goodEreader reporting:
The Bookseller Industry awards has just occurred in the United Kingdom and Pottermore
came away with a huge victory. The Harry Potter focused digital company
beat out some hefty competition by Random House, Harlequin, Kobo,
Penguin, and Bloomsbury.
The Pottermore strategy as a gateway to
sell ebooks has been a bit of a case study on how to start an e-commerce
site and maintain control over the entire experience. Normally, books
are sold and distributed by the publisher and seldom does the author
maintain any control over the companies that send the books to libraries
and bookstores, let alone international rights and sales.
The
essence of Pottermore was to serve as an online destination for people
to buy the entire Harry Potter series and their spin-off books. The crew
at Pottermore established their own prices and were not held at
gunpoint by any outside publishing interest. The books are compatible
with almost every major e-reader and tablet, in Kindle and EPUB formats.
The one big factor is Pottermore is hardware agnostic, they don’t lock
you into a specific device to enjoy reading the books.
Being able
to truly enjoy a book, means that you should be able to load it on your
phone, tablet, and e-reader without having to rely on bulky third party
programs like Adobe Digital Editions. Pottermore took the innovative
approach of ditching Digital Rights Management altogether and instead
went with digital watermarks. These watermarks bind the owners
information on the cover of the book, putting the onus on them if they
decide to pirate the books.
The one thing Pottermore did was adopt the trans media approach, which few companies in the world have been able to match...
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/pottermore-wins-digital-strategy-of-the-year-award/
Showing posts with label drm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drm. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Sunday, April 1, 2012
New French Law: Digital Exploitation of 20th Century Unavailable Books
Teleread reporting: France has implemented a new law on the Digital Exploitation of 20th Century Unavailable Books. Here’s an excerpt from the Library of Congress’ summary:
This Law adds a new chapter to the French Intellectual Property Code,
comprising articles L.134-1 to L.134-9. Article L. 134-1 provides that
an unavailable book is “a book published in France before January 1,
2001, which is commercially unavailable and is not currently published
in paper or digital format.” (Id.) The Law creates a public
database specifically dedicated to unavailable books, accessible at no
charge, which will list these titles. . . .After a book has been registered in the database for six months without any opposition, a collective management society approved by the Ministry of Culture will be authorized to grant a publisher a non-exclusive license for digital exploitation of the book for a period of five years, which will be renewable (art. L.134-3). . . .
In addition, the Law provides an exception for libraries. It states that the collective management society must authorize libraries that are accessible to the public to digitally reproduce at no cost and distribute to their patrons unavailable books, where a holder of the right to reproduce the work in its paper format has not been found within ten years of the first authorization to reproduce, provided that the library does not receive any commercial profit.
http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/new-french-law-digital-exploitation-of-20th-century-unavailable-books/
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Will Hachette Be The First Big-6 Publisher To Drop DRM On E-Books?
paidcontent reporting:
“There’s a misconception that somehow the digital format of books has made piracy increase, or become logarithmically more serious. But piracy was always very easy to do, because scanning a physical copy of a book [takes] a matter of minutes. A physical book doesn’t have DRM on it.
“Coming from the audio business, where I started, we had DRM on our audiobooks when music had DRM on it, and as that changed, a lot of audio publishers started to drop the DRM on their audiobooks. We were one of the last ones to drop it, and I was asked to monitor the destruction of my business. The business was not destroyed. If anything, it became more robust.
“You could argue that taking the DRM off e-books would be in the benefit of consumers, and possibly even publishers, because then you wouldn’t have the device lock-in you have now.
“We saw that with Pottermore this week, [watermarking and] moving a file onto eight different platforms easily. [More about Harry Potter DRM here, here and here.] That’s certainly revolutionary.”
However, Thomas’s view does not align with that expressed by Hachette UK CEO Tim Hely Hutchinson in a letter to authors and agents this week. He wrote:
DRM (Digital Rights Management encryption, on which we insist) divides opinion. Our view is that the advantages greatly outweigh any perceived disadvantages.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-will-hachette-be-the-first-big-6-publisher-to-drop-drm/
DRM is just “a speedbump,” Hachette’s Maja Thomas said at a
copyright conference this afternoon. However, opinion within Hachette
is clearly divided.
DRM “doesn’t stop anyone from pirating,” Hachette SVP digital Thomas said in a publishing panel at Copyright Clearance Center’s OnCopyright 2012. “It just makes it more difficult, and anyone who wants a free copy of any of our books can go online now and get one.“There’s a misconception that somehow the digital format of books has made piracy increase, or become logarithmically more serious. But piracy was always very easy to do, because scanning a physical copy of a book [takes] a matter of minutes. A physical book doesn’t have DRM on it.
“Coming from the audio business, where I started, we had DRM on our audiobooks when music had DRM on it, and as that changed, a lot of audio publishers started to drop the DRM on their audiobooks. We were one of the last ones to drop it, and I was asked to monitor the destruction of my business. The business was not destroyed. If anything, it became more robust.
“You could argue that taking the DRM off e-books would be in the benefit of consumers, and possibly even publishers, because then you wouldn’t have the device lock-in you have now.
“We saw that with Pottermore this week, [watermarking and] moving a file onto eight different platforms easily. [More about Harry Potter DRM here, here and here.] That’s certainly revolutionary.”
However, Thomas’s view does not align with that expressed by Hachette UK CEO Tim Hely Hutchinson in a letter to authors and agents this week. He wrote:
DRM (Digital Rights Management encryption, on which we insist) divides opinion. Our view is that the advantages greatly outweigh any perceived disadvantages.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-will-hachette-be-the-first-big-6-publisher-to-drop-drm/
Friday, January 13, 2012
Copyright Sage Bill Patry On What Content Owners Should Do Now
paidcontent reporting:
Patry, who was copyright lawyer to the US House of Representative and authors a seminal textbook series, is also an obsessive book and music consumer. He boasts of blowing thousands of dollars a year on sheet music and recordings, and letting his 10-year old daughter buy whatever she likes in Diane’s Books in Greenwich, Connecticut. He is rooting for the content industry.
“I want them to be wildly profitable because I love their stuff.”
High discussions of copyright are all well and good but, for many creators and publishers, the more pressing issue is how to find a business model that will let them survive in the digital era. Patry’s new book, How To Fix Copyright, offers a mix of theory and practical ideas. We will have a proper review of the book this weekend but, for now, here are three concrete pieces of advice from Patry:
Focus On Access Not Copies
Control over the reproduction of books, music and movies was forever the cornerstone of the content industry’s business model. Today, though, the significance of copies is becoming meaningless in an era where an infinite number of digital reproductions can be made at nearly no cost. In practical terms, this means that content owners should focus on expanding access through technology like streaming rather than controlling copies.
This may not reassure content owners who confront others who share their products without permission. Patry thinks the response here once again turns on access:
“The answer to the contraband stuff is flooding the market with authorized versions.”
Pricing Matters As Much As Piracy
...Patry is aware that global piracy is a concern for the content industry but believes that the issue is “more a pricing problem than a moral problem.” He thinks that the industry is leaving money on the table by holding out for Western level pricing rather than making digital media available at prices that consumers in developing nations can afford.
Focus On The Product Not The Law
...Patry suggests it’s better to focus on providing consumers with new products in “formats, places and times” they they will embrace.
He also suggests that publishers concentrate on value-added features. They can do so for digital products but also for legacy products like hardcover books and music compilations. Patry explains he recently refused to buy a $30 DVD of Kung Fu Panda 2 because there is no added value to justify the cost. But he will happily shell out much more than for the beauty and tactile joy of an elegant edition.
Patry, who was copyright lawyer to the US House of Representative and authors a seminal textbook series, is also an obsessive book and music consumer. He boasts of blowing thousands of dollars a year on sheet music and recordings, and letting his 10-year old daughter buy whatever she likes in Diane’s Books in Greenwich, Connecticut. He is rooting for the content industry.
“I want them to be wildly profitable because I love their stuff.”
High discussions of copyright are all well and good but, for many creators and publishers, the more pressing issue is how to find a business model that will let them survive in the digital era. Patry’s new book, How To Fix Copyright, offers a mix of theory and practical ideas. We will have a proper review of the book this weekend but, for now, here are three concrete pieces of advice from Patry:
Focus On Access Not Copies
Control over the reproduction of books, music and movies was forever the cornerstone of the content industry’s business model. Today, though, the significance of copies is becoming meaningless in an era where an infinite number of digital reproductions can be made at nearly no cost. In practical terms, this means that content owners should focus on expanding access through technology like streaming rather than controlling copies.
This may not reassure content owners who confront others who share their products without permission. Patry thinks the response here once again turns on access:
“The answer to the contraband stuff is flooding the market with authorized versions.”
Pricing Matters As Much As Piracy
...Patry is aware that global piracy is a concern for the content industry but believes that the issue is “more a pricing problem than a moral problem.” He thinks that the industry is leaving money on the table by holding out for Western level pricing rather than making digital media available at prices that consumers in developing nations can afford.
Focus On The Product Not The Law
...Patry suggests it’s better to focus on providing consumers with new products in “formats, places and times” they they will embrace.
He also suggests that publishers concentrate on value-added features. They can do so for digital products but also for legacy products like hardcover books and music compilations. Patry explains he recently refused to buy a $30 DVD of Kung Fu Panda 2 because there is no added value to justify the cost. But he will happily shell out much more than for the beauty and tactile joy of an elegant edition.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/02/how-publishers-gave-amazon-a-stick-to-beat-them-with/
GigaOm reporting: We’ve described a number of times at GigaOM how Amazon is disrupting the traditional book-publishing business, both by allowing authors to self-publish and do an end-run around the traditional industry, and by signing writers to its own imprint — as well as starting its own e-book lending library and other ventures.
But as author Charles Stross argues in a recent blog post, the
mainstream publishers are partly to blame for their own misfortune, since they themselves handed Amazon one of the weapons it is using to attack them and steal their market share: the use of digital-rights management or DRM locks on their books.
...
Amazon could be a far bigger threat than piracy
But Stross makes the point that piracy isn’t the only threat the mainstream publishers face as their industry gets disrupted, and it may not even be the primary threat. The most significant threat, he argues, is that Amazon is eating their lunch in a variety of ways, and it shows every sign of continuing to do so:
...
Amazon could be a far bigger threat than piracy
But Stross makes the point that piracy isn’t the only threat the mainstream publishers face as their industry gets disrupted, and it may not even be the primary threat. The most significant threat, he argues, is that Amazon is eating their lunch in a variety of ways, and it shows every sign of continuing to do so:
The corporate drive for DRM is motivated by the fear of ebook piracy. But aside from piracy, the biggest ebook-related threat to the Big Six is called Amazon.co [and] the Big Six’s pig-headed insistence on DRM on ebooks is handing Amazon a stick with which to beat them harder.http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect/xd_proxy.php?version=3#cb=f154e8c58&origin=http://gigaom.com/f56722c3c&relation=parent.parent&transport=postmessage&type=resize&height=20&ackData[id]=1&width=90
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Why strict copyright enforcement is becoming obsolete
TechRepublic reporting:
Takeaway: Strict copyright enforcement is popular in major copyright dependent industries right now. But here’s why advancing technology is rapidly making those industries’ traditional business models obsolete.
The ongoing controversies over matters of copyright enforcement and piracy are infected by virulent strains of propaganda and misunderstanding. The entire issue is commonly framed as a battle between content creators and peer to peer file sharers. Let us take the two most extreme views, and refer to them by names they often choose for themselves. At one extreme, there are the defenders of “content owners” who either believe that copyright is a basic property right imperfectly embodied in law or who just believe that treating copyright that way is an important expedient that they should defend. At the other extreme, there are the “copyfighters” who believe that copyright is an authoritarian imposition, establishing harmful monopolies, either as corrupt and immoral support for capitalist plutocrats, or as unconscionable governmental interference in markets that should be free....Regardless of your feelings about the matter of whether copyright enforcement is justified, it makes little sense to cover our ears, close our eyes, and ignore the facts that face us. In the end, if you want to make money by providing content for others’ consumption in years to come, you are going to have to start recognizing the increasing difficulty of maintaining a state of artificial scarcity enforced by copyright law. The most successful media distributors will be those who can employ a business model that does not assume users can be prevented from making copies. Give people positive reinforcement for not making copies as an inherent feature of the model or, better yet, employ a model that relies on the natural tendency people have to share what what they like when it is essentially free to copy.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/why-strict-copyright-enforcement-is-becoming-obsolete/5616?tag=nl.e550
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Piracy is a market failure, not a legal one, says Canadian study
TeleRead reporting/Michael Geist:
Canadian Social Science Research Council launched the study in 2006, identifying partner institutions in South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and India to better understand the market for media piracy such as music, movies, and software. The result is the most comprehensive analysis of piracy to date.
While setting the record straight on piracy myths is valuable, the report's most important contribution comes from chronicling how piracy is primarily a function of market failure. In many developing countries, there are few meaningful legal distribution channels for media products. The report notes “the pirate market cannot be said to compete with legal sales or generate losses for industry. At the low end of the socioeconomic ladder where such distribution gaps are common, piracy often simply is the market.”
Even in those jurisdictions where there are legal distribution channels, pricing renders many products unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Foreign rights holders are often more concerned with preserving high prices in developed countries, rather than actively trying to engage the local population with reasonably-priced access. These strategies may maximize profits globally, but they also serve to facilitate pirate markets in many developed countries.
The study concludes that local ownership makes a significant difference in developing country markets, finding that “domestic firms are more likely to leverage the fall in production and distribution costs to expand markets beyond high-income segments of the population. The domestic market is their primary market, and they will compete for it.”
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/956637--geist-canadian-backed-report-says-music-movie-and-software-piracy-is-a-market-failure-not-a-legal-one
Canadian Social Science Research Council launched the study in 2006, identifying partner institutions in South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and India to better understand the market for media piracy such as music, movies, and software. The result is the most comprehensive analysis of piracy to date.
While setting the record straight on piracy myths is valuable, the report's most important contribution comes from chronicling how piracy is primarily a function of market failure. In many developing countries, there are few meaningful legal distribution channels for media products. The report notes “the pirate market cannot be said to compete with legal sales or generate losses for industry. At the low end of the socioeconomic ladder where such distribution gaps are common, piracy often simply is the market.”
Even in those jurisdictions where there are legal distribution channels, pricing renders many products unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Foreign rights holders are often more concerned with preserving high prices in developed countries, rather than actively trying to engage the local population with reasonably-priced access. These strategies may maximize profits globally, but they also serve to facilitate pirate markets in many developed countries.
The study concludes that local ownership makes a significant difference in developing country markets, finding that “domestic firms are more likely to leverage the fall in production and distribution costs to expand markets beyond high-income segments of the population. The domestic market is their primary market, and they will compete for it.”
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/956637--geist-canadian-backed-report-says-music-movie-and-software-piracy-is-a-market-failure-not-a-legal-one
E-book business should take a page from music industry and go DRM-free
WP reporting:
The e-book business seems determined to repeat the early mistakes of the music industry with “digital rights management” restrictions. But this time around, I don’t feel compelled to back their early investments with my own money.
Think back to how the first good, mass-market music-download store worked. Apple’s iTunes Store seemed like a revelation compared with earlier, listener-hostile efforts, simply because it let you listen to your purchases in most cases.
All you had to do was consent to listen to songs bought off iTunes only on the five computers you’d authorized with your account, plus any iPods or iPhones you owned.
Those restrictions started to grate on some users. Then Steve Jobs admitted he wasn’t a fan of DRM himself, one major label decided it could do without it as well, Amazon launched an entirely DRM-free MP3 store . . . and less than two years later, DRM vanished from iTunes, too.
Somehow, the recorded-music business did not perish. Digital sales should finally pass CD sales next year.
...E-book DRM also disables many functions common to paper books or other electronic documents. Most stores don’t let you copy text from a book to quote elsewhere, although Barnes & Noble is a welcome exception. Printing? Forget it, unless you go to the trouble of placing an e-reader face down in a copier, one page at a time.
Lending is limited to those titles for which a publisher has authorized it and comes with condescendingly strict limits that most librarians would not recognize. For example, Amazon permits only one 14-day loan per authorized title, ever.
Reselling an e-book? Forget it.
All those limits and lock-ins make an e-book with DRM a dubious deal. Why would I want to pay almost as much as for a paper book — in some cases more — and then have my purchase constrain its usefulness and therefore cut its value?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/e-book-business-should-take-a-page-from-music-industry-and-go-drm-free/2011/04/05/AFBRbG1C_story.html
The e-book business seems determined to repeat the early mistakes of the music industry with “digital rights management” restrictions. But this time around, I don’t feel compelled to back their early investments with my own money.
Think back to how the first good, mass-market music-download store worked. Apple’s iTunes Store seemed like a revelation compared with earlier, listener-hostile efforts, simply because it let you listen to your purchases in most cases.
All you had to do was consent to listen to songs bought off iTunes only on the five computers you’d authorized with your account, plus any iPods or iPhones you owned.
Those restrictions started to grate on some users. Then Steve Jobs admitted he wasn’t a fan of DRM himself, one major label decided it could do without it as well, Amazon launched an entirely DRM-free MP3 store . . . and less than two years later, DRM vanished from iTunes, too.
Somehow, the recorded-music business did not perish. Digital sales should finally pass CD sales next year.
...E-book DRM also disables many functions common to paper books or other electronic documents. Most stores don’t let you copy text from a book to quote elsewhere, although Barnes & Noble is a welcome exception. Printing? Forget it, unless you go to the trouble of placing an e-reader face down in a copier, one page at a time.
Lending is limited to those titles for which a publisher has authorized it and comes with condescendingly strict limits that most librarians would not recognize. For example, Amazon permits only one 14-day loan per authorized title, ever.
Reselling an e-book? Forget it.
All those limits and lock-ins make an e-book with DRM a dubious deal. Why would I want to pay almost as much as for a paper book — in some cases more — and then have my purchase constrain its usefulness and therefore cut its value?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/e-book-business-should-take-a-page-from-music-industry-and-go-drm-free/2011/04/05/AFBRbG1C_story.html
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