Maria Savva's Blog - Posts Tagged "digital-rights-management"

The Keynote speech from the TLC writers' conference this year was from Cory Doctorow a successful Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author.

His speech centered around the use of DRM in digital publishing and he says we don't need it and shouldn't use it.

What's DRM?

When you publish an e-book you have the option to 'protect' the content with Digital Rights Management. This means that your book will be effectively locked and no one can copy the words and steal it. Well, that's the theory anyway.

This part of Cory's speech stood out for me because as an independent author I have always been concerned about piracy and I always check the box when I publish on Amazon to make sure my books are protected with DRM.

The truth is DRM doesn't make it impossible to steal the words. I have always been aware of the existence of software that can remove DRM, but I thought it's better to have the protection in the first place because any pirates might only target text that is easier to get hold of without having to go to the bother of getting software to remove the DRM. After hearing Cory's speech, I am left thinking that it probably doesn't make a difference whether you have DRM protection or not. The fact is your e-book is vulnerable to piracy either way.

Not only that, Cory thinks that you're actually giving away control of your work to the book seller e.g. Amazon, when you allow them to 'lock' your product.

Cory Doctorow says there are 3 things that publishers must understand for digital success. He calls it 'Doctorow's Law':

1. When someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you and won't give you the key, there is something wrong and it's not there for your benefit.

So this goes back to the DRM issue. It is illegal to remove DRM protection unless you're the company who published the product, so once you've given the go-ahead for DRM protection, you can't then change your mind with that particular product. However, pirates happily remove DRM immediately, and very easily.

Cory Doctorow is adamant that DRM doesn't prevent piracy.

2. Fame won't make you rich, but you'll have a hard time making sales if no one's heard of you.

Cory believes that the problem most digital publishers should be more concerned of is obscurity, not piracy.

It's becoming more common for publishers to approach and offer publishing deals to authors who are successful on Kindle.

Piracy can actually help you get noticed. It only takes one person to read your book and become a 'super-fan' and that may help with promotion. People who download from pirate sites will always be downloading that way, whether or not a book has DRM doesn't make the decision for them. Potentially, you are missing a market by 'locking' your books.

3. Information doesn't want to be free but people do

Cory says DRM hands over control to the companies that publish the digital material.

Information that’s supposed to be free and public is shut away, where it’s kept under lock and key. There is a law that prevents companies telling people about the flaws in DRM.

He says that his publisher (a Macmillan imprint in the US) has dropped DRM and hasn't seen a resulting fall in sales.

Cory says that most indie authors are naive about DRM.


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It was an interesting speech and definitely made me think.

One of the audience members did make a comment after the speech that perhaps the use of DRM has prevented large-scale piracy.

I'm not really sure where I stand on this. As an author, of course I don't like the idea of anyone getting my writing free when I hardly sell any books. Writing is hard work and authors deserve to be paid for it.

What I'm now thinking, though, after Cory's speech, is maybe I'm losing out on reaching a wider audience by insisting on DRM protection of my work.

It would be interesting to hear other authors' views on this topic.

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I'll be posting some more stuff from the conference soon...