Benscomputer.no-ip.org - How to regain my custom

I'm making this post as I know a number of people feel exactly the same way. If you want me as a customer, you have to be reasonable, I'm a difficult person to pin down, sometimes I want the convenience of a download, sometimes I prefer to have a copy I can hold in my hands.

The above goes for books, CD's, DVDs and even maps. Yet I hardly ever buy e-books, I'm quite happy to read from a screen, and it's very handy to be able to carry a library on a netbook. I use Project Gutenburg quite regularly, so Why don't I buy E-Books?.

The answer is simple, I strongly object to being ripped off. How can you publishers justify charging 15 quid for a hard copy, yet 12 quid for an e-book? The author only has to write the book once! (Drafts aside.). At least with physical copies you have to pay for ink, paper, binding glue and the extra ink used to print the cover. None of that is present in an e-book, you can't tell me it truly only forms 3 quid of the cost of a book? Once you factor in the cost of shipping it to the shops, it must cost vastly more than that.

With a digital copy, you need to pay for the space to host it, and the bandwidth to download it. Hell, I even pay my downstream costs, so you only have to cover a meg or so of upstream transmission. So why do you think I would pay such a large amount. Yes you and the author want to get paid, but why are you not getting paid the same amount as if it was a hardcopy. Frankly if an author is unable to live off writing hard copies, there's no reason my wallet should be robbed just to try and help them quit their day job.

Music is in a much better position than it has been in the past, however some tracks are still too expensive. I'll not pay for something that I consider overpriced. The thing that these publishers often forget is that buying their product is optional. I can do without books, and I can do without music if needs be. The reality is, that even if both industries collapsed tomorrow, there would still be media available. All this rubbish about "Artists have to be rewarded for their work" is plain and utter bollocks. Some people create for the love of it, and don't overly care whether they get paid for it. Creativity will still exist, and frankly with the internet as a channel that anyone can publish on, the quality of the available media may well improve somewhat.

I'm not saying that Copyright Infringement (Note: Not Piracy or Theft) is right, or even justifiable, but just don't expect everyone to believe the party line!

Simply put, if you want me to buy electronic versions (and not buying it does not necessarily mean I'll bother to buy the hardcopy), you need to do the following;

Charge a reasonable price for it (I'd pay a fiver for an e-book. Maybe slightly more for a really good book)

Drop DRM. It's unfair on consumers, unfit for purpose and will never be run on my system

See, it's really not that difficult. With regard to DRM, I just won't purchase an electronic product that includes DRM. No E-books, No Music, No Copy-Protected CD's. I paid good money to get that media, so I will control what happens with it. I'm a good person, you can trust me. Oh, you don't? Well you know what, I don't trust you either, so I'm hardly going to run your closed-source DRM software on my system am I? Look at what happened with the Sony Rootkit, I'm sure your customers want to be put at risk of that again!

Of course some places do sell DRM free music, but some do so at a lower bitrate. Do you really want my money? Because you know what, the higher bitrate is available for free on P2P and on music sharing sites. I don't personally use them, but it's starting to become obvious why people are abandoning the industry.

I get no renumeration for most things I write, OK I may make a small amount from the odd Picture sale or from selling an Article, but I don't expect to make a living from it. I write because I enjoy it, and yes it's good to get paid for it from time to time, but I'm not about to start insisting that people follow ridiculous guidelines. If you buy an article from me, you can use it wherever you want, so long as we have agreed it in advance. If I can be open and relaxed like this, why should anyone else expect me to be less flexible with their work? Odds are I probably only want to read/listen to it, yet instead I've got to wait while the DRM software checks that I'm authorised, during that time I have no idea what else it's doing. How very security conscious of me!

Hell, I get most of the software I use for free (Open Source, not Copyright Infringement), yet I still make donations to some of those projects. Yes, I'm well aware that some people will never donate, and the paid system works in many ways. But, the model still exists, and works in some small part.

I know I'm not the only person who feels this way, and I'm certainly not going to apologise for it. You may not care about our disposable income, but if enough customers take this stance, your business will be in deep trouble. So please stop bleating on about how Copyright Infringement is killing your business, and focus on the things that you can actually fix. So many people buy nothing because they feel the current market is bereft of something intresting, yet rather than innovating, you waste your income on lobbying and restriction schemes. Focus on what actually matters!

If you don't, there will always be someone willing to fill that void, and when your business is in administration they will be bathing in our disposable income.

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