Music DRM is already dead because it never made sense in the first place. Every work of music was and is available in a DRM-free lossless digital format called the compact disc. Music also never had a history of copy-protection. Video still has DRM, but that's because the content holders are out of touch with reality. DVDs may be DRMed, but the DRM is useless and effortlessly cracked by even a novice with an outdated computer. Video does have a long history of copy protection though, going back to Macrovision for VHS (Macrovision is still around in DVDs, but it's much better to copy DVDs digitally than by hooking a DVD player up to a DVD recorder).
Books are a whole different animal. Paper books aren't copy protected, but copying them requires a multi-stage process. The first part, scanning them, is either very labor-intensive or requires very expensive equipment. The second part, OCR, requires expensive software if you want good quality image-to-text conversion. The final part, proof-reading, is also labor-intensive. Even some publishers aren't bothering with that. The Victorian Internet, a great little book about the history of the telegraph, is one such example. It is full of blatantly obvious OCR errors in the Kindle edition. I've been meaning to complain about that, actually.
So I don't expect publishers to offer DRM-free ebooks any time soon. I suspect it will take DRM-stripping of Kindle/Nook/Etc. ebooks to become truly pervasive before it's even considered. It will also require book piracy to reach the level of music piracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment