 2009 at 5:37 am
It’s no secret that I have maintained much the same opinion of DRM: It already exists in many forms and in many mediums, where it essentially does no harm; and that it still needs to find its proper and practical application in the e-book world to achieve the same goal.
Although I do not use it to sell my e-books, if it existed in what I would consider a practical format and application, I would likely use it. (So the difference between me and Pan Mac is that they started out with DRM, and I started out without it.)
Hopefully seeing more voices like this, from mainstream media and publishers, will accelerate what I believe will be inevitable: A DRM system for e-books that works, and doesn’t piss people off, resulting in a happy e-book culture and infrastructure… which, after all, is what we all want.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:11 am
By definition, a DRM system for e-books will never work. That’s the point of DRM: to make something in a digital object not work.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:01 am
I agree DRM has it’s uses. But in it’s current form it is evil, I purchase 20 books in Mobi format to read on my windows based phone and then later upgraded to an iphone. I have waited patiently for mobi to bring out an application in my location to read some of the books. I have now got to the stage where to read the books I have had go down the pirate avenue to remove the DRM. Something I never wanted to do. I don’t mind some form of DRM, but let me use them on whatever device I need to. I can not justify spending another cent on a ebook now. My last purchase was with a site that embeds a credit card number in the book. Great idea, I will not be sharing them with anyone, problem is I used a gift visa card to buy the books ($100) and never kept the card and of course when I downloaded the books a month or so later, I have no idea what the card number was. But I own them, they are sitting in my online library, just can’t legally read them, how evil is that. Most of us want to do the right thing, we also don’t mind authors protecting their works, but please if you must DRM, make it usable and stop forcing us to go over to the dark side. Remember that when we look for ways to get around the problem we get to see lots of other stuff that normally we would not have been aware of and maybe some hard working authors are going to go hungry tomorrow.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:34 am
The claim that paper is a form of DRM is laughable. The limitations on the sharing of a paper book are simple physics, not an artificial restriction imposed for the sake of the business. Customers know the difference.
This article’s faith in the efficacy of DRM is touching, but seems to fly in the face of experience. How’s that working for the music industry?
The assumption that DRM is a necessary condition for a unit-sales business model is also (at best) unproven; there are several examples where unencumbered digital content is being sold in this fashion. Apparently, it can be done.
You don’t have to consider DRM to be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse to believe that it causes real harm to the customer. You just have to have “bought” a DRM-encumbered product, and lost it to a platform change or to corporate abandonment.
Yes, relying on less onerous DRM schemes (i.e. no device lockin, no built-in obsolescence) would go a long way to improving the customer experience. I have no objections to social DRM, for example. But if such permissive schemes are acceptable to the publisher, that suggests to me that the threat is not really serious in the first place. This is security theater.
July 15th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Tony, I know some sites like Fictionwise use the credit card number in the DRM scheme. When you change to a new credit card they will let you set the new number as the default and re-download your books with the new number. If your booksite does not allow that, you might try contacting their customer service to see if they can fix this for you. There should be some way for you to get books.
July 15th, 2009 at 9:29 am
DRM is a technology. Of course it’s not evil. However, as frequently noted on this website, it comes attached with some negative practices. Like Steve, I’ve avoided DRM because of its high costs (to small publishers, both in terms of purchasing the technology and in terms of support costs once implemented). However, I’m also concerned with orphaned DRM as technology changes. I buy books for future as well as current reading and like the idea that I’ll be able to read them in the future.
I think the Harry Potter example is a good one. Sure there’s near-infinite availability of video free from YouTube but it does seem that the long tail still has a huge bump on one end.
Rob Preece
BooksForABuck
July 15th, 2009 at 10:40 am
On the digitalist, there is an insightful response by Cory.
Anyway, the comments at the digitalist reflect:
- there is much justified unhappyness about DRM
- people do not buy the idea that p-books are “kind-of” DRMed (there are many ways of re-distributing and re-using books that do not generate revenue for the rights-holder)
- anti-DRM advocates suffer from wishful thinking as well
Let us look at that last point: It is often argued that DRM would hurt sales more than it drives. As computer games tell us, that is generally not true. Also, look at the AppStore:
http://www.icombatgame.com/2009/05/08/my-experience-getting-owned-by-app-store-pirates/
The problem is that indeed, many business models (such as text books) would be more or less doomed without some kind of effective DRM. (Here, even watermarking will not act as a deterrent, because the users come in groups, and the stuff is expensive.) Thus, without DRM, text book editing will have to become non-profit (paid for by schools and universities).
The same is true for content with extremely wide distribution, such as Harry Potter.
What about the titles inbetween? It would be very interesting to run a barrage of tests, for instance selling two different comparable novels with and without DRM, and repeat the experiments regularly and for different target-groups, author rankings etc. As it is, we still need more data to find out about the economic impact of DRM.
It is very understandable that Hollywood studios and Pan MacMillan do prefer a world where their business models work. Yet the cost of that might be higher than the damage that we as a creative and productive society were taking if the internet became seriously limited and monitored.
The economical criteria are not identical to cultural criteria. As a reader, I could very well live in a world where Joanne K. Rowling would not be a multi-millionaire. I believe that Harry Potter would have been written anyway, and generated a lot of income, too. And I can live in a world without Hollywood blockbusters, which produces many more worthwile indie movies.
I have the strong suspicion that the publishing industry benefits authors much less than publishers. Fully digital production chains might replace the classical publishers with labels, which means that authors can get a much larger share of the revenue.
Look at this: Currently, an author gets less than 10% of the price of a pBook. For eBooks, this figure can easily be 80%. Imagine a fully digital world, where people still buy as many ebooks as they get pbooks today, but at only half the price. Also, imagine due to lack of marketing and because of digital shelf-space abundance, we get only half the number of sold units per title (but we sell more titles than before). In this world of smaller and cheaper Harry Potters, twice as many authors could thrive, with double income!
July 15th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
A lot of the issues have been covered here, but I would like to add a some thoughts.
1. The basic problem with DRM is that making information secure is always going to involve making compromises both in ease of use and in allowing fair use. In other words, the more secure a DRM technology is, the more likely it is to be inconvenient to the user and to limit their fair use of the material purchased.
2. DRM treats honest citizens like criminals that can’t be trusted. The simple fact of the matter is that most people don’t mind paying for their entertainment. It basically penalizes a user before they have ever had a chance to illegally share files.
3. DRM as a protective mechanism is essentially useless. The majority of lost revenue from illegal file sharing does not come from people who buy media and then decide to share it with a few friends. Rather, it comes from pirates who are incredibly technically proficient and for whom new DRM schemes represent little other than challenges. The fact that books that have never been legally issued as e-books have ended up on file sharing sites (often with-in hours of their release… if not before) shows how little effect DRM can have on stopping piracy of books.
4. I find it interesting that Mr. Bashkar believes that the ultimate end point of a DRMless world is a world where movie, books, and music all essentially come to a stand still. But lets take a closer look at what he really thinks will end… Specifically he mentions “door stopping best sellers”, “Hollywood Blockbusters” and “Epoch Defining Albums” and defines it in terms of mass culture. Well, to begin with, provided a good way is found to ensure authors are paid for their efforts, I see little reason why the world of literature needs to be hurt by the new world (Publishers are a different matter.. but we are talking about culture here, not business). The music industry has essentially given up on trying to stop file sharing by DRM (Amazon sells all its mp3s DRM free and Amazon now offers many titles DRM free)… so that argument is null. As for the Hollywood Blockbuster… well lets face it most of the best pirated copies of films actually come from inside the movie industry itself. I know people who often watch movies days or weeks before they are released anywhere in the world.
Of course, the most interesting thought to all this is that it is all about mass culture. But why is mass culture something that necessarily needs to be maintained? Mass culture is really a result of the 20th century… Prior to that, culture was regional, to country, region or even local town. Now we are reaching the point where many different cultures can co-exist across the globe. The problem is that these micro global cultures are harder to market too. Ultimately though, world culture will be enriched if we are all able to choose what parts of the whole we want to be actively be involved in as opposed to being told by mass media.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Put activation based DRM on a disc and your in the renting and not sales business, this is the legal reality of the matter. The music industry never made any real money online until they realised this and started to set their prices acordingly. As long as the pro DRM lobby wont accept this they will be described as lying bastards by those who get this fact.
Theres some histirical evidence that DRM protected works will become unreadble on standard eqipment 5-10 years down the road because of the DRM something that never ever happens whith non drm based data.
Non activation based DRM is simply putting a license fee on the legit player manufacturers it have no other real life impact, look at DeCSS and the stuff they put on audio discs causing them to loose the right to call em CompactDisc’s if you doubt it.
You dont actually own the songs you purchase on itunes or books you download to the kindle, you cant resell em when you get bored with em, you cant take them with you when you cancel your amazon acount or amazon terminate the service for whatewer. when apple goes into red again
DRM have it’s uses but only in situation where your being honest about renting on a time limited basis!
July 17th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
These require scale, a corporate scale, which requires direct and secure revenue which to date has existed in the form of unit sales. … DRM is one of the only tools available to prevent catastrophic loss of revenue.
Baen Books sells e-books without DRM and makes money. So the statement above is just flat out not true.
DRM hurts customers and it’s not necessary.
I’m perfectly willing to pay for my (in copyright) books. But the hour DRM punishes me for paying is the hour I learn to break DRM.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
No… here’s a better idea:
DON’T BUY THE BOOK!
What store owner is going to listen to a customer who threatens to break their window if they’re unhappy? They won’t listen… they’ll either close up for good, or call out the police to watch their goods and monitor every transaction.
(Hmm… sounds like what we have now, doesn’t it?)
So, instead of threats, just walk away. Buy from Baen, and anyone else that doesn’t use DRM. If they are successful, and DRM-using publishers are not, they’ll take the hint.
But for pity’s sake, stop the threats. They only serve to fan the flames.