Most consumers of ebooks are not the complete owners of the product that they have paid for. Worse - they are fooled into subservience!
It is no secret that one single company has monopolized the ebook medium. Thirst for money eventually has led to some unethical practices - Absolute power corrupts absolutely. In particular, I will draw your attention towards DRM practices.
Digital Rights Management is an umbrella term referring to practices that enforces the rights to digital content. For example a consumer of a DRM protected music video will not be able to make copies of, or distribute that video - making sure that the only way to access that content is by trying to make sure it is purchased from the authorized publisher. DRM originated along with the rise of internet in the late 90s and early 2000s. While there are campaigns against the enforcement of DRM across all domains of digital content, I will only be talking about DRMs in ebook distribution in this post.
What happens when ebooks are DRM protected?
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The seller can now control how you open and read your books. You probably would have to purchase another device sold by the same distributor, or download an app from them to open this book. This takes away your freedom. You can no longer open it in your preferred device using your preferred software. Imagine if the store you purchased your physical book from imposed that you can only read the book when using the glasses that they also sell!
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Now that the seller has full control over how you read, they can now add trackers and collect data as you read. How long did you take to read a single chapter? Did you read some portions again? Did you read a book again? How often do you read? What genres do you fancy? What time of the day are you most likely to read? Imagine someone sitting next to you while reading a physical book, jotting down each and every action of yours.
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Now that they have the data, they can use it for targetted advertisements. Hey!, you seem to like fantasy books a lot, you should try this… You seem to come back to this series a lot, here is a collectors edition with a special foreword that you shouldn’t miss. Let me share your preferences with this other company so that they can show you advertisements related to you when you are on their site browsing videos. Now imagine the hypothetical person sitting next to you selling whatever information they collected back to the seller so that they can better target you!
Data = More profit for the seller
Why do ebooks need DRM?
Collecting such data, and later selling it for profit sounds like breach of privacy and unethical. Why do companies do it then?
If one asked this question to the Amazon Kindle team, one would get the following answer -
- Because we want to protect the Author’s intellectual property. You see, if we were to freely distribute the digital books without DRM, it is possible for anyone with a copy to redistribute it. This leads to more people reading the book without paying its author their due. With the help of DRM, we can strictly control the number of copies sold as it can only be read in our device or our software. This also prevents redistribution as each copy is associated with exactly one owner. The book can be opened only when they are logged in to our softwares. Brilliant isn’t it???
Hmmmm, not exactly, for 2 reasons -
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All DRM has been broken into and made void. People who want to pirate and redistribute books do so regardless of the existense of DRM. This proves that DRM is not doing the intended job of protecting the author.
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It is easier to handle an ebook without DRM, than with it. A DRM protected book brings in a lot of restrictions on how it is read. It is the pirates who can read the book freely. If anything, DRM encourages piracy because people who pay have a worse experience compared to those who pirate.
So what is the real reason companies sell ebooks with DRM?
DRM……Personal Data……..PROFIT!!
If you see yourself reading DRM protected books, you should get paid. You share your data which is turned into money by the seller. You need to be compensated! If not, I might just buy my digital books from stores that sell the open EPUB version that can be viewed on any device and on any software.
NOTE - I do not encourage piracy of ebooks. There are online stores that sell ebooks in the EPUB version so that they are interoperable and without any trackers. Buy your books to support the author. Don’t get the DRM protected ones because they are a little cheap!