RicDay on Publishing

[Minor updates September 18, 2010] I do not like most forms of digital rights management. I should state that more strongly: I really do not like most forms of digital rights management. Let me explain.

My first experience with digital rights management was way back in the early days of personal computers. Shortly after it was released, I bought a legitimate copy of the VisiCalc spreadsheet software for my new Apple ][. I tried to make a backup copy (5-1/2 inch floppy disk media was notoriously unreliable). The copy failed. The software had a protection scheme designed to prevent copying. Within a few weeks, my worst fears were realized — the original, very expensive disk would not boot. I took it back to the dealer, who told me there was no way to replace the now defective disk and I would have to buy a new copy.

In the past couple of years, various friends have purchased music online from MSN Music, Yahoo! Music, and Walmart. Then each of these vendors changed their minds about selling music online. MSN and Yahoo! were the first to announce they would shut down the servers that managed the rights — and in so doing, abandon their customers and orphan the music (the DRM schemes they used required a “call home” by the software before the music could be played).

The problem? Once the DRM server is shut down, the person who bought the music (or any other digital product) can no longer move it to another device (DRM software typically needs to be “authorized” on each device, via the DRM server). Want to abandon Windows 98 and move to XP or Vista or another operating system? Be prepared to lose all your MSN or Yahoo! music.

There was a massive outcry. MSN decided to delay shutting down the servers until 2011. Yahoo! offered to compensate customers. Amazingly, well after the MSN and Yahoo! messes had played out, Walmart announced in late September last year that it, too, would be shutting down its DRM servers ... two weeks after the announcement and with no compensation.

I wonder what the cost has been to Microsoft, Yahoo! and Walmart. Not the cash cost, but the cost in lost customer goodwill.

Music Lessons

Even the loss of customer goodwill by those companies was minor compared with the loss of trust and respect the industry suffered. Many consumers were openly posting on the Internet their intention to download unprotected music in future, even if it came from pirate websites, because they now believed the music industry was an evil group whose sole intention was to rip them off.

The music industry made pretty much every conceivable mistake in trying to protect its music with DRM schemes. Among the worst was Sony Music’s stealth system which installed the equivalent of malware on your computer when you played a Sony music CD on the machine. This awful software opened up security holes in Windows (as if it did not have enough already!) and was nearly impossible to remove without reformatting the hard drive.

Another major error was charging premium prices for DRM’d music. And another error was ignoring consumers, who wanted to be able to select the tracks they purchased, by insisting for the longest time that consumer should only purchase complete albums — which all too often contained one or two worthwhile tracks and a load of what I will politely call “shovelware.”

Hackers and Crackers

Ever since companies began using “protection technologies” to stop people copying digital materials, those protective measures have been cracked. Games and business software alike for the Apple ][ were sold "protected" on five-inch floppies. And were promptly “unprotected” by skilled software engineers. In fact, a new industry was quickly spawned: software tools, with names like “Locksmith” that would remove the protection from your software and allow you to make backups.

Thirty years after the Apple ][ and the first “protected” software fiasco, corporations have still not learned a simple truth: copy protection does not work. What copy protection does do is greatly annoy consumers, force prices up, and encourage piracy.

Each time a copy protection scheme is cracked, a more powerful protection scheme is introduced. And it is soon cracked, too. The result of this arms race is protection schemes like the one Sony tried — nasty, invasive, and potentially harmful to the user’s computer. Worse, each new Sony-like horror story increments the number of disillusioned consumers who decide they have had enough and instead of buying legitimate copies, elect to download cracked copies.

What About Books?

What can we in the book industry learn from the mistakes made by the music (and video) industries?

I think the biggest lesson is, do not treat your customer as your enemy. The recording industry chose to treat its customers as their enemy. Applying strong DRM technologies to their music and videos told the consumer, “I know you are a thief so I am going to stop you stealing this and restrict how you can use it after you buy it from me.” Suing 7-year-olds added to the bad image. Not a good message.

Sadly, and somewhat incredibly, we are making exactly the same mistakes in the early days of ebooks. We are producing ebooks with strong DRM schemes, locking them to specific, “authorized” readers, and telling our customers, we think you are thieves so we are going to protect you from your base instincts.

We are, in our efforts to “protect” e-books, going against the grain of 20 centuries of human practise. Ever since the earliest printing of books on cloth (in China around 220 and not long after in Egypt), people have loaned or given the books they have read to family and friends to read. Very soon after we humans started writing down our stories, we created libraries to store copies of our writings so that others could borrow and read them.

I have a Sony Reader, an iPad, and an iPod Touch, both all of which can download ebooks. Once I have read a book on one of these devices, I cannot give it to my children to read, or pass it along to a friend, or donate it to a library or charity. Most of the commercially sold books available on both devices are "protected” by DRM schemes.

In the case of the Sony Reader, the device connects to my home computer and software on the computer connects me to the Sony Store, where I can purchase books. My computer is authorized to the Sony Store and my Reader is authorized to my computer. Each book I purchase is thus authorized to be read on my computer, and on the Sony Reader. Puts a whole new twist on “permission selling”!

I have multiple computers. Desktops running either XP Windows 7 or Ubuntu Linux, and a laptop running Vista MacBook Pro. I guess in theory I can authorize some of these so that I can access my ebook collection and the Sony store from various machines, at home and on the road. In practise, the one time I tried this (on my now-abandoned Vista laptop), the Sony Store flat out refused to accept my credentials and locked me out of the books I had bought. So in reality Sony’s DRM has locked me into a one reader, one computer configuration.

Another issue for the book publishing industry is the cost of DRM. It does not come cheap and adds a significant amount to the cost of producing and selling an e-book. That means higher e-book prices. And higher prices for e-books are not what the consumer expects. Offering an e-book to a consumer at a price very similar to what she might pay on Amazon for the physical book looks and feels like a rip-off. Which creates another reason for the consumer to think about “publisher” and “greed” as synonyms. Not good.

Trust

We need to trust our customers. We do not need to treat them as if they are unrepentant thieves. Instead of adding costs to the books we sell with DRM technology, we should be concentrating on adding value by making our e-books a better reading experience.

If we trust our customers, we should be talking to them, getting their feedback on what we can do to make our e-books better. Building walls around our books and telling readers they must pay a premium to enter and read is a stupid idea. We have seen the music and video industries try that. Lets not join them in the foolishness!