Mail 315 June 21 - 28, 2004 (original) (raw)
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Digital Rights Management: Continued
The Hill's property rights showdown June 22, 2004, 6:52 AM PT By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com
WASHINGTON--The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is under siege.
For the first time since it was enacted in 1998, the DMCA has become the target of a large and growing number of critics seeking to defang the controversial law. The legislation says that Americans aren't permitted to circumvent encryption guarding certain digital media products--even if the purpose is to make a backup copy of a computer program or DVD.
< http://news.com.com/The+Hill%27s+property+rights+showdown/2008-1025_3-5243241.html?tag=nefd.acpro >
-- Robert Bruce Thompson
Hurrah. One doesn't have to take the naive "information wants to be free" position to be critical of the DMCA and its rather Draconian approach.
We need some way to allow writers to make a living without begging, without jailing a visiting programmer or a Norwegian teenager for finding ways to get past ill-conceived copy protection notions.
Doctorow is certain that technology will always defeat DRM. I used to believe that. I am not so certain now.
More on all this when I get back from my walk, if I don't do fiction first. Assuming that there is any point in writing fiction since my works are routinely copied and sent about for free.
Subject: DRM and Copyright Musings
I find myself on the fence as far as the current hoopla over DRM (and Copyright enforcement in general) goes. While I can't say I agree with the "information wants to be free" crowd, I do agree that some of the way copyright is used today is used *not* for the benefit of the copyright holders, but forthe benefit of the sole *distributors* of the copyrighted work.
I know very little about the publishing world, I know a bit more about the music industry. Musicians get very little money for the music they distribute through a record label. Unless they are one of the very few, fortunate "stars" of the music industry, you can release a semi-successful record and still go bankrupt. As I understand it, it's possible for an author to earn at least a supplemental income by writing books. In that respect, it is a healtier and substantially fairer industry for an artist to belong to.
One of the benefits of all this unregulated technology available on the internet is that it makes the task of recording, producing and distributing your own music a lot more affordable. It used to be that this was why you needed a label -- they could provide access to a decent recording studio, they could provide access to distribution chains, they could market your music. And because they had the lock on all of that, they could pretty much set their own terms -- and did -- as to how much money they would receive opposed to how much money the musicians would receive.
The "new culture of music" has many problems, but one of the genuine advantages is the ability to acquire, relatively cheaply, recording technology that was considered state of the art in the 1970's. I remember the first time I bought a Fostex 4-track recorder (a mini-studio that used cassette tapes to provide four tracks of sound recording) and I realized that in many respects the equipment I had was better than what the Beatles had when they recorded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Of course, they had a better studio engineer, better microphones, and a better sound space... but the point is that technology had advanced to the point where you didn't need a huge amount of money to be able to make respectable recordings.
The same, of course, is true with the world of print. You can now buy programs that allow you to create pamphlets, books, newsletters, heck, even newspapers with more ease than you could 30 years ago. Technology has lowered the bar for publishing -- all kinds of publishing, even radio broadcasting (though more specifically I suppose it would be "web radio" broadcasting).
The problem I have with DRM is that it will raise the cost of publishing again -- proprietary encryption technologies will be priced "reasonably" for the publishing industry, which will be quite out of reach of the small-time independents. It will in essence be a "publishing tax" -- the fee you must pay to be allowed to play the game, as it were. This is what I am opposed to, and there's no real way to stop it. If DRM becomes the standard industry practice, then anyone who wishes to have access to that market will be forced to adopt it, and if the technology is aimed at large record labels it will be priced in a way that large record labels can afford -- which does not guarantee that anyone else will.
The problem is, of course, that the same technology that gives independent artists the ability to create has also spawned technology that makes it easy for people to get those creations without paying the artist. I am both a musician and a cartoonist (and perhaps eventually an author) and I would like to get paid for my work. I don't agree that information wants to be free, nor do I believe that an artist has an obligation to do what they do for "love of the art and nothing else" (I've heard that argument before as well.) It takes time and resources to do anything even remotely creative, and I think people who take the time and spend the resources ought to at least have a chance to be compensated, and perhaps even profit, from the exercise.
But the only way this can work at the lower end of the scale, at least in our current society, is if there is a tension between the rights of the distributor and the rights of the audience. If the rights of the distributor become paramount (which is what would happen if DRM became the standard) then they would control how the artist is able to make his work available. If the rights of the audience become paramount then the artist would have little chance of being paid other than on a "work for hire" basis.
The only way I see currently for artists to come out ahead, or at least to maintain their current status, is for everyone involved -- artists, distributors, audiences -- to be dissatisfied with the way it works. The only true compromise is one where everyone loses something. Perhaps that makes me a pessimist. I suspect I am.
Sincerely,
Christopher B. Wright (wrightc@ubersoft.net)
One of the complications of this issue is that music publishers are rapacious and have been successful in taking the lion's share of the work of their artists. Not so with books and general publishing. I have been well paid for my work in magazines for nearly fifty years, and I was able to collect my old Galaxy columns into A Step Farther Out which was in print for 20 years and sold fairly well.
Book contracts are engineered so that authors and publishers make about the same profits. The publisher gets more revenue, but has far higher expenses and overhead; but the profits are shared fairly well, and again, while as a former president of an author's association I have had my differences with both individual publishers and the publishing industry, authors don't generally hate publishers the way music artists hate the record industry.
Keep that in mind when thinking about the upcoming problems with Intellectual Property and Digital Rights Management.
I am collecting views here. I have no final views of my own other than a vague sense of dread. It may be that individual authors are buggy whip makers and the world belongs to those who will work for little other than having a high number of Google hits as their reward.
I am not one of those. I'd rather play games.
Subject: Doctorow versus Hamit
Interesting. Mr. Hamit describes Cory Doctorow's speech as lacking depth, and yet it is pretty clear to an unbiased reader whose position is the more supportable.
Mr. Hamit reminds me of the proverbial buggywhip makers. The smart ones realized that buggywhips were a dying technology and moved with the times. The less smart ones devoted their efforts to preserving the buggywhip market.
Mr. Hamit seems to be saying, "Technology be damned. This is the way it always was, and this is the way we're going to keep it forever." Alas, Mr. Hamit will find himself steamrollered by technology, whether he likes it or not.
I think it is significant that I was not familiar with Mr. Hamit's name until I read it on your page, whereas Cory Doctorow, who practices what he preaches in terms of copyleft, is very well known. For example, a Google search turns up 702 hits on "Francis Hamit" versus 84,400 on "Cory Doctorow" (and 47,400 on "Jerry Pournelle").
And I found your own comment about voluntary support interesting. You imply that it's unworkable, and yet your own web site generates pretty significant subscriber payments, or so you've said, with only the electronic equivalent of a tip jar. You don't even *ask* people to pay, not really. You simply let them know every once in a while that they can pay if they want to.
I don't know how much time you put in on your site. Obviously it varies a lot, but I'd guess you might average one hour per day. Clearly, some days when you write long essays, it's longer than that, but many days you don't update the site at all. So, based on purely voluntary payments by readers, you make a reasonable amount of money per year for an hour's work a day. How much would you make, I wonder, if you devoted full time to your web site? And how much more again would you make if you actively solicited payment?
Mr. Hamit seems to think that everyone is a thief, worrying that everyone will "steal" his work if there aren't any locks to prevent that. I don't think that's true. What is true is that if a work is freely available, many more people will read it. Some fraction of those people will decide to pay the author. If the author writes stuff worth reading, that fraction will be large enough that the author will make more money that way than he would by keeping the work locked up.
I've often told new novelists who are having trouble gaining traction with readers that if I were a novelist, I'd *want* my work to be copied freely. I'd want as many people as possible to read it and to become aware of me. As you know, awareness translates to sales. What do I care if 1,000,000 people download my book and only 1% of them buy the printed version? That means my book sells 10,000 copies, which is a heck of a lot more than new authors generally sell in hardcover. And perhaps another 1% will send me $5 or whatever directly.
Authors who favor DRM and Draconian copyright enforcement obviously believe, whether they realize it or not, that most people are thieves. If you think about it, you know that's not true. Here's a message I just received this evening:
"What's your paypal info so I can send you a few bucks for your help over the years. I just graduated from school so I don't have much money, but I haven't given you anything in quite a few years so I'd like to do so now."
Which is not unusual. After the dot-com crash, I had many subscribers write me to apologize for no longer being able to afford to subscribe. I left them on my subscriber list, and told them to pay if and when they could. Or not, as they wished. And you know what? Nearly all of them have now re-subscribed, telling me that they've found new jobs and can now afford to pay. Many have even tried to pay back-dues for the period I "carried" them.
People aren't thieves, most of them, and treating them like thieves by insisting on DRM and similar technologies is counterproductive.
Cory Doctorow is absolutely correct in what he wrote. He's one of those guys you'd call a "150+", and he's thought this through dispassionately. His thinking is logical, deep, and lucid, no matter what Mr. Hamit may think.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson
I want to let the debates continue a while without me, but I do think a couple of points need to be made.
First, arguments stand or fall without much regard to the credentials of the person making them, particularly when the credential is how many Google references you can garner. I make no doubt at all that I could generate a lot more Google references by the simple expedient of going into Slashdot and other controversial places and framing an answer to many of the posts there. Whether that would be a useful way to employ my time is another matter. I know what my sales are and I have some notion of what Doctorow's are; and Francis Hamit despite my disagreement with many of his views has made a living at writing longer than Doctorow has been writing, and thus has some qualification to speak as a working writer grinding out a living without having hit the best-seller list. Francis has also spent a lot of time looking into the actual details of how the present system works, and I thank him for sharing that knowledge with me, as I thank you for the benefit of your experience.
As to revenue from this site: I would never work as hard as I have in writing -- over 20 novels -- for the returns I get from this site. My journalism pays fairly well: in addition to the English rights which are paid for by BYTE/DOBBS (CMP), I sell foreign rights to a variety of places, and the exercise generates speaking engagements. Journalism is topical, and has few residual rights -- and it is one heck of a lot easier to turn out 10,000 words of non-fiction about Chaos Manor than 100,000 words of fiction in which all the characters and much of the scenery and the worlds and the society are sucked out of my fingertips. Stephen King has decided he won't work for the return he gets from voluntary payments on the net. I probably would work for the money he got, but that's a lot more than I am likely to get, judging at least by the number of subscribers I have divided by the number of people who visit this site. I might make a living from voluntary payments of subscribers if I did little else and cut way back on what I consider "a living"; but I sure would not write novels for what I get here. That's not to be ungrateful for those who consider this site worth supporting and I sure hope there will be more; and I too have had people apologize for being unable to subscribe, and who have paid sometimes rather substantial lump sums as back payment: and my model is less restrictive than yours since I don't give out passwords, only codes for making contact with me.
In any event, arguments over whether trying to control one's intellectual property is good business or not are irrelevant, if one takes the position that I, and Francis Hamit, and Harlan Ellison, and other authors are each the best judge of our own interest and do not concede to Doctorow and his supporters the right to decide that for us.
Subject: Cory Doctorow's Paper for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, 2004
http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt
in which he recounts his story of releasing two complete e-books simultaneous with their paper publication, provides much background on e-books and asserts that the creation of competitive new media does not necessitate the death of the old. A fascinating read,, many good points to consider.
-- John Bartley
To which I can only say, not everyone has had similar experiences; and in any event, most of that data comes from times when reading books on computers was less convenient that it is now on some new systems. The technology gets better. Doctorow has said many times that the new technology isn't as good as the old, but I think he's probably saying that for effect: I know I find it a lot easier to read a real book on my TabletPC than ever I did on a clamshell laptop, or on a big screen monitor in my office. And I have seen new developments that make reading books on electronic devices an even more pleasant experience. I do not think all the returns are in.
Good Afternoon Jerry,
DRM is a complex issue, and I still struggle a bit with where the line should be drawn. I completely agree that the product of someone's work, from shoes, to furniture, to a great novel belongs to them, and that they should own both the product (copyright) and idea (patent) for an appropriate period of time. Let's set aside patents - they have a different set of sticky issues.
I believe that the legal doctrine of 'Fair Use' is at the root of the problems we're experiencing today. Let me be clear though - I'm not speaking about using an attributed passage or quotation from one work in another, but rather the idea that a consumer has control over the terms under which a product is sold.
My brother works for Disney as a sound engineer, and my mother is a professional artist. We've had long discussions about this, and I've reached the conclusion that a creator should be able to specify the contractual terms under which the product is sold, and it's entirely ethical to take steps to ensure that those terms are enforced. If a consumer doesn't like the terms that are offered, and the producer isn't willing to negotiate, then they have the option to not purchase the product.
Let's take music CDs for the moment. The license has always included a prohibition on public performances. If the artist (or record company, etc) wants to place further restrictions on how and where it can be used, and enforce those contractual restrictions through technical (DRM) means, so be it. Yes, it's annoying. But as a consumer, my sole, moral recourse is to not purchase the product. In a similar vein, folks decry software licenses that restrict how programs can be used and disclaim liability, but they forget: They have the option of not buying the product. Yep, that's painful if you don't like Microsoft's license, but it's the only moral option.
And that's the crux of the problem. By legislating 'Fair Use', the government has interfered with the negotiation between producer and consumer, and essentially socialized a portion of their work - a producer no longer has control over the contract under which his products are sold.
I believe that the only real solution is to repeal the legal doctrine of 'fair use' and return contractual control to the producers. Yes, some will impose draconian DRM solutions, others may impose terms that are overly restrictive, and other products may arise under liberal use terms (like Linux) and rapidly gain market share. The free market will then determine which products (and terms) will succeed or fail.
Best regards,
Doug
Doug Lhotka doug[@]lhotka.com
"Do something you like. Forget about the pay, for Christ's sakes. Regulate your style of living to fit your income. Just have fun in your job, that's the main thing." ~ General Chuck Yeager
One of Doctorow's frequently made points is that authors have no right to prevent their works from being made available, without compensation to the author, to the blind. Leave out that this "fair use" loophole has been exploited by some "non-profit" associations to make a lot of money which is then paid as salaries to its executives (many non-profits pay better salaries than any profit-making organization could pay); concede that some of the outfits taking other people's works and making them "available" to the blind are done by volunteers who get no compensation; and one is still left with the question of "Why?" That is, when it was voluntary, I never refused the Braille Foundation permission to publish my works, and I would have thought mean-spirited any author who did; but I don't see why I lose my ownership of my work simply because of someone else's 'needs'; carried to conclusion that's the whole of the communist principle, isn't it?
And yes, I would have thought more libertarians would take a stronger position against "fair use" and the like -- stronger even than I do with my paleo-conservative views.
Subject: Amazon honor payment system
Jerry,
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/help/how-we-know.html/104-8154821-8299952
describes Amazon.com�s system to support small websites and to buy digital content on the web.
I found it searching for Francis Hamit�s work after reading his latest on your site.
Jim Dodd
San Diego
===
Ken Burnside publishes about the best board game of tactical space warfare I know of (http://www.adastragames.com/ ). He's not doing mine because another publisher has bought (at quite a high price) electronic game rights to the CoDominium universe and we're still trying to see if there's any way we can give Mr. Burnside some non-exclusive share given that Burnside does paper/boardgame rather than electronic games. We'll see on that, but let it serve as an introduction to this letter that Mr. Burnside does some darned good work.
To Corey Doctorow and others who insist that "Information Wants To Be Free!" and insist that DRM is a waste of time and effort, I propose the following thought experiment.
Electronic piracy exists because the effort involved in doing it are so low, and the consequences of getting caught so neglible that there is no deterrent in doing so.
I run a small publishing venture, publishing games, as you know.
Most of my product line would be easy to translate into PDF format...and doing so, in the distribution system I use, is tatamount to suicide. Distributors get ticked at holding onto paper inventory when I'm passing it around as bits and such.
But there's a legitimate desire to have some of it in PDF format -- ship sheets that a user can print from home are an amazing convenience.
In theory, I can generate a program that spits out these PDFs, and make sure that the user's name, email address and account number are embedded on every page of the PDF; I can put them on a locked layer that includes the background (white) layer of the PDF, with a black layer underneath it, so that deleting the layer with this information is difficult and results in laser printers spitting out sheets of black text on a black background.
It's only an inconvenience if you're trying to remove the user data....so it's not an inconvenience to the legitimate purchaser. (Who, since he probably doesn't want his email address circulating for spam harvesting, doesn't want to share that file electronically anyway...)
Also, in theory, I have a way to backtrack who releases my products into the wild.
I am considering the following.
If I find that a customer has released my privileged information onto the 'net, in the spirit of "Information Wants To Be Free!" what moral or ethical (I'm still investigating the legal repercussions of this, so I'm not including that standard) compunctions prevent me from publicly posting their order information (name, address, credit card number) for all the Nigerian scammers to harvest?
After all, Information Wants To Be Free...that applies to their information as well as mine, unless they're hypocrites of such flaming proportions that the beatific light of their self delusion is visible from Mars. On a bright, clear day....
I suspect that if I actually do it, I'll get squashed like a bug from lawsuits, citations of disproportionate harm, etc. But, boy, is it a fun concept to play with in my head...
If Microsoft or Adobe made this their policy, however, they have the legal budgets to establish a precedent.
Ken Burnside [ken_burnside@ ameritech.net]
=========
Subject: DRM and copy-protection of software?
Given your well-documented past experiences with and conclusions regarding copy-protection of software (and present, for that matter; Contribute2 may be installed on a total of 2 machines using the same installation code, unless additional licenses are purchased, it checks over the Internet to see if it's authorized every time it's started), what similarities and differences do you see which would lead to the conclusion that DRM for copyrighted works isn't as unwieldy and unworkable as copy-protection schemes for software?
--- Roland Dobbins
Well, I have long argued that software licenses ought to be "just like a book" and I helped Philippe Kahn write the first Turbo Pascal license: just like a book. You can lend it, you can use it, you can put it on other machines, but one copy and one only ought to be in use at the same time.
I don't know how to accomplish that with DRM, and perhaps it is impossible, but surely it is worth trying?
Make things sufficiently inconvenient for customers and you will lose your customers. It doesn't follow that you don't have the right to be pigheaded. In the early days it was clear that copy protected software never got popular: that was particularly true of word processors. People wanted to use them before buying. They often then bought them, in part to get the manuals -- you got real manuals, printed on real paper in them there days -- and in part to get the support and updates and such like.
Microsoft for a very long time had no protection whatever on products, then went to those goofy keys but still did not insist on activation and the like. Interestingly, I am forever tearing down and rebuilding computers here, and I have yet to have an activation problem with Microsoft. As to Contribute2, the only such software I have is for a Mac and I have only one Mac so it's not much of an issue.
I have long argued against most forms of DRM and still do, and I am not at all convinced it's possible in any event, but I have talked with enough programmers to wonder now.
I had hoped that Millicent or some such painless means of transfer of small sums would work; that would solve a lot of problems, and that may yet be the right way to go. If you can routinely get ten million people to give you a dime, you can do as well as having a million give you a dollar, or a hundred thousand give you ten dollars, or getting the usual royalties from selling a few thousand copies at hardbound prices. The question is, do you have a potential ten million readers, even if it's cheap? Maybe you only have a few thousand readers...
On this next one: if I had time I'd edit it a bit. But he has a point that needs commenting.
Glad that you were able to share in seeing Space Ship One launch. I, too, was there and it was worth a vacation day and no sleep. The best part was being able to see it take off, right there in front of me, maybe 100-200 feet away. Amazing. Going to treasure the memories of seeing it fly for the rest of my life. Pulled me out of a general existential funk (my last piece of art was entitled "The Death Of Engineering") and made me hopeful again.
Anyways, about the DRM, I'll start by saying that I'm not an "Information Wants To Be Free" whacko. Of *course* copyright owners should have the right to sell their works. I'd like to point out a few things and hopefully make a little bit of sense.
I think, however, that the current debate in DRM is really a symptom of a larger set of issues, one which I think the book industry has been partially spared.
I've got a nice freeware ebook reader for my PocketPC that can handle most of the unencumbered formats. I can, if I want, download illegal texts and read them on my PocketPC. I'm second generation geek, so the 240x320 screen is "good enough" for me to be able to read in comfort.
Yet, if you scan my hard disk, you won't find a single pirated ebook. All I've got is legitimately acquired books -- Fallen Angels, from the Baen Free Library, for example. Somehow, I will still go to the bookstore and spend some amount of money on books, sometimes new ones, sometimes used ones.
I think that Baen and Doctorow have some sort of point, that people will still buy things, even if they can read them online and enjoy them for free. I think that this also may go hand-in-hand with the longstading tradition of being able to read a book in the library instead of purchasing it.
In fact, I don't really read much online fiction in general, because the process of being doomed to a slushpile purgatory for months and being picked by an editor for a substantial printing investment means that there's a screening process that prevents me from investing reading time in truly awful amateur fiction. This is in stark contrast to the music business, where most of what I'd consider to be good stuff is not selected by the big guys and a vocal percentage of musicians feel like they are getting screwed.
Now, my biggest beef with the whole DRM issue is that they assume that any unauthorized use is illegal. I've got a good percentage of my CD collection ripped to MP3 format. Why? I don't share it, but it's a convenient way to be able to listen to some music while I'm out on my balcony writing, without needing to grab a handful of CDs. The problem is, the usage pattern is what one would assume to be piracy. An individual track may end up on several CDs, played off of several computers, etc. DRM software is being *nice* if you can see it on 3 machines.
I can rattle off plenty of examples, both in my life and other people's. The problem is, if you total up the users of a particular piece of media, X% of them are using it legitimately in a rule-encoded fashion, Y% of them are using it illegally, and Z% of them are using it in legal, yet not-able-to-be-properly-secured fashion. And as you shrink Z, you risk increasing Y, decreasing X, or losing your total audience base.
The problem is, in the process of trying to prevent the clearly illegal transactions, the industry is also trying to restrict legal transactions that people have always assumed would work. I expect that if I buy a copy of a book that I can turn around and sell it later. DRM prevents this. I expect that I can keep a CD around and play it in any number of devices. Things like that.
The problem is that once people become used to a certain business model, they really do not like changing it. My employer is able to offer software (with an accompanying data feed) as a subscription service. If most other software vendors who have been selling their software for years try that, nobody wants it. I still use Windows 2000 and not XP because the notion of needing to dig up the CD key every time I change something about the hardware is repulsive.
The DVD format is the same way. There's DRM software in there, not really to prevent piracy, but mostly to prevent people from making DVD players without paying the licensing fee or buying imports.
And with respect to DRM working, I tend to agree with Cory. The problem with DRM is that "good enough" isn't. All it takes is one leak for a given piece of in-demand media to be copied freely. And, because the non-DRM media offers benefits that the DRM media doesn't have, even legitimate, honest customers will seek out the de-DRMed media.
In order to make this happen, time has shown that the only hardware that can't be cracked is at the level of Secure Cryptoprocessors, which are incredibly expensive to produce and are, in general, not useful for a consumer-usable device. And any software can be cracked given access to the hardware (there exists a CS-theory proof that shows that obfustication can always be reversed) The problem is, a pretty large chunk of people need access to hardware that's not cast in a block of epoxy, enough that it wouldn't be fruitful to interrogate each and every one.
The problem is, in grabbing for DRM, they have grabbed too much and decided to go after all of the little loopholes that they didn't want around anyways, liked used books/CDs/Movies, imports, etc. In order for DRM to work, the keys to decode it can't be given to just anybody, which then discourages innovation (because 2 guys in a garage aren't going to be able to afford what the licensing fee costs). And, to top it off, the industry hit most by digital piracy, the music biz, has been a house of ill repute for a long time now and whose artists are becoming progressively *less* dependent on the major label as it becomes cheaper to record and market.
The good part (at least for me) is that the more studios push for more restrictions, the more people have found themselves on the wrong side of the DRM fence and the more likely a more rational set of copyright laws is to be made. The problem is that piracy has *always* happened and you aren't going to be able to change that with DRM.
Ken "Wirehead" Wronkiewicz \ \ \/ http://www.wirewd.com/wh/ \ \
A couple of points. First, who is "they" in "they assume that any unauthorized use is illegal"? I don't know that this makes sense. Moreover, many illegal things are done. It is illegal to Xerox a short story from a book and hand it to your students to read, but it is done all the time, and I have yet to hear of anyone actually prosecuted or sued for it. It is not illegal to claim your non-profit foundation is benefiting the blind and use that to make tape recordings or large-format copies of books which you sell to anyone who states he's blind, even if you pay yourself a pretty good salary from the non-profit; so that not being illegal no one is prosecuted for it. And what is the point of worrying about what is assumed?
Regarding grabbing too much, I have pointed that out at nearly every technical meeting I have attended. "Just like a book" is the model I am hoping DRM can emulate, right down to being able to sell the original second hand, loan it out, etc. As to "backup copies" you don't have a backup copy of your hardbound MOTE, although some may have bought paperback copies for reading lest they wear out a valuable signed hardbound.
I don't know what DRM can and can't accomplish. I suspect it can do, as you say, far more than printed book format does. However, if it can be made to work "just like a book," my guess is (a) many will use it that way and not further, and (b) there will be a lot of "information wants to be free" people who will moan and complain that this is unduly restrictive.
Finally regarding the "they will pay anyway" argument: Perhaps so. But The Strategy of Technology has been up on this web site for many years, along with a request that if it is any use to you send a dollar or so, and I'll pass most to all of it along to Mrs. Possony. I think we have received under $500 in ten years; the book has many thousands of page requests. I am assuming most of those readers are students who can't afford a dollar.
And to end the day's discussion:
Dear Jerry:
Well, to begin with, I never contested Cory Doctorow's right to give away his work. It is is his. He may do as he pleases with it. What I quarrel with is the notion that I should, without my permission or consent, be forced to do likewise. This has already happened with over a hundred of my articles on various databases and those using them are very careful to try and conceal their theft. The outfit that charges $45.00 per copy for some of my articles and indicated that they might share revenue instead hunted down the link I found one article on and killed it. Tiresome of them because it makes them willful violators now and gives my lawyers yet more work to do. I made a copy. I can prove they have it. The library databases make them available for printing, and for emailing ad infitinum and the big embarrassment is that they did not do their due diligence and make sure the rights were the publisher's to sell, but simply took their word for it. A big class action settlement is being negotiated in New York right now on that same issue.
But that is neither here nor there regarding the issue of DRM. As said before, I'm using Lightning Source to distribute my e-documents and I am well aware that someone will spend several hours proving they can crack their code rather than pay the $1.95 I ask for most single articles. I get 88 cents of that. I guess it depends on what you think your time is worth. And make no mistake, doing so is theft and a morally corrupt and indefensible act.
As for the attack on my relative lack of street cred, I'm not responsible for other people's lack of information. A brief trip to the library biography bases for Who's Who will tell you some of it and a Google search some more. Most of what you will find are my recently republished titles which you can buy all over the world, thanks to Amazon. There are one or two which are not copyrighted and may be of interest.
If you check the other offerings on Amazon from other providers in the e-books section you will see that some go as high as $4,000. Most e-books are priced like printed books even though they cost less to produce. It's a market economy and my publishing program is an experiment, since I had half a million words or so laying around, to see if a freelance writer can make a living this way. Its a little exercise in reality. Something I learned as a consultant --sometimes you just have to get in there and work the problem and the process to figure out how to improve things. It may fail. That's part of the process of discovery.
I was in the security business far too long to believe that I will get paid for every use and there are so many protections for "Fair Use" that more are not really needed. You have to infringe big time to get sued. $10,000 in damages is the least you can go to Federal Court for, and ten times that amount is the usual minimum case. Because that's what the legal fees will be. These are not something you can do in Small Claims Court, which is why the RIAA has taken the path it has.
Note that I go only with great reluctance. I'd rather be spending my time writing fiction and drama. The new tactic of infringes is to ignore all attempts to communicate and settle the issue and to force one to file the case. Most writers don't have the stomach or the purse and the law is written by Congress, but it is decided, through case law, in a Federal Court. I guess the idea is that if they ignore us, we'll go away. Just so the matter is clear, I'm not taking on some guy who ran copies of one of my works for his zine; I'm taking on very large corporations which are worth hundreds of millions to several billion dollars.
Why? Well someone has to or the theft continues unabated and my cases, because of the volume of work I've done, are better than most. If you want an example of how I publish, there are now 66 items online and more to come. Something for everyone. Will I make any money? I sure hope so, but I'm at least a year from actually knowing. If you decide to crack the encryption, you'll get away with it unless Lightning Source tracks you down. And shame on you. Really.
Sincerely, Francis Hamit
And I may well join you, if I have some time. I have some works around that might be sold for 1.95,includingstoriesthatwereincollectionsnowoutofprint.IfIhadthenecessarypermissionsfromthecontributorsImighttrygettingsomeoftheTHEREWILLBEWARanthologiesintoelectronicform(itcostsabout1.95, including stories that were in collections now out of print. If I had the necessary permissions from the contributors I might try getting some of the THERE WILL BE WAR anthologies into electronic form (it costs about 1.95,includingstoriesthatwereincollectionsnowoutofprint.IfIhadthenecessarypermissionsfromthecontributorsImighttrygettingsomeoftheTHEREWILLBEWARanthologiesintoelectronicform(itcostsabout1 a page to get them from print to electrons) and put them up for $2.95. The trouble is that the book keeping to send money to the contributors would be onerous; given a thousand or so sales it would be worth it, but I have no idea how many sales we might get. But getting all the permissions from all the authors would take longer than I can spare.
Unlike you, I haven't written much non-fiction with legs. Computer columns are interesting only as history. "America's Looming Energy Crisis", while prophetic in 1973, isn't likely to be terribly interesting now. "The Hydrogen Economy," also in the 1970's, is relevant but the technology is somewhat different now. And most of my best work went into A Step Farther Out which with some luck and hard work will be available in print on demand fairly soon.
So I follow your experiment with considerable interest...
=============
Subject: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em . . . maybe.
Perhaps that T-38 flight wasn't such a waste, after all:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,63949,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6
---- Roland Dobbins
NASA flew an official in a T-38 to the Rutan flight. We saw the airplane parked near XCOR. I never saw the NASA chap. But perhaps some good will come of that?
The Aldrich report has sections on prizes that look as if they were lifted from this web site, which is fine by me.