DRM-Free Day, forever.
radar.oreilly.com
radar.oreilly.com
If you didn't read the article, then you have no value to add to this discussion. The fact that the guy agrees with you just makes it comical.
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.
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.
While I personally prefer having electronic copies of books because I find them much more useful, I know a good deal of people who still buy physical books for various reasons (one of which being haptic), so it's not like they will die out any time soon. Maybe they won't be as profitable anymore, and eventually fade into obscurity, but that's just the way of things.
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
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.
I know I've wanted to donate many times for things I got for free, or for books that were handed down to me, or whatever, but there doesn't currently exist a good model for this. I like the "pay what you want" model of leanpub, but I think you would get even more revenue per thing if you made it free to read and based it on the honor system.
Anyway, it sounds like an interesting experiment.
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.
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.
Why do they get to have and eat their cake.
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.