I am generally anti-DRM. That said, I'm also a 9 year audible subscriber and an avid audio book listener (both from Audible and my local library) and I think there are two sides to the story.
First I want to point out that audio books are not quite the same as music. This is because the primary format of a book is, well, a book. The audio version is a secondary format and one which brings in additional revenue to be sure, but isn't the main focus of the publisher. Audio versions of books are optional, audio versions of music are required :-) After years of hating DRM, it was my library which finally made me see the other side of the argument (not that I prefer DRM'd content even now). They have an online system via "MediaMall" which allows you to "check-out" audio books from their library (for free with your library card number). They are typically in DRM'd WMA format and only play for 4 weeks. I initially thought this was crazy and weird - but when I spoke with someone at the library about this they explained that this system allows them to buy a number of "virtual" copies of an audio book and the enforce a virtual "checkout and return" process. Overall, this led to the audio book publishers being able to sell "virtual copies" of their audiobooks without worying about losing revenue (because they act just like the CD sets they sell). By the end of the first year, the audiobook selection was easily 50 times the size it was before this. So this is a case where I am emphatically "pro-DRM" because I know for sure this content would not be available free from my library without it. Since audio versions of books are not compulsory, I don't think the all same (music/movie) DRM arguments apply (at least in the same way). -C -- cburke ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cburke's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=35876 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=73651 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
