[A2k] DRM free does not increase piracy - Random House

Wed Feb 27 11:57:47 2008

Michelle and all,

  This kinda points up that the RIAA's suggestions for their
clients is basically worthless, now doesn't it.

Michelle Childs wrote:

> This very interesting in the context of the  EU Commission's content
> online consultation. If you follow the link to the Boing Boing page
> you get the link to the full pdf
> <snip>
>     The results: we have not yet found a single instance of the eMusic
> watermarked titles being distributed illegally. We did find many
> copies of audiobook files available for free, but they did not
> originate from the eMusic test, but rather from copied CDs or from
> files whose DRM was hacked. It is worth noting that these results are
> entirely consistent with what the music industry has found in the last
> six months. After conducting their own tests with Amazon, Walmart.com
> and others, the major labels have reached the conclusion that MP3
> distribution does not in itself lead to increased piracy, they are now
> moving their entire catalogs to this approach.
>
> Michelle
>
>  From Boing Boing
> http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/21/random-house-audio-a.html
>
> Random House Audio abandons audiobook DRM
> Posted by Cory Doctorow, February 21, 2008 12:44 PM | permalink
>
> Random House Audio -- a division of Bertelsmann, one of the largest
> publishing conglomerates in the world -- has announced that it will
> now allow its audiobooks to be sold without DRM by all of its online
> retailers. In the announcement, Random House notes that they've been
> running a DRM-free audiobook program with eMusic for months, and that
> none of the pirate editions of their audiobooks online came from those
> DRM-free editions; rather, they've come from DRM'ed editions that were
> cracked, and from ripped CDs. I know, I know -- duh. But how freaking
> cool is it to have a publisher come out and say that in public?
>
> I'm especially pleased about this because I've been doing a couple of
> little publishing deals with various Random House divisions. The
> German division publishes translations of my novels in Germany and
> Austria, while Random House Audio is doing the audiobook version of my
> forthcoming novel, Little Brother. My agent had negotiated a one-off
> no-DRM deal with them for that edition, but now it seems like
> everyone's going to have the same option: authors who don't want DRM
> won't be forced by Random House to include it.
>
> The big question-mark is hovering over Audible, recently acquired by
> Amazon. I love the range and selection and pricing of Audible's
> titles, but I got majorly hosed when I switched to Linux and had to
> spend a month converting my giant, expensive Audible collection to DRM-
> free MP3s. When my agent started shopping the audio rights for Little
> Brother, I was shocked to discover that Audible refused to release any
> books without DRM -- even if the author didn't want it -- and that
> they had the exclusive contract to supply audiobooks to the iTunes
> Store.
>
> Amazon's gone on record saying that they'll kill Audible's DRM if the
> public makes a big enough stink. With Random House going DRM-free, you
> gotta wonder if Amazon will do the right thing and follow.
>
>      Since our decision has been based in part on our experience with
> eMusic, I would like to share those results with you. EMusic started
> selling audiobooks mid-September, and their program has been a
> success, with strong sales every month since launch. Since they sell
> content only in the MP3 format (in other words, without DRM), our goal
> was to find out if allowing them to sell our content would lead to any
> increase in illegal filesharing. For tracking purposes, we watermarked
> all of the eMusic files and then hired a piracy watchdog service to
> monitor and report back to us if any of our titles appeared on the
> major filesharing networks. We tracked a mix of popular titles,
> including some that were not available through eMusic. Because piracy
> is already a fact of life in the digital world, what we were
> interested in finding out was not whether piracy exists, but rather
> whether there is any correlation between DRM-free distribution and an
> increased incidence of piracy.
>
>      The results: we have not yet found a single instance of the
> eMusic watermarked titles being distributed illegally. We did find
> many copies of audiobook files available for free, but they did not
> originate from the eMusic test, but rather from copied CDs or from
> files whose DRM was hacked. It is worth noting that these results are
> entirely consistent with what the music industry has found in the last
> six months. After conducting their own tests with Amazon, Walmart.com
> and others, the major labels have reached the conclusion that MP3
> distribution does not in itself lead to increased piracy, they are now
> moving their entire catalogs to this approach.
>
> PDF Link
>
> Michelle Childs
> Head of European Affairs
> Knowledge Ecology International
> michelle.childs@cptech.org
>
> "The world we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we have
> done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of
> thinking at which we created them=94 Albert Einstein
>
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