– What keeps loans from being duplications? I like that you can loan my book to Aunt Sue (she’s going to love it), but the fact that you can give it to her, her hubbie, your oldest kid, the couple next door (both of them), and all your coworkers, all at the same time, while keeping your own copy? Not so much. Best dealt with via simple morality/ethics education, iffen you ask me.

The answers to most of these questions are future answers. What we’re concerned with now are transitions from one mode/code of behavior to something new, and we (rightly) would like to exert some control on how that transitional process plays out.

I tend to think, however, that there really isn’t much new under the sun, and that human behavior won’t change drastically no matter how much tech you make available. X% of the theft happening right now is simply novelty theft, and particularly the part driven by young people. Stealing is also political oppositions/invalidation, so it feels cool in a suburban-hip-geek kind of way — as opposed to the urban-gun-in-your-face way. Over time, though, the workload of even being a good thief will pale in comparison with the ease of finding whatever you want whenever you want for a price that’s relatively painless, and people will just go back to buying things.

Some digital books will be duplicated on loan, but for the most part they won’t be. Why? Because it’s easier not to. “Oh, god, I’m supposed to send Greg that stupid copy of that book I’m reading…. Why can’t he just get his own damn copy? What the hell am I, a library???”

Software tools like SourceSafe have long made it a practice to control the release of files so that no two people are ever working on the same file at the same time. A library-like control for read-only texts isn’t even a difficult solution, and packaged properly (meaning marketing-wise) it could replicate the experience of checking out a book at a library.

Mr Stackpole seems to be talking mostly about repurchases by the same reader, but his argument could be applied to the purchases that were NOT made by the people who received free copies from a purchaser.

Just for the record, I’m not advocating for a model where SD cards are the norm for books, merely pointing out that in such a world, most of the advantages of ebooks would still hold, and yet the limitations of DRM’d ebooks (or the “Physical Rights Management” of print) would still be in place as well.

I have no doubt at all that within a very short time, ebooks will become the de facto standard, but I do have a short list of deep concerns:

– What will the ability of the author/editor/designer be to exert control over such features as the physical layout of the book, the pagination, etc? If I write a novel that relies on typeface to tell you things (I did — Jillian’s Gold), then I assure you that until I can have that level of control over the presentation, that particular novel is never going to be available as an ebook. PDF, sure. I love PDF.

– What will we do about that pesky question of ownership? I really like the model where the book exists “in the clouds” somewhere, and all you buy is the right to read it across a network on a device of your choice, but who owns it? What prevents the loss of the right you’ve paid for?

– What keeps loans from being duplications? I like that you can loan my book to Aunt Sue (she’s going to love it), but the fact that you can give it to her, her hubbie, your oldest kid, the couple next door (both of them), and all your coworkers, all at the same time, while keeping your own copy? Not so much. Best dealt with via simple morality/ethics education, iffen you ask me.

Once MP3 players, a dedicated device for enjoying music, came out, piracy was more of an issue, since the pirated MP3 experience and the iTunes bought MP3 experience was the same, or at least very similar.

I don’t disagree with your analysis leading up to this point, but I think the advent of the MP3 player, and in particular the iPod and iTunes one-two punch, also did what was necessary to bring the cost (both economic and procedural) of acquiring content into line with consumer expectations. Most people just don’t have a gripe with a buck for a song, and particular not the generation(s) that were forced to buy whole CD’s to get one decent track. (If you haven’t read Steven Knopper’s book, you really should.)

My own view is that iTunes (and the iPod) work primarily because it’s one-stop shopping. Just as Amazon is the go-to site for books, Apple’s iTunes is the go-to site for must music. Amazon clearly wants to be the go-to site for e-books as well, but only time will tell if they can pull that off.

I think that content tends to be valued differently depending on the source, and that might partly account for pirates’ limited use of that content.

I agree, and was trying to convey that same idea in the original post I quote from. Anyone who’s pulling down tons of pirated publishing content almost by definition places no value on that content, and is therefore unlikely to invest time or money in digesting it. That’s one of the reasons that I think you can make a guestimated leap from the number of people actually using pirated publishing content to the number of lost sales: you gain some insight into what people care about when you ask them if they actually read the book they stole.

What, exactly, are these punishments and disadvantages that ebook purchasers are facing?

I think the majority of disadvantages I was alluding to would stem from the sticky issue of mating theory to practice. Whatever DRM system you come up with, it’s another technical layer on top of multiple technical layers that all need to work flawlessly. As almost any interaction with technology will show (in frighteningly short order) things often do not go as planned.

So…you implement a DRM solution, and all of a sudden X percent of your legit users are having their machines locked, or scrubbed, or their credit card numbers are being charged fees for abuses that people didn’t commit. Or maybe it all works, but there are two extra steps involved in each purchase…or maybe that’s only an one-time thing, but if you blow it you have to make three calls to get it straightened out. (That would be the unintended punishment.)

In theory, as you point out, if DRM were transparent and flawless there would be no disadvantage or punishment.

As to functionality — including the ability to loan out multiple copies, etc., I don’t really have a wish list. If everybody wants to have a one-copy-only policy it’s fine with me. I think iTunes does a decent job of letting you have multiple copies on (I think) five machines, if only because you might want your music in five places. Maybe books can get around this with a central library feature where you can loan yourself (or someone else) the same paid-for copy from one server location.

I understand the SDHC example, but it almost seems like an unnecessary step from the point of view of the technology. Wireless obviates the need, as does broadband. The parallel with books holds better with a card, but I don’t know if I want to sort through a drawer full of cards to find my favorite book….

I don’t agree that e-books are better than print books. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff online, and I don’t mind going to the web for short pieces, but longer works on almost any kind of screen simply break me down over time. Reflected light of moderate intensity off a paper page has a quality that is not wearying. Everything else that I’ve ever seen does not (yet) have this quality.

To me it’s the only thing that matters. Make the reading experience transparent to my sensory apparatus and you can dictate functionality all you want. (Meaning you the developer, not you, Levi.) Absent that transparency, I’ll still be reading most of my novels in paper form — even if I have to print them out to do so.

What, exactly, are these punishments and disadvantages that ebook purchasers are facing?

Yes, I know, a DRM’d book cannot be copied to another machine. It cannot be read on every device you own. You can’t make backup copies. But if you go to the bookstore and buy a book, none of these things are possible with that single, paper copy, either, and yet “everyone seems to agree that [ereaders] are substandard reading experiences.” So it is inherently inferior (given the current state of the art) in terms of the reading experience itself, and yet not having the ability to do things that are unheard of in the print world is a punishment? I’m not sure I can buy that.

Let’s invent a new device, just for fun. It’s got an e-ink screen, full-color and touch-sensitive. The resolution and clarity are unparalleled. Everybody agrees it’s like reading ink on paper. It’s fifty bucks at a drug store near you, and we’re making everything we can legally get our hands on available for it. Oh, but the books come to you as SDHC cards.

If you have the book in your pocket (or in the handy-dandy pocket of the free leather case), then you can read it. You can sell it. You can loan it out. In short, you can do all of the same things you can do with any print book you now own, except it’s the size of a postage stamp and no thicker than an old man’s thumbnail. Oh, and Amazon can’t come to your house in the dark of night and take it back.

Is this not a huge step forward over print books? Isn’t the fact that you can carry a few hundred books in your pocket an advantage, not a disadvantage? Isn’t it a blessing, and not a punishment, not to have to hold the pages open? Isn’t it great to be able to read one-handed, snuggled down into a warm bed on a cold winter night, and never have the book slide closed because you let your guard down?

Ebooks as they exist are significantly better than print books, better even than books on SD cards, and yet DRM is being vilified because DRM’s books cannot be used in ways that print books or books on SD cards cannot. I agree, it would be great if new technologies brought us new ways to interact with art, but if all the new technology brings us is a better way to do what we’ve always done, I can hardly agree that the lack of new utility is a “punishment ” or a “disadvantage.”

When MP3 piracy came out, people also seemed like they were spending more time on their computers – IM was bigger then, because it wasn’t on phones, just PCs, so sitting for hours while chatting with friends and listening to pirated MP3s on the computer was more feasible. Once MP3 players, a dedicated device for enjoying music, came out, piracy was more of an issue, since the pirated MP3 experience and the iTunes bought MP3 experience was the same, or at least very similar.

It seems like as e-readers and other dedicated reading devices get better, pirates will be better able to emulate the same experience that can be had via purchasing, since the device will be the place to consume content, whether legitimately purchased or not. It seems as though the widespread adoption of the digital medium will increase piracy, but there is something to your approach that seems important:

I think that content tends to be valued differently depending on the source, and that might partly account for pirates’ limited use of that content. If I buy a book, I tend to read the whole thing even if I have to slog through it, because I paid money for it, so I’m going to get my money’s worth. If I get a book from the library and it turns out to be awful after 20 pages, I’m happy to return it without reading the rest. A book has to be better for me to read it if I got it for free from the library. I imagine the same thing is the case with pirated copies, not just for books, but music, games, movies, etc.

Right now, the experience of reading on a screen isn’t that great, but it will get better once there are more dedicated devices for the task. Once that’s normalized, I think your approach will be even more necessary, since the exchange of money (and corresponding legality) will be the only real differentiator between a digital pirated copy of a book and a legitimate digital one.