With the rising popularity of e-books, the digital copyright discussion once again rears its ugly head. At issue is the use of digital rights management (DRM) to encrypt e-books and prevent users from copying or sharing them.
Supposedly, DRM is meant to protect the publishing industry from the threat of online piracy. But in practical terms, DRM limits the use of the purchased product.
Certain types of DRM limit the number of devices on which an e-book can be read. Consumers have the expectation they can share their purchased work.
When a variety of different file formats are introduced, you have the same storm of confusion that online music stores only recently crawled out of.
Apple’s iTunes store struggled through the DRM debate between the music industry and consumer groups for six years, until finally agreeing to offer DRM-free songs in 2009.
Even though current types of DRM may slow digital piracy, past technophiles have had no trouble cracking the codes. There is little reason to believe this trend will not continue.
DRM also does not account for those pirates whochoose to painstakingly scan traditional books, page by page, in order to share their favourite titles.
Publishers ignore the potential boon of free promotion, introducing content to potential new customers who could purchase a copy of a future release if they enjoy it.
With little recourse to stop the flow of piracy, and only embittered consumers left to answer to, the publishing industry would do well to learn from the experiences of the music industry and remove DRM from their e-books.