The traditional markets that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years are still struggling with this newfangled digital media stuff, trying to impose old world restrictions on it that just don’t work. I’m all for an author, musician, artist or programmer getting paid for their work. But DRM as it exists is doomed. Virtually all DRM is eventually cracked and it just becomes a race between the manufacturers creating more complex DRM and hackers breaking it, and lawyers and judges threatening jail terms and huge fines to people doing no more than they have for decades – sharing their albums and books. You know something is wrong when the word “sharing” becomes redefined to mean something synonymous with “criminality”.
The music industry has been dealing with this for a while longer than the book industry and are slowly coming around. For most of the songs on the iTunes music store, you can buy slightly more expensive DRM free versions. Many other on-line music retailers are following suit and offering DRM free songs. And it actually seems to be working. People keep buying them and the record companies and artists are making money. Removing DRM from music did not result in the total downfall of the recording industry.
I think the key points that made it work for music are:
Make it very easy to buy what you want. Easier and safer than searching some seedy “warez” site filled with malware and viruses.
Make it cheap. 99 cent songs, 9.99 albums are affordable. As cheap or cheaper than I used to buy my vinyl LPs 30 years ago!
Universal formats. Download a song and play it on virtually any device.
Eventually the publishing companies will come around on this stuff. They are on their way:
Make eBooks easy to buy. They are doing well on this. Between Amazon, B&N, and iBooks, you can easily find pretty much any book that is available in digital format. Yes, you can also find pirated, cracked books, or crack the DRM yourself, but it’s a pain in the neck. Much easier to buy.
Prices probably need to come down. A book at $12.99 or more makes searching for a pirated version just that much more attractive.
The fact that the Kindle has its own proprietary format that no other device can read, and the fact that the Kindle cannot read ePubs, DRMed or otherwise, is perhaps its worst “feature”. Amazon gets away with this for now because they have the biggest and best selection of books and the best, most popular dedicated reading device. Very similar to iTunes a few years ago. But I think eventually Amazon is going to need to adopt the ePub standard or allow and actively encourage other ebook manufacturers and publishers to use the AZW format, making it the de facto standard. However, I think and hope that eBook DRM will go the way of music DRM.