
Why O'Reilly Media doesn't use DRM - rnicholson
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0411/focus-tim-oreilly-media-e-book-antipiracy-steal-this.html
======
cpr
Little-known fact that shows just how enlightened ORA is: you can go to
<https://members.oreilly.com/account/benefits>, and buy any ebook upgrade from
a physical book for $4.99.

They don't even check--they just take your word for it.

I just hope people don't abuse it, but, as Tim says, they'd rather have 100K
books floating around and 10K books sold, than just 10K books sold. Can't help
but improve their visibility and overall sales.

Good folks.

~~~
ams6110
The ebook revenue is nearly 100% profit; the marginal cost of selling ebooks
has got to be near zero. So if more people buy ebook "upgrades" by falsely
claiming they bought the book, that's better for O'Reilly than making them
prove it.

~~~
HelloBeautiful
Are you kidding? Once more ppl get to know about the $5 books, OR will have to
start verifying ownership or take a huge hit on sales.

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RyanMcGreal
I'm really gratified that the guy who once wrote, "Obscurity is a far greater
threat to authors and creative artists than piracy" has built his business
successfully on this same principle.

~~~
GrandMasterBirt
There was an article on HN a few weeks ago about a guy who was selling
something I don't remember. But he used to sell books. And when talking about
piracy he asked the audience who did not agree with him "how many of you are
fanboys/fangirls of an author and will buy everything that person makes" which
was followed by "how many of you bought the anything made by that author as
your very first introduction to him/her as opposed to borrowing it from
someone, reading it in a library, pirating it and reading it, etc...?"

People understand the value of things. If you give people something they value
and want more of, they will gladly pay for it (the value that they see it's
worth) because they want you to keep producing. They know if they stop there
will be nothing new. So the end-goal is to make people see the value you
produce (even if its giving them that thing for free) because instead of
instant-value you will get long-term customers.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
That sounds like Neil Gaiman's take on piracy:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2351978>

~~~
pjscott
Or Eric Flint's take on it, which resulted in Baen Books putting a respectable
number of their books online for free:

<http://www.baen.com/library/>

It's been a good boost to sales.

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cpr
Of course, they put your name & other info on every page of the PDF generated
for you. That probably works as a general "shaming" mechanism, such that most
folks won't share indiscriminately.

~~~
generalk
Which is the right way to discourage large-scale piracy.

If I put my copy of an O'Reilly ebook online for anyone to grab, it's obvious
the copy floating around is mine and I'm a jerk. But I can still give a copy
of the PDF to a few friends and encourage them to buy a copy if they like it.

And, there's absolutely _no way_ this is going to somehow bone me in the
future. The authentication server isn't going to go down, it's not going to
mistakenly think I lent out my "last copy" or lock me out of my purchase
because I don't have internet access.

~~~
pmjordan
I wonder if there's any legal precedent for a friend being the jerk in a
scenario like this. "Friend" uploads ebook/music track/magazine I bought and
"lent" him/her to file sharing site or whatever. It's my name in there, so
_I'm_ going to be the one who's going to be sued.

~~~
kragen
Yes: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine_Caridi#Piracy_incident>

~~~
Entlin
In other words, giving your book to somebody in good faith but the person then
pirates it will cost you $300'000 (or at least it did in this case with Caridi
and DVD screeners).

In other words, you better not share, unless you've got a lot of money laying
around...

------
xbryanx
No DRM? What are they talking about. As a "Safari Books Online by O'Reilly"
subscriber I'm constantly confounded by annoying "features" that seem to have
almost no purpose but to prevent you from copying anything from the online
versions (like code sections). While it's not technically blocked or
prohibited, these features sure don't seem to be there to enhance online
reading.

~~~
betageek
I still can't get over how bad Safari is when O'Reilly are so great in
everything else they do. Does O'Reilly proper run the site?

~~~
Kadrith
I haven't used Safari in a long time, but it used to have non-O'Reilly books.
I'm sure some of those publishers aren't as willing to go without DRM.

------
andreah
I bought 98% of my ebooks from B&N because they allow to download them in
ePub. I've also removed the DRM from all of them, not to share them, I haven't
shared one single ebook yet, but to have them open and readable from every
other reader. Tim O'Reilly perfectly got the point.

This is my first message here (sent from my CR-48 with Verizon :)), Hacker
News is a great community, I also read you guys on my iPhone, keep working
hard!

------
sethg
To be fair, the vast majority of people who live in a First World country and
who have an interest in getting an O’Reilly ebook also have the means to
easily pay for one—or to put it on their employer’s expense account.

~~~
derleth
I think you may be underestimating the number of poor students in the First
World.

------
dutchrapley
Tim gets it. Those who can pay, will.

Those who can't pay, this time: 1) benefit from the information and 2) may pay
for a book in the future when they can afford it. 10k in circulation is free
advertising, to some extent.

------
japaget
Forbes article is abridged. Full interview here:
[http://blogs.forbes.com/jonbruner/2011/03/25/tim-oreilly-
on-...](http://blogs.forbes.com/jonbruner/2011/03/25/tim-oreilly-on-piracy-
tinkering-and-the-future-of-the-book/)

~~~
petercooper
Yes, this version is significantly better.

------
pmjordan
None of the DRM-related revelations in the article should be overly shocking
to the HN crowd. For me, the most interesting nugget of info was that e-books
now account for a quarter of O'Reilly's revenue. (top of the second page)

~~~
generalk
Of course, but this is printed in _Forbes._ The more that the non-tech crowed
sees that publishers can succeed without customer-screwing DRM, the better
chance other publishers will follow suit.

~~~
pmjordan
I know, I guess I was just pointing out that this was hardly _news_ for
_hackers_ , and potentially saving others the time of reading all of it,
looking for the newsworthy bits.

------
encoderer
I recently took advantage of the Borders bankruptcy to snag several o'reilly
hard copies at 40% off. I've always loved having the hardcopies. Even with 2
big monitors there's always enough shit vying for screen real-estate.

------
doghot
Purchased and downloaded a book from Wrox this weekend, looks like they're
taking the same route. Loved the experience.

------
rmc
Another factor that makes O'Reilly different: Lots of their customers are open
source / Linux users, who are usually opposed to drm, have the technical
knowledge to break drm, and are used to standing up for what they believe to
be digital rights.

This means if they used DRM, it would likely be broken, openly, by their
target users

------
yannickmahe
I always wonder, when people say they don't mind about piracy, what part of it
is genuine, and what part of it is pandering.

Do they really mean what they say? Or do they secretly hope there would be no
way to pirate their products?

~~~
cpr
Tim is an absolute straight-shooter. He's not pandering and he's not playing
games. That's the way they think. (An old co-worker of mine is his right-hand
man, running the book publishing business.)

------
njharman
"People who don't pay you generally wouldn't have paid you anyway."

That and other quotes. Man, I'm so glad were finally said by someone who won't
be written off as a hippy, communist, hacker, etc.

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JulianMorrison
Follow the link to the unabridged version, that official version cut a lot of
interesting stuff.

------
lostgame
Wow, this guy is such a level-headed guy...or at least it seems that way, his
outlook is great.

------
GrandMasterBirt
Seems like whenever there is a no-drm success and they are interviewed it is
EXACTLY the same argument/story:

1) If 10,000 people will buy my X I will have sold 10,000. I will not have
sold more since nobody else was willing to pay.

2) If 100,000 people also pirated my X then potentially a few of them would
like it and either buy it, or buy a future product from me, which translates
into more sales.

3) Once my X is hacked it is hacked for good (or something to that extent) and
people pirating have no problems with DRM while people who legitimately bought
X have to deal with DRM.

4) DRM can cost me sales just as piracy could.

