Rabble.ca’s Wayne MacPhail has an intriguing perspective on the future of DRM and the impact of using it or losing it in book publishing:
“Book publishers, especially Canadian book publishers, have such a great opportunity right now. Few, if any, Canadians hate book publishers. Few, if any of us, think they foist junk collections of short stories on us with only one good tale in the bunch. We don’t think they make obscene profits on the backs of less well known authors.
“We don’t think they pump out indistinguishable pulp fiction junk. But, that’s just how many of us think of big record labels (and with good reason). In short, our goodwill is the book publishers’ to lose. Point being, even if they put electronic books for sale DRM-free and in a platform-agnostic form, we have little reason (apart from greed or cheapness) to rip them off. On the other hand, we have every reason to support them.”
He also points to the study done at the University of London which found strong evidence that Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing actually buy more CDs than those who don’t. Buy it, love it, share it? It’s not unlike what I do with books that I love…
