Longer term, removing the requirement for DRM will lower the barrier to entry in ebook retail, allowing smaller retailers (such as Powells) to compete effectively with the current major incumbents. This will encourage diversity in the retail sector, force the current incumbents to interoperate with other supply sources (or face an exodus of consumers), and undermine the tendency towards oligopoly. This will, in the long term, undermine the leverage the large vendors currently have in negotiating discount terms with publishers while improving the state of midlist sales.
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness.
Piracy is not going to be solved by the heavy hand of the law. As far as businesses should be concerned, it can only ultimately be “solved” by new business models, just as radios, record players, tape recorders, and video recorders all required media companies to figure out new ways of making money. We are not about to jump in a time machine to return to the 60s and give up the internet just because some companies can’t compete.
It is the role of librarians to first remind our communities that every citizen is responsible for the performance of our government and that the best elected government is one that is elected in the light of knowledge.
Take a look at this post from Library Renewal board member Matt Weaver about Penguin’s recent decision to severely limit libraries’ access through OverDrive to its ebooks. If you don’t know about Library Renewal, please check them out at libraryrenewal.org — it’s a fantastic organization.
Even in this “digital revolution” we remain mired in how we did things in the past — we’re just trying to do them slightly different online. True imagination — not simply extrapolating out the present — is rare. We would do well to seek it out, foster it, pay attention to it, and attempt it ourselves.
