Thursday, December 01, 2005

Will Random House Learn from the Sony/BMG Fiasco?

Over at The Da Vinci Crock, Kodewulf posted the following comment:

"I know this is a bit off-topic, but if you see what Sony did with the new DRM fiasco, then it's very easy to understand all the underhandedness that Random House are displaying. It seems that Bertelsmann got a finger in the pie with everything that's shady."

In fact, Kodewulf pre-empted a blog post I was going to talk about here because the Random House/Bertelsmann connection with Sony/BMG's covertly installed hacker rootkit came to mind when I read about Random House's own digital "pay per page" project.

Significantly, nothing that Random House has announced mentions any sort of digital rights management controls or system. Will purchasers of material be allowed the same sort of fair use as one who purchases a dead-tree version? Will purchasers be allow to print out the pages? Cut and paste? Will they have to buy special viewer software (can you say "Peanut Reader?").

All of those restrictions are among top reasons that ebooks of any sort have not caught on with consumers ... that plus reader devices that suck. However, I was initially excited about ebooks for my Palm PDA ... until I bought Peanut Reader and fiund that -- I could not print, underline, cut and paste etc ... what a load of ...

One might hope that they'd learn from the Sony/BMG fiasco and blizzard of lawsuits ... but then, you'd think that publisher's would have learned from the experience of the music industry in general --- something that has not happened.

6 Comments:

Blogger Mindy Tarquini said...

Often pdf versions of books are sold at Amazon for a buck or two. I've puchased those.

The Sony thing is weird. I don't pretend to understand it, I just won't buy Sony DVD's, or CD's anymore because I don't trust them. I play audiobooks in my car CD player or download them to iTunes from Audible. The only discs the go in my computer's disc drive now are for backing up files.

I have to give an awful lot of information over the digital airwaves for the privilege of paying 8 cents to view a page or two of a book.

I love the library.

12/01/2005 5:13 PM  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

Yeah, it's massively messed up.

Sony is really screwing itself. My son William, who earns his money doing scans, programming and wireless router security not will never buy another Sony product or CD.

William is 12 and learns every darned thing I teach him ... see: http://www.yourtechworx.com (said the proud father).

Anyway, he spent his hard-earned money on a Sony (true baloney) MP3 player. Read here about what he has to say.

He now has a 60GB iPod -- again, bought from his own earnings -- and is very, very happy.

There is a lesson here. And when you start losing the tech-savvy 12-year-olds, you will have damn little of your future left.

12/01/2005 6:35 PM  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

And it's good to have you posting again.

12/01/2005 6:40 PM  
Blogger Mindy Tarquini said...

heh. I wondered if you'd make the connection. I have you to thank that I'm posting again. I did a side by side reading of the first couple of chapters of Two Certain Books with a writing buddy who didn't get what the brouhaha was about.

She does now.

She also says you're a way better writer.

Well, duh. Off to check out William's work.

12/02/2005 7:13 AM  
Blogger WannabeMe said...

Hi, Lewis!

I'm M.G.'s friend. And yes, I think your book was much more descriptive and entertaining than "you know who's"!

12/02/2005 10:41 PM  
Blogger Lewis Perdue said...

Thank you, Dana!

Hopefully the appeals court will agree with you, m.g. and scores of others.

12/03/2005 8:12 AM  

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