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Tor announced last month that it was going DRM-free, and the first such book was released yesterday. Alas, some retailers didn't get the memo, and applied DRM to it, against the specific wishes of both publisher and author.
Tor is busy sorting this out, and has a) explicitly stated that the Redshirts should be available DRM-free, whatever the store might tell you, b) immediately set up a system to allow people to ask for a replacement file direct from Tor if they were sold a file with DRM applied to it.
In the meantime, people who have contacted the stores who sold them DRMed files have been told by the stores that the DRM is nothing to do with them, and that the publisher supplied the file like that, and/or specified that DRM be applied.
This is not true.
Or more accurately, someone has either cocked up or actively chosen to implement DRM, and in this case I'm trusting the publisher and not the retailers. Not just because I know what this particular publisher's attitude is to DRM. A typical feature of DRM is that it is applied at point of sale, because DRM is typically vendor-specific, i.e. it's the retailer's proprietary DRM format and nothing to do with the publisher, so claims by the retailer that the file was supplied by the publisher with DRM already applied do not add up.
As John Scalzi says in his posts, it's the first DRM-free book in the Tor distribution pipeline and there are bound to be glitches, at either end of the pipeline. I'm assuming this is down to glitches, and it's clear that the ebook people in Tor are busy finding and fixing them. But the reported retailer responses to reader complaints have been... instructive.
My interest in this is two-fold. I'm a reader, and I'd like to be able to buy my ebooks DRM-free. To that end I will support publishers like Tor, who wish to supply me with DRM-free books, and I'm not at all happy about the retailers interfering with that intended transaction in order to lock me into their ecosystem.
I'm also a writer, in the camp of writers who think that DRM is a delusion and a snare. My publisher is one of the small presses that hasn't drunk the DRM Koolaid. Their anti-piracy measure is a "Please don't, or we'll be forced to send our lawyers after you" notice on their website. And yet I have readers who complain to me about DRM on my books, and say that when they've gone to the retailer they've been given the same line about "the publisher made us do it".
Well, it looks as if the dam may about to break on the Big 6 going DRM-free for at least some imprints, and if enough of them do, "the publisher made us do it" isn't going to work terribly well as an excuse.
Tor is busy sorting this out, and has a) explicitly stated that the Redshirts should be available DRM-free, whatever the store might tell you, b) immediately set up a system to allow people to ask for a replacement file direct from Tor if they were sold a file with DRM applied to it.
In the meantime, people who have contacted the stores who sold them DRMed files have been told by the stores that the DRM is nothing to do with them, and that the publisher supplied the file like that, and/or specified that DRM be applied.
This is not true.
Or more accurately, someone has either cocked up or actively chosen to implement DRM, and in this case I'm trusting the publisher and not the retailers. Not just because I know what this particular publisher's attitude is to DRM. A typical feature of DRM is that it is applied at point of sale, because DRM is typically vendor-specific, i.e. it's the retailer's proprietary DRM format and nothing to do with the publisher, so claims by the retailer that the file was supplied by the publisher with DRM already applied do not add up.
As John Scalzi says in his posts, it's the first DRM-free book in the Tor distribution pipeline and there are bound to be glitches, at either end of the pipeline. I'm assuming this is down to glitches, and it's clear that the ebook people in Tor are busy finding and fixing them. But the reported retailer responses to reader complaints have been... instructive.
My interest in this is two-fold. I'm a reader, and I'd like to be able to buy my ebooks DRM-free. To that end I will support publishers like Tor, who wish to supply me with DRM-free books, and I'm not at all happy about the retailers interfering with that intended transaction in order to lock me into their ecosystem.
I'm also a writer, in the camp of writers who think that DRM is a delusion and a snare. My publisher is one of the small presses that hasn't drunk the DRM Koolaid. Their anti-piracy measure is a "Please don't, or we'll be forced to send our lawyers after you" notice on their website. And yet I have readers who complain to me about DRM on my books, and say that when they've gone to the retailer they've been given the same line about "the publisher made us do it".
Well, it looks as if the dam may about to break on the Big 6 going DRM-free for at least some imprints, and if enough of them do, "the publisher made us do it" isn't going to work terribly well as an excuse.
