I recently read a diatribe by an author about how great and wonderful DRM is. And how it saved the music industry. And how they believe they “added something unique to the market, and I believe I deserve to be paid for my work.” And how ebooks are in decline. And how “a lack of DRM decimated the music industry.”
Geez. Some people.
So let’s set the record straight:
“Lack of DRM” had absolutely NOTHING to do with the changes to the music industry. In fact, having DRM wasn’t even thought of when uncompressed, unencrypted music was being sold for years and years and years in the form of CDs.
DRM is idiotic. It’s a deadbolt lock sitting – locked – on the front stoop of a house where the owner has removed the doors and windows and put out a nice spread for anyone who wanders by.
DRM’s primary purpose has always been to undercut fair use and force buyers into new revenue streams – even though they’ve already bought and paid for the property or licenses for a work.
DRM has nothing to do with piracy, nor did it decimate the music industry, nor did a high percentage of people download music without compensating the author/music publisher.
When Apple created iTunes, DRM became the ‘cool’ thing to do. Steve Jobs was always about control; Apple would ‘permit’ this, ‘stop’ that, ‘monitor’ the user, and force auto-expires on unsuspecting purchasers. Apple was the walled garden, and Steve was the gardener.
Until, of course, DRM became unfashionable and uncool. Then Mr. Jobs wrote quite the missive about how DRM requirements limited the industry, and how “If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players.”
Coming late to the party and all, the guy who called me a Bozo finally admitted that DRM was for Bozos. Not Bezos, Bozos; Amazon had been offering (and cutting into apple’s pie) DRM free products for quite awhile.
If one were to examine the market for free ebooks (a la Kindle), one would find that sales of non-free ebooks has continued to skyrocket, year after year after year. Ebook sales are up 4,456% since 2008. That’s four THOUSAND four hundred and fifty-six percent. That’s not ‘static,’ and certainly not ‘declining.’ It’s true, though, that sales are *ONLY* expected to increase about 45% this year … Forty-five PERCENT? Are you KIDDING me? NO industry can claim that kind of increase lately – especially in this economy!
To those who claim ‘free’ books are ‘pirated’ books: you don’t know what you’re talking about. A free book is a loss leader. It brings your work in front of people who otherwise might not have found it. It doesn’t mean the book was pirated, it means that the author made a conscious choice to give out a business card for the kind of work they do.
Piracy is different. DRM doesn’t stop it. Never has, never will. And piracy doesn’t mean lost sales, either; the person who will pirate your book isn’t a person who would buy your book in the first place. It’s idiotic to think otherwise.
DRM doesn’t result in increased purchases. It results in frustrated buyers. And what does a frustrated buyer do? Return what they’re frustrated with. If anything, DRM results in fewer purchases and greater anonymity for writers who think they’ve added something to the market and deserve to get paid.
DRM is for suckers.