David Pogue, Kolumnist bei der New York Times, Buchautor und CBS Korrespondent schreibt in der Ausgabe vom 17.12.2009 der NYT über den Reiz und die Gefahr von DRM aus Sicht von Autoren und Verlagen. Wie schon viele vor ihm, dafür nicht weniger treffend, resümiert er die Erfahrungen der Musikindustrie:
“Publishers are terrified of piracy, whether it involves music, movies, software programs or books. Everyone remembers how Napster made music easy to duplicate and freely share. Publishers argue that the music industry was badly hurt, and never really recovered. Their first reaction, therefore, was to install nasty copy protection of the type you describe, with limits on which brand of player would play a song and how many gadgets you could copy it to. In time, everyone realized the silliness of this exercise. It inconvenienced only the law-abiders; the software pirates had plenty of simple, convenient ways to duplicate the songs anyway. So eventually, the music publishers agreed to let Apple, Amazon and others sell non-protected versions of their songs. (That's a reversal that I still find mind-boggling, although of course I'm thrilled.)”
Er endet mit einem Appell, sich dem Thema pragmatisch zu nähern und einen Real-Life-Test durchzuführen:
“Maybe, then, the publishers should try an experiment like mine. Maybe they should release a couple of Kindle or Nook books without copy protection and track the results. Maybe that way, we could bring this discussion out of the hypothetical and into the real world.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue-email.html?_r=4
Cory Doctorow, der wohl kaum einer Vorstellung bedarf, hat im Dezember einen sehr spannenden Vortrag gehalten, den Sie hier transkribiert finden:
http://thevarsity.ca/articles/23855
Neben vielen weiteren höchst interessanten Aspekten formuliert Doctorow eine amüsante, gleichwohl sehr treffende Analogie zum Thema DRM:
“Imagine if a giant book chain did a deal with Ikea so that Ikea would be the exclusive supplier of reading chairs and shelves and light bulbs for its books, and actually got a law passed that made it illegal to sell chairs and bookcases and light bulbs that were compatible with their books. This would not be in the interests of readers nor of publishers nor of writers. It would very much be in the interest of Ikea, because they would then have a lock in over our readers that would allow them to exercise undo power in the marketplace.”
Gedanken, Ideen, Kritik? Ich freue mich darauf.
Ihr Ronald Schild
