
DRM-Free Day, forever. - Garbage
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/05/drm-free-day-forever.html
======
slowpoke
Stopped reading at "theft". Sorry, I don't take anyone serious who equates or
even compares copying to thievery. It's factually wrong, and serves as nothing
but an attempt to discredit anyone critical of or even opposed to copyright
(whether just in its current form or in its entirety).

~~~
lloeki
While I strongly agree with the statement that copyright infringement does not
equal theft, you're overreacting. It's even more ridiculous when the article
is actually on your side of the argument.

~~~
rickmb
I don't think he's overreacting. I read further, made it almost to the end,
but stopped when the author kept re-iterating his "stealing" BS.

So he's against DRM. Fine. He's still repeating the same bullshit propaganda /
newspeak that serves to justify draconian "anti-piracy" laws and the
continuing attack on civil rights.

As slowpoke says, he continues to discredit those who are opposed to copyright
in its current form (which by its very definition violates civil rights, it's
just that we never really noticed until technology changed) as thieves and
pirates.

The insults and accusations make it pretty obvious who's side he's on.

~~~
lloeki
> _New DRM technologies are not innovation, they are a Neanderthal-like
> reaction. We need distribution innovation. We need learning science
> innovation. We need total immersion with content innovation. We need
> production and manufacturing innovation. At this time our industry is
> staring down the barrel of a powerful gun that can soon dictate the means,
> price, availability of content creation and distribution if we do not figure
> out novel ways to move forward_

He's both against DRM _and_ against laws nailing down on P2P. The very
'draconian "anti-piracy" laws' that '[continuously] attack on civil rights'.

And not only he is against that but _he is also actively doing some fscking
thing about it_.

In this article, he's not talking to us, who know the deal. He's talking to
those who don't have a clue, and those people are talking about "theft" and so
on. If you want to make the argument that he makes to such people, you have to
talk their language however approximate it is, because if you first spend time
what looks like (to them) some technical minutiae, you've already lost because
they get lost.

Again, from the article:

> _My point here is we need to get creative with piracy and how to work with
> it instead of thinking DRM, lawyers, or search engine blocks will address
> the problem._

That's a far cry from the side you're putting it on based on some verbiage.

------
Teapot
I'm thinking that people that cant afford, or thinks that 50$ is overpriced,
are correct. Just as those paying for it are also correct. Just as those that
would pay even more. Fixed prices is a tradeoff that is needless nowadays. Try
a better way. ● Spread the book far a wide on torrents everywhere. Make the
Book also freely downloadable from your site. ● This maximizes the number of
readers. ● This maximizes the number of readers that wants more books. ● Tell
them that that next book is planned, it will cost this much to write. Donate
here. BitCoin, Flattr, PayPal, etc. (It's no more begging then begging for 50$
per book)

The upside is far more readers and thus far more potential payers. And
variable payment makes it affordable for everyone. The cost of writing is also
payed in _advance_ , no more worries about how the book may sell.

And finally, zero piracy. =O

~~~
slowpoke
You just described Kickstarter[1]. :)

I personally like this approach because it doesn't rely on distribution as a
business model anymore. By the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's 2012 and we're
still forced to pay for flipping some bits because an industry thinks it
deserves to be saved from having been made obsolete through technological
progress by ridiculous and increasingly draconian laws.

[1]: <http://www.kickstarter.com/>

------
hxa7241
Thinking of piracy as a tax is not really a very good way to understand
things.

Business is only able to sell copies at monopoly prices because the government
gives them that ability through copyright law -- copyright is effectively a
_negative_ tax, a subsidy: the government gives businesses money the free
market would not otherwise provide.

Since current copyright terms are almost certainly, in general, too large,
piracy is working as a corrective: it brings actual copyright 'protection'
back towards economically defensible and efficient levels.

One might feel there is still wrongness in piracy: that it is unfair, that
some pay and others get things for free. But there is a very substantial
amount of free-choice here: people are not at all strictly forced to pay and
strictly prevented from free access. People can make a choice.

This seems like it might be, or at least suggest, a rather more functional
kind of market than the standard conception. Instead of access being set
bluntly and by guesswork by governmental law, it is decided by each individual
according to their particular circumstances.

------
micro-ram
I showed my support and bought 2 books.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Three here :-) Machine Learning, Git, and Haskell

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Which Git book did you get?

~~~
ChuckMcM
This one: <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596520137.do>

I've borrowed a friend's copy when I needed to do git stuff (we use Mercurial
at Blekko) but figured it was time to get my own copy.

------
m4rkuskk
I got "Node up and running", "Programming Amazon EC2", and "Developing
Backbone.js Applications".

------
john2x
A thought I had, if publishers don't want their content to be digitally
copied, why do they make them digital in the first place?

Why do they get to have and eat their cake.

------
jk
Linux Device Drivers, 3e, was available for free legitimate download - the
authors themselves released GPL version of the book online - all the while. I
bet it has not affected the sale of the book.

Forget piracy, we have a Safari books online account. Still, we buy copy of
books we like. I have seen a lot of people doing the same.

------
egypturnash
tl;dr: Piracy makes good promotion for tech reference books. Bing returns a
lot more links than Google when you hunt for anything involving "torrent".

~~~
theon144
Also: Piracy doesn't hurt sales as much as you might (like to) think, and DRM
is not a good deterrent against piracy anyway.

