The 'Digital Rights Management' Debate continues - Are they dying or already dead

At the London Book Fair 2010, it was hard to find anybody advocating the imposition of a digital rights management (DRM) layer to most devices and digital products. Even mighty Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" DRM standard, which was launched in 2004 only to be withdrawn two years later.

This consensus against DRMs emerged in spite of the ability of Applestore and the i-product family to impose severe restrictions on how iTunes and the like are moved between devices. Those following Apple's path are increasingly critical of regulatory capitalism and attempts to use the law to control what should be a straightforward commercial relationship.

The law, this side claims, gets in the way of the free market to provide solution. The music business went wrong by mistaking consumer demand for piracy. Their appraisal is that DRMs actually promote piracy.

The argument goes like this: If you protect your product it will only be a matter of hours before somebody removes the digital locks and starts to distribute or sell an open version. Whereas, if you sell  the product without locks, and at a sensible price, through easy-to-find outlets, many people will buy.

The debate has moved on to rewarding those honest folk who pay for what they use rather than wrapping every product in barbed wire actually encourage piracy. So Publisher, by the failure to release accessible, digital content can make matters worse. The consensus is that you are allowed to copy product you own - So that you can have copies of material in your car and other devices that accompany you on you travels. No need to rely on a ripped version to let you play your music the way you want to.  But you can't prevent piracy but you can think about managing it.

Generosity as a good sales strategy!

The suppliers are not dumb - they are looking at many different types of watermarking individual products so that they can still chase the bad guys who rip-off and then sell digital products they don't own.

O'Reilly, the leading publisher of technical books, sells its content without DRM.. Magellan Media's monitored the impact of this bold move in 2008. There was some piracy but for a third of the list there was no trace of pirated versions. What they found was "a low volume of seeds and leeches" rather than widespread piracy which peaks and "falls off fast". There was "an unexplained bump in sales at 'paid sites' after piracy was noted". This is consistent with other reports that users check products and then most people buy this they want to use.

Copyright

'Litigation won't stop the future' was a view expressed many times. Creative businesses that rely on copyright law for their business plan are heading for oblivion was the consensus view. The rate of innovation means that the e-book will soon be superseded. But the market responds more slowly than we imagine with CD sales still accounted for 65% of the income from music the first half of 2009.

The music industry managed to prosper for many years by selling us the same songs on different types of plastic. It worked well until they got greedy and innovation slowed so that they could not profit from recycling old material.

What writer's want

Money is what they need, to set alongside their other goals of recognition and esteem. To obtain the former they need  agents, unions and organisations.

The ALCS, the Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild are three UK bodies who make it their business to encourage reading, listening and watching but try to put in place, and also police, simple systems to make sure artists are paid for their work.

The UK Government's Digital Economy Act made its way into law in the dying hour of the old Parliament(2010). It included a controversial measures for sanctions against illegal file-sharing.

The next danger - a Bargain Basement Mentality

Because those who have provided the creative content of these digital products have been at the bottom end of the pecking order when it came to dividing up the revenue from books, there is a danger that as the production and distribution of e-versions of books reduce to zero, the writers pitiful share will be undetectable.

This is one of the moments when writers can attempt to reassert their rights to a fair share of the proceeds. It helps if they hold the digital rights. Because digital products will inevitably fall in price, it is vital that the creators obtain a substantial share of the revenue. 10% of very little is no good. Writers should be asserting their right for at least half of the net revenue.

The Impact of Piracy

Oddly, we happily share printed book and even donate them for resale event though this is expressly excluded under the terms of sale published in almost every book. But there is a great deal of fury being generated about the sharing of digital files. To be sure it is a matter of scale as digital copies are much cheaper to make then printed copies but sharing of files is something we have lived with since books were invented.

Nobody approves of piracy and there is evidence, discussed earlier, that consumers are for the most part honest citizens. Whinging about the impact piracy is having on the creative industries is not the answer. Happily the purveyors of the mythical horror stories about firm going bust and films being abandoned are confined to those to stay to long at the bar: Those who are engaged in sober debate are looking towards solutions that will generate revenue.

Newspaper executives assumed that advertising would move from paper editions to the online version and The Times (aka 'The London Times) is all set to charge to read the paper online. If they provide something worth having (like special offers on ereaders?) and if the price is sensible, it will test the hypothesis that people are not natural thieves but are honest and upstanding. The problem will come if other papers continue to give material away. It might not be easy to interpret the results of this experiment quickly, but every writer should hope that it is successful.

So

Flexibility is vital to cope with the fast moving changes in technology and consumer behaviour. Providing what people want is seen as the answer as there are many more fair minded and honest consumers out there than the lobbyists from the music industry would have us believe.

chas jones 2010

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