DRM, Groklaw, Adobe and Ebooks

This post is a followup to my earlier post on my experiences with buying an Adobe PDF ebook from Amazon.

I've had lots of feedback after the posting was linked to over at Groklaw on Saturday. In part because I've had a few weeks to reflect on the situation as well as ponder the responses and in part because the original posting was pretty much just documenting the situation, I wanted to follow up. However, I probably end up raising more questions than clarifying anything.

First, I want to say that I heard back both from Morris Rosenthal, the author of the book, and from Bill McCoy at Adobe. Both were refreshingly honest and empathetic as well as both writing extensive, well-thought out replies. In addition, Mr. Rosenthal offered to send me a printed copy of the book, which I actually had already purchased. This is a much better response than I've gotten in 99% of my frustrations as a consumer.

I also want to say that I definitely believe this was a case of filet mignon (preferably bison) on a dirty garbage can lid. The content was and is worth every penny. I believe this to be the case for a great deal of the content currently exclusively available in digital form under DRM restrictions.

As more background and clarification. I bought the ebook so that I'd be able to read the content over the weekend. Ordering the printed copy would have put me past the weekend. It turns out I did buy the paperback anyway, but that's my primary reason for choosing the PDF initially. For the record, the page on Amazon does note that "Most publishers do not allow Adobe e-books to be printed", but it's sitting right by the ISBN number, which isn't exactly the most highly read portion of an Amazon listing. Given the behavior of PDF's in general, the deviation in expectations should be more clearly stated.

If, for instance, I pulled into a McDonald's drive-thru and ordered a Big Mac, and received 3 slabs of hamburger bun, 2 burger patties, lettuce, sauce, etc. all individually packaged and frozen and stacked together in the bag, it doesn't matter that the menu board had this detailed in small print. Sure, it prevents lawsuits and that's why we have text like that. However, if "we can't be successfully sued" is the height of our customer service, it's a sad, sad day.

Mr. Rosenthal conceded that, from a buyer perspective, my experience was, indeed a big problem. He also informed me that the PDF's were actually supposed to be set to 3 printings. While it is still quite a bit more restrictive than I'd like (for reasons I'll detail in a minute), it would have cut down on at least one part of the situation.

He has a pretty long history of publishing content both in print and online. That's the reason I bought his book. He detailed much of this history and experience with digital publishing and has as well reasoned an explanation for why he chooses to impose some DRM on his ebooks. In the absence of my own 10 years of book/ebook publishing, I'm going to look into his information more thoroughly before insisting that he come to my way of thinking :). I respect someone who can reasonably back up his opinions and he did so admirably.

Mr. McCoy also apologized and offered a wonderfully cogent take on the situation. I particularly liked his statement that the future lies in letting the law handle it rather than trying to fix it with technology. He summarized the key points in this situation quite well. He's right that it isn't all Adobe's fault. I didn't intend to give that impression. The entire chain bears some culpability (even me for not reading the fine print).

However, the fact that CISCO supplies the wilted lettuce at McDonald's doesn't matter to the consumer. The net result is that the McDonald's will receive a negative reputation (moreso than it normally has ). In this case, I searched for a specific book title in Amazon, noticed a digital version and from the point I clicked "Complete Transaction", things went poorly. As Mr. Rosenthal, Lightning Source, Adobe and Amazon are all part of the chain and all function as partners. In most digital delivery situations, there's more profit potential with lower overhead, providing an incentive to get this right. I hope that they do.

I personally believe that there is a balance and it will be found. However, what exists today can hardly be called workable. I'm hopeful that that balance can be reached soon. The current arrangement gives the publishers nearly 100% restriction and almost nothing is conceded to the readers. When the analog for the ebook is a physical book, when you remove physical costs and distribution costs, the static prices are often pretty close. Yet, most of the ebooks don't allow me to do even the things I can do with the physical book.

Yet, whole industries are trying to figure out why consumers aren't rushing to buy ebooks. It's because the value they're providing for the money they're asking isn't enough for most people. And, with the hassles, it's often significantly less.

No one has contested that the current chain failed miserably in my case. I have pretty good technical skills (was able to figure out how it was trying to authenticate) and you saw the result. To expect that the average person to be able to navigate this chain or understand the rights and legalities that are involved here is ludicrous. The fact that the average person not only doesn't know the difference between trademark, patent and copyright law, but often doesn't have a clue how any of the 3 work points to a serious usability problem. No understanding is required to buy and read a book and you shouldn't need to understand intricate legalities just because the same transaction moves online.

Where to Go From Here

I have used "secured" PDF's in the past and, in some instances, have been OK with it. For instance, PHP Architect is a PDF magazine that I subscribed to for a while. Those PDF's were encrypted to my email address and used the subscriber password to open. However, in EVERY other respect, they functioned like normal PDF's. I could move them between machines, print them multiple times, etc.

I understand the desire to ensure that they earn from their content. Unlike many voices in the DRM argument, Mr. Rosenthal has run the experiments and permutations between entirely free, free chapters and no ebooks at all. He has the numbers to back up his conclusions. However, so do Cory Doctorow and Baen books on the other side.

Like the theme of this site and one of my biggest personal philosophies, I believe that the general truth is somewhere in between. I know that takes the wind out of the sails on both sides, but I tend to do that, sorry. All I can do is run my own experiments off of what I believe to be true and report my experiences like I did.

To me, on the publisher side, the authors desire that they be compensated for the value their work represents. However, I don't think many authors are really prepared for that, should it be achieved. That kind of raw valuation cuts both ways. In our current model, consumers are actually putting forth their money in "hope" or "expectation" of value. The monetary expression of that value is static. One pays the $7.95 for the paperback (less any bookseller discounts) or one doesn't. Yet, the value a reader may put on what they actually receive is wildly different and even as a general audience will often vary greatly from the initial static value. A quick check through most sections of Amazon, looking at the ratios between the new price and the used price will show you the value that exists for the reader *after* they pay.

Not surprisingly (to me), the corrolation tends to follow the average rating, which strengthens the idea that these books often are "worth" much less than is asked for them. For books where the users passionately enjoyed them, you get nearly no discount at all by buying used. For more throwaway reading, the books are essentially free if you pay the shipping costs. That would indicate that if the valuation was more dynamic, these titles would be priced much lower. Thus, when the publishers and authors entirely govern (or even mostly govern) the pricing/valuation, we get overvaluation.

Of course, if you go the other way and remove the scarcity that DRM and printing can impose, you get the selfish side of consumer behavior and too few readers paying for the value they find, with many choosing to pay nothing, despite receiving significant value. This is the freeloader side and gives us undervaluation.

I'm still not sure what they mean, but the examples of $57 ebooks in the whole "49 Secrets to Google Optimization" vein that are unprotected yet making money hand over fist make me wonder what is different in the way that the value is applied to those vs. more commodity publishing. I welcome further discussion, because I clearly don't have the answers myself, just more questions.

Somewhere in the middle there's a balance that will create enough incentive for content creators to do their best while still allowing the recipients of that content to use the content fairly. That's the balance that the original copyright legislation set out to strike. However, maybe a new mechanism is needed. Copyright is a really old method of handling it and predates not only several of the media that it now governs, but also most of the forms of text that are covered as well. Anyone have any ideas that genuinely address both sides of the equation?