Killing the Goose Dept: I saw an interesting article on ZDNet today about the copy protection being built into Microsoft software. Microsoft is now enforcing the edict that you can only install one copy of office on a maximum of two machines (generally a PC and a laptop). If you need more copies you have to shell out $450 a pop for them. The article makes the interesting point that Microsoft's hegemony in the office suite market was built on "shared" copies, and that had it used copy protection years ago Lotus and WordPerfect might still be with us. More interesting is the idea that we've reached a point in PC software now that new features just don't make a compelling upgrade anymore, certainly not at the prices Microsoft is charging. If Microsoft is intent on saddling users with copy protection, and still wants to charge a small fortune for each copy, then users are likely to decide to just make do with what they have. Rather than seeing revenues go up as people start paying for all those pirated copies, they'll see revenue plummet as people just refuse to upgrade.
The really interesting part of this is the parallel to ebooks, pricing and DRM. Think about it. You want to buy a book, a novel to read in your leisure time. You don't want a hardcover, because you want it light and portable enough to take with you everywhere, and you don't want to lug around audio tapes either. That leaves two choices. You can buy a paperback or an ebook. If you get the paperback, it's small enough to be pocketable (assuming it's not a King or Clancy novel), costs about seven bucks, and you can do whatever you want with it. You can resell it, loan it to friends, even rip pages out of it if you want. And paper, even on a cheap paperback, is a fairly high-resolution medium. If you get an ebook, you frequently have to deal with copy protection restrictions, you can't lend or resell it and in most cases it isn't as easy to read as paper (MS Reader on a Jornada is an exception, as the ClearType font rendering on that device must be seen to be believed). And in most cases the ebook costs more than the paperback! So where's the incentive for the average Joe to pick the ebook over the paperback? Until publishers ditch goofy DRM and start pricing ebooks cheaper than paper, ebooks will remain a niche market. Don't get me wrong; I still believe ebooks are a superior medium to pulp in a lot of ways, but they're going to be a hard sell until publishers get with the program.
The really interesting part of this is the parallel to ebooks, pricing and DRM. Think about it. You want to buy a book, a novel to read in your leisure time. You don't want a hardcover, because you want it light and portable enough to take with you everywhere, and you don't want to lug around audio tapes either. That leaves two choices. You can buy a paperback or an ebook. If you get the paperback, it's small enough to be pocketable (assuming it's not a King or Clancy novel), costs about seven bucks, and you can do whatever you want with it. You can resell it, loan it to friends, even rip pages out of it if you want. And paper, even on a cheap paperback, is a fairly high-resolution medium. If you get an ebook, you frequently have to deal with copy protection restrictions, you can't lend or resell it and in most cases it isn't as easy to read as paper (MS Reader on a Jornada is an exception, as the ClearType font rendering on that device must be seen to be believed). And in most cases the ebook costs more than the paperback! So where's the incentive for the average Joe to pick the ebook over the paperback? Until publishers ditch goofy DRM and start pricing ebooks cheaper than paper, ebooks will remain a niche market. Don't get me wrong; I still believe ebooks are a superior medium to pulp in a lot of ways, but they're going to be a hard sell until publishers get with the program.
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