Professor B, discussing a Law Blog story about Kindle DRM, comments:
Looking at the problem from the perspective of an author who royalties are a very large percentage of his annual income and an avid Kindle user, I'm totally okay with the the differences between real books and e-books. As it is, the used book market takes a huge chunk out of my annual royalties. The drop off from the first year of a new edition to the second can be as high as 30%, for example. I can't imagine the hit my royalties would take if e-books of my texts were available without strong DRM. But it seems safe to assume that anything remotely resembling an e-book Napster would be a disaster from my perspective. My assumption is that it would make the hit we currently take from the used book market look like chicken feed. The enormous amount of time and effort put into writing and updating the books simply would no longer be worth it.
Kinda reminds me of what I said four years ago about the effect on the music industry of digital music. I observed that live and recorded performances were to some extent substitutes, so we should expect the prices of both to be falling in the digital era. Yet live shows were getting more expensive. Why?
Maybe because the shows are getting better because they're more important to artists’ careers. So that may be why the troubadour is returning. Will we see this effect in other areas -- a resurgence of live theatre? The big-time lecture tour, like the ones Dickens and Wilde used to do? I sure hope it doesn't mean that everybody in the intellectual property business will suddenly have to work for a living.
Well, maybe we're all rock stars now. I can't wait to see Prof B in a sequined vest.
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