Redbeard wrote:Sorry I don't accept that. A whore is a whore no matter how much they make or how popular they are. If you look at the history of publishing from scribes in monasteries to Guttenburg through to PDFs and Kindles, open platforms succeed and closed platforms, although more profitable, fail and cause more harm than good. If the world is forced to buy an iPad or Kindle to access proprietary content we are heading for a corporate dark age of digital feudalism.
Idealism doesn't feed people. Within a few seconds, I can find most DRM protected ebooks (format doesn't matter) on torrent sites. Likewise, you can easily find pirated versions of paid apps (iOS and Android alike) on similar web sites. What you can't easily, or at all, find are pirated versions of iOS apps that include IAP (in-app purchases). SmartGo Books are IAPs. If I were to publish a Go book (which is already a niche market) and was willing to take the risk of making an ebook version, I would use the most secure method of doing so. For now, the iOS platform is the safest way of doing this.
References to monasteries and such don't apply, because before the digital age it didn't take a fraction of a second to get a 100% identical copy of a book. I'm not fond of DRM, but what's the alternative? It's been shown over and over that a large number of people will not pay for a product if they can easily get it for free. If you want to blame someone, blame those who pirate software and digital media, not the authors and publishers who want to protect their property and continue making money from it.
As I said, there is much to idealism and "perfect world" scenarios. But rent has to be paid, food needs to be put on the table, and that's the reality most content providers (and everyone else) has to deal with. Do you work for free? I unfortunately can't afford this form of idealism because my landlady doesn't share it. My supermarket doesn't either. Shame.
Except the Redmond book, all other SmartGo Books are available in other formats too (paper), so the exclusivity is limited to the electronic editions. And while I believe they will be made available in other formats as well, if it didn't happen, then you'd just have to accept that some things have requirements that you may not meet. A book on Sanrensei isn't "essential" and not having access to it (you do, you just chose not to buy a device you can read it on) doesn't impact your "freedom". Reality check, please.
You don't want digital feudalism. Publishers don't want digital anarchy.
