TelePoll: Laws needed to ban REQUIRED use of DRM?

it is especially bad to dictate technical solutions for anything. The government should not be involved in what is essentially a bottoms-up solution. Don’t want DRM? Then don’t buy content locked in it.

In the US, I think all we need is a fair use exception to DMCA that allows cracking DRM for personal use (format shifting and archiving). The gvmt is already on our backs, requiring us to honor DRM measures.

David, a couple of years ago you wrote about a DRM Code of Conduct. Do you still like that idea?

Branko re DRM: I still like the idea of the code, but the idea of a law against required use of DRM is even better. I dislike government intervention, but I’m pessimistic about the willingness of Amazon to allow publishers freedom from DRM.

Look how Amazon chased away rival formats competing against its Mobipocket!

I hope I’m wrong, but Amazon wants to push its own technology.

If/when epub reaches Amazon, DRM could be the new proprietary differentiator.

Meanwhile, speaking of freedom-from-DRM issues, let’s see if the IDPF will do an epub logo assuring compatiblity for nonDRMed books.

At any rate, as both a reader and a writer, I despise the technology more than ever—even though I believe in giving publishers the option to use it if they insist.

Many and perhaps most small publishers won’t want DRM. The Mobi store’s current DRM fixation is at the expense of the little guys.

Thanks,
David

As a consumer, I don’t like DRM. As a publisher, I can’t afford the costs that DRM would impose on my business. Also as a publisher, though, I’m vitally aware of how much copyright infringement goes on. It’s so easy to forward an unencrypted book to a friend or thousand. The web is filled with sites consisting of thousands of in-copyright books that are being made available without payment to the publisher or author. So, I’m sympathetic with the idea behind DRM and I’m not prepared to say that DRM is inherently flawed rather than flawed in implementation (this is not to say that it isn’t inherently flawed, just that I’m not sure). I actually think the long term solution is going to be based on public key encryption. When you buy a book, it’ll be encrypted to your public key so only you can open it. Because it’s your key, you’ll be able to open it on any device you have–it’s your key–so the four device limitations won’t come into play. The leap that needs to be made is to ensure that once decrypted, it can’t just be posted everywhere–it’s only decrypted where it’s decrypted.

For me, the fact that paper is not immune to cracking doesn’t really prove anything. The point that paper can be cracked might just mean that paper is an increasingly bad solution to delivery of intellectual property and should be replaced by eBooks.

Wrapping up and in hopes of avoiding a lot of lightless heat, at this point, I don’t think DRM is adequate to do the job but I have sympathy with the ideas behind DRM and think that the ultimate solution will be some form of encryption that limits user ability to enfringe on copyright while allowing them to read their book on multiple machines, keep their book as they migrate to newer computers, and own a copy of the book that will still be readable even if the original publisher or distributor goes out of business.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com