Zen and the art of e-book piracy

Tech publisher O’Reilly Media does not put digital-rights management (DRM) controls on its electronic books to discourage unauthorized copying and sharing. Forbes Magazine asked CEO Tim O’Reilly if he wasn’t worried about piracy.

No. And so what? Let’s say my goal is to sell 10,000 copies of something. And let’s say that if by putting DRM in it I sell 10,000 copies and I make my money, and if by having no DRM 100,000 copies go into circulation and I still sell 10,000 copies.

Which of those is the better outcome? I think having 100,000 in circulation and selling 10,000 is way better than having just the 10,000 that are paid for and nobody else benefits.

People who don’t pay you generally wouldn’t have paid you anyway. We’re delighted when people who can’t afford our books don’t pay us for them, if they go out and do something useful with that information.

I think having faith in that basic logic of the market is important. Besides, DRM interferes with the user experience. It makes it much harder to have people adopt your product….

I just think the whole logic of DRM is flawed. There’s a bakery in Berkeley that every day dumps a lot of fresh bread into a dumpster behind the store. And there’s a bunch of people who get their bread there. I guarantee you that there are a lot more people who, even if you told them they could, would not do that. A lot of sources of free content are like going rooting through the dumpster.