In the words of Bruce Schneier, “[DRM] is an impossible task”1 and “trying to make digital files uncopiable is like trying to make water not wet.”2 Since the advent of the internet and digital file sharing, many lessons have been learned, and various media industries, not just publishing, have witnessed the adverse effects of DRM. These have been the key takeaways for publishers and libraries:
It remains to be seen what the future holds for digital content and DRM. More investigation is needed into the impact of DRM-free books, as well as those with light DRM. Likewise, more investigation is needed into the impact of e-books available through libraries. A simple Google Scholar search for “digital rights management and e-books” and “piracy and e-books” yields very few articles, and those that pop up were published in the first decade of the twenty-first century, not the second. Those articles that are available rarely, if at all, discuss piracy in the context of libraries. (The references in this paper reflects that as well.) As of fall 2019, the author of this paper was not able to locate a single study tracking the effect of free e-books available through libraries on the sales of those books in local or online bookstores. Without such knowledge, claims made by publishers like Macmillan about cannibalization of sales remain unjustified.
Perhaps the most logical way to proceed is to take clues from the lessons learned thus far, and those lessons point to the desirability of less DRM and more flexibility for users. They also point to libraries as being uniquely positioned to tackle the problem of digital piracy by competing with pirate sites. Library platforms give users what pirate sites do not: online safety, no advertising that distracts from reading and research, no vulnerability to virus attacks, and a higher quality of digital files. That said, the book industry cannot overlook the obvious problem of free content. “Free content is a popular solution to the DRM problem. Yet free information removes the monetary incentive for creating content, relying entirely on enhanced reputation for the creator’s reward.”9 Indeed, in order to continue creating and publishing high-quality content, authors and publishers will need assurance moving forward that they will be able to receive just compensation.
Which leads the conclusion: there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the conundrum that is DRM and digital piracy, but there are many sensible solutions that together give the book and library industry more clarity as to what works and what doesn’t. We can all agree that too much of anything backfires, even when it comes to protecting copyrighted materials.
Hauser, Tobias, and Christian Wenz. “DRM Under Attack: Weaknesses in Existing Systems.” In Digital Rights Management, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2770. Edited by Eberhard Becker, Willms Buhse, Dirk Günnewig, and Niels Rump, 206–23. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2003.
Kotobee. “Ebook DRM and Security: What Is It and How It Works.” Kotobee (blog), January 17, 2017. www.kotobee.com/blog/ebook-drm-security-what-how.
Ku, William, and Chi-Hung Chi. “Survey on the Technological Aspects of Digital Rights Management.” In Information Security: 7th International Conference, ISC 2004, Palo Alto, CA, USA, September 27–29, 2004: Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3225. Edited by Kan Zhang and Yuliang Zheng, 391–403. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2004.
Minow, Mary. “Library Patron Internet Records and Freedom of Information Laws.” California Libraries, April 4, 1999: 8–9.