Content is a Service Business

What you're selling as an artist (or an author, or a publisher for that matter) is not content. What you sell is providing something that the customer/reader/fan wants. That may be entertainment, it may be information, it may be a souvenir of an event or of who they were at a particular moment in their life (Kelly describes something similar as his eight "qualities that can't be copied": Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage, and Findability). Note that that list doesn't include "content." The thing that most publishers (and authors) spend most of their time fretting about (making it, selling it, distributing it, "protecting" it) isn't the thing that their customers are actually buying. Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business.

Ebook Piracy is Up Because Ebook Demand is Up

My email, twitter, and "real-world" information stream is abuzz today with references to a New York Times story about the increase in piracy of ebooks: “It’s exponentially up,” said David...

Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle, and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get). We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates. There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle: poor rendering of complex content and compulsory DRM.

At TOC: Cory Doctorow to Publishers: Demand Option To *Not* Use DRM

I knew Cory Doctorow would be a great wrap up to the first day morning keynotes at TOC, and he more than delivered. He ended the keynote with a challenge...

Amazon Dropping Non-Amazon Ebook Formats (Sort of)

Via Publishers Weekly, Amazon announced Monday it will stop offering ebooks in formats other than Kindle and Mobipocket: In the future, the online retailer says it plans to offer...

Palm's webOS Represents Major Shift for Syncing and Data

In an article covering the Palm Pre mobile device, Ars Technica makes a very important point about how devices utilize network connectivity, and what the assumptions are underlying their...

Point-Counterpoint: Digital Book DRM, the Least Worst Solution

In the second part of a point-counterpoint exchange, Bill McCoy examines two scenarios: a publishing industry that doesn't embrace interoperable DRM, and one that does.

Point-Counterpoint: On Digital Book DRM

In the first part of a point-counterpoint exchange, Peter Brantley outlines reasons why DRM is bad for book publishers.

Another Sci-Fi Publisher Opts Out of DRM

Night Shade Books has joined Baen's WebScription service. It's interesting how sci-fi is one of the genres leading the way into DRM-free ebooks. From a Galley Cat: "Baen has...

The Analog Hole: Another Argument Against DRM

No matter how strong the encryption, digital rights management can't block "analog hole" piracy.

TOC Recommended Reading

The Live Web (Doc Searls, Doc Searls Weblog) The Web isn't just real estate. It's a habitat, an environment, an ever-increasingly-connected place where fecundity rules, vivifying business, culture and...

"Spore" Backlash: Is DRM Officially Bad for Business?

Strict digital rights management may limit long-term development of "Spore's" user base.

EFF Looks at the Big Questions Surrounding Digital Books

At the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a post on what the future of digital books portends for pubishers and consumers: Skeptics should remember that it wasn't long ago that...

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....

Rhapsody Courts Apple Crowd with DRM-Free MP3s

Rhapsody, a digital music subscription service, is now offering MP3 downloads with no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. Rhapsody's subscription service remains under digital rights protection, but Reuters says...