From housing, to media, to printers, to everything else. Get ready to own nothing; pay rent on everything.

Disclaimer: I am the author

  • hertg@infosec.pubOP
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    5 months ago

    Sorry, I missed that this thread started on the topic of ebooks. To be honest, I don’t fully understand the connection you are making to the tragedy of the commons when it comes to DRM. I think I understand what you mean, if you are arguing on top of DRM, but DRM is itself already a tool of enclosure. So the problem is not really consumer choice, but rather that DRM is allowed in its current form. But I admit that this is a different discussion, I guess in the end we are talking about the same and I agree with you. I think the self organizing part here would be for authors to publish independently, and for people to support independent publishing. But as you implied, that market is already captured to a point where people don’t even know about independent publishers/markets. I wouldn’t look at that as a tragedy of the commons, where people “selfishly” choose DRM and degrade the underlying resource, rather they are simply consumers of an almost fully enclosed resource.

    Glad you find it interesting enough to start reading. The book doesn’t necessarily “propose self organizing”, although that may be a conclusion one can draw. Rather it showcases different case studies where common pool resources have degraded, and others where they have flourished, and tries to compare the different situations through a few parameters. What I took from it is, that it is pretty safe to say that neither privatization, nor central planning are good “solutions” when it comes to common pool resources, also that it seems important to have some form of rule monitoring and enforcement where actors directly affected by rule-breaking are part of the monitoring. But I should probably read through my highlights again some time, to freshen up my memory :)

    Really appreciated your insight.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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      5 months ago

      Think on the available e-books as a common pool, from the point of view of the people buying them: that pool is in perfect condition if all books there are DRM-free, or ruined if all books are infested with DRM.

      When someone buys a book with DRM, they’re degrading that pool, as they’re telling sellers “we buy books with DRM just fine”. And yet people keep doing it, because:

      • They had an easier time finding the copy with DRM than a DRM-free one.
      • The copy with DRM might be cheaper.
      • The copy with DRM is bought through services that they’re already used to, and registering to another service is a bother.
      • If copy with DRM stops working, that might be fine, if the buyer only needed the book in the short term.
      • Sharing is not a concern if the person isn’t willing to share on first place.
      • They might not even know what’s the deal, so they don’t perceive the malus of DRM-infested books.

      So in a lot of situations, buyers beeline towards the copy with DRM, as it’s individually more convenient, even if ruining the pool for everyone in the process. That’s why I said that it’s a tragedy of the commons.

      As you correctly highlighted that model relies on the idea that the buyer is selfish; as in, they won’t care about the overall impact of their actions on the others, only on themself. That is a simplification and needs to be taken with a grain of salt, however note that people are more prone to act selfishly if being selfless takes too much effort out of them. And those businesses selling you DRM-infested copies know it - that’s why they enclose you, because leaving that enclosure to support DRM-free publishers takes effort.

      I guess in the end we are talking about the same

      I also think so. I’m mostly trying to dig further into the subject.

      So the problem is not really consumer choice, but rather that DRM is allowed in its current form. But I admit that this is a different discussion

      Even being a different discussion, I think that one leads to another.

      Legislating against DRM might be an option, but easier said than done - governments are specially unruly, and they’d rather support corporations than populations.

      Another option, as weird as it might sound, might be to promote that “if buying is not owning, pirating is not stealing” discourse. It tips the scale from the business’ PoV: if people would rather pirate than buy books with DRM, might as well offer them DRM-free to increase sales.