News Roundup: B&N Won't Buy Borders, Kindle Roadblocks and Sightings, Pirates Convince Game Developer to Drop DRM

Mac Slocum
August 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Report: No Borders Bid for Barnes & Noble

It looks like Barnes & Noble won't acquire Borders after all. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) says B&N is changing course from earlier this year and will not submit a bid for Borders.

Kindle Projections, Roadblocks and Sightings

Theresa Poletti from MarketWatch comments on the relative absence of Kindle sightings, particularly in Silicon Valley:

The biggest problem is the fact that the Kindle is only available online, via the Amazon.com Website. For many consumer electronics products, potential buyers need to touch and feel the device, to pick it up and play with it, before making any kind of purchasing commitment ... (Continue reading)

Pirates Convince Game Developer to Drop DRM

"Why do people pirate my games?"

Game developer Cliff Harris recently posed this question on his blog and the onslaught of responses caught him (and his blog host) by surprise. Harris offers some interesting conclusions, but most notable is this passage on digital rights management (DRM):

People don't like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood. If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it. These gamers are the low hanging fruit of this whole debate.

Harris says his company will no longer use DRM on its games.

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