Oddly, I and many of my e-book owning friends have encountered situations where we've bought a book in hard copy, and wanted to buy an e-copy for the reader, but been unable to do so because of geographic drm bollocks and other stupidity.
The ebook exists, we *want* to pay for it, but the publisher refuses to sell it to us. The book has been released and is globally available in hard copy, but for reasons unfathomable to normal humans, the electronic version is restricted.
In some instances it's been because of location, in other cases it's been because of proprietary reader restriction (which is to say, only available on whichever particular, proprietary brand e-reader, and if you don't own one of those exact models then FUCK YOU, NO BOOK FOR YOU!).
The only solution we've come up with is to find a pirate copy and send the author a dollar or five on paypal or whatever. Which we do. But, of course, that doesn't help with your sales figures.
It seems some of the anti-piracy measures being used at the moment are turning out to be anti-legitimate-purchase measures. They don't even slow pirates down, and they push people into piracy who actually want to purchase. Converting sales into piracy seems counter-intuitive to me. Wouldn't it be better to go the other way, convert piracy into sales? Maybe?
As the shallower parts of the internet might say, HERP-A-DERP-A-HURR-DURR.
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Date: 2011-09-16 11:35 am (UTC)Hear, hear.
Oddly, I and many of my e-book owning friends have encountered situations where we've bought a book in hard copy, and wanted to buy an e-copy for the reader, but been unable to do so because of geographic drm bollocks and other stupidity.
The ebook exists, we *want* to pay for it, but the publisher refuses to sell it to us. The book has been released and is globally available in hard copy, but for reasons unfathomable to normal humans, the electronic version is restricted.
In some instances it's been because of location, in other cases it's been because of proprietary reader restriction (which is to say, only available on whichever particular, proprietary brand e-reader, and if you don't own one of those exact models then FUCK YOU, NO BOOK FOR YOU!).
The only solution we've come up with is to find a pirate copy and send the author a dollar or five on paypal or whatever. Which we do. But, of course, that doesn't help with your sales figures.
It seems some of the anti-piracy measures being used at the moment are turning out to be anti-legitimate-purchase measures. They don't even slow pirates down, and they push people into piracy who actually want to purchase. Converting sales into piracy seems counter-intuitive to me. Wouldn't it be better to go the other way, convert piracy into sales? Maybe?
As the shallower parts of the internet might say, HERP-A-DERP-A-HURR-DURR.