Random House and other leading book publishers have announced that they are dropping DRM for their audiobook sales. Random House experimented with DRM-free audiobooks in the fall on eMusic and could not find a single instance where a DRM-free book later appeared on a P2P system.
Publishers Dropping DRM for Audiobooks
2 Comments
Recent Posts
Canada’s Campus Antisemitism Crisis: National Survey Finds Antisemitism Nearly Everywhere and University Responses Nowhere 
Why the Answers to Hateful Content Online are Hiding in the Platforms’ Own Rules 
From CCH to ChatGPT: How Canadian Copyright Law Played the Key Role in Deciding a Leading AI Training Data Case in India 
Starting Over: Court Filing Confirms the CRTC’s Streamer Contribution Decisions Are Dead With a Full Online Streaming Act Reset to Come 
The Name on the Window Was Enough: The Attacks on Kiva’s and the Normalization of Antisemitic Violence in Canada
That’s good news. It’s understandable that the publishers had been whipped into a panic by the music industry, but to see them looking into the facts for themselves and drawing a conclusion that supports their customers better is really heartening.
I’ll admit to being moderately surprised by the specific finding that they couldn’t find any watermarked mp3s, the broader finding (that removing DRM doesn’t change piracy levels) fits right in with what I’d expect. How hard is it to remove a watermark, anyways? Is it any more challenging/time-consuming than removing their drm?