Re: Cory Doctorow tries to talk MicroSoft out of DRM

Edward Welbourne wrote:
> Saw the following on GrokLaw at ...
> Let's hope at least some of them were listening,

I thought that this bit was interesting (around line 680):

  http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

  Today we hear ebook publishers tell each other and anyone who'll
  listen that the barrier to ebooks is screen resolution. It's
  bollocks, and so is the whole sermonette about how nice a book
  looks on your bookcase and how nice it smells and how easy it is
  to slip into the tub. These are obvious and untrue things, like
  the idea that radio will catch on once they figure out how to
  sell you hotdogs during the intermission, or that movies will
  really hit their stride when we can figure out how to bring the
  actors out for an encore when the film's run out. Or that what
  the Protestant Reformation really needs is Luther Bibles with
  facsimile illumination in the margin and a rent-a-priest to read
  aloud from your personal Word of God.
  
  New media don't succeed because they're like the old media, only
  better: they succeed because they're worse than the old media at
  the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the
  old media are bad at. Books are good at being paperwhite,
  high-resolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks
  are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for
  free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb
  it into your IM session or turn it into a page-a-day mailing
  list.

I mean, we have been using the argument at times that MP3s aren't
going to significantly hurt real record sales because everyone loves a
physical object, and Cory is taking quite a different approach.  When
he is arguing it like this, it makes a lot of sense.  

(By the way, I think Cory is well worth going to see if he's doing a
talk somewhere -- he puts a lot into his delivery.  I thought it was a
shame that a lot of people disappeared at the Ravensbourne event after
Fravia and RMS had spoken.)

Jim

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