Charles Stross: "What Amazon's ebook strategy means"

Charles Stross betrachtet in einem Blogbeitrag Amazons eBook-Strategie, wieso sie aufgeht, was daran problematisch ist (Monopole/Monopsone) und warum die großen Verlagshäuser (Stichwort „Big Six„) mit ihrem Beharren auf DRM selbst daran schuld sind:

DRM restrictions would be mandatory on all ebook sales, lest rampant piracy cannibalize their sales of paper books. (This fear is of course an idiotic shibboleth—we’ve had studies since 2000 proving that Napster users back in the bad old days spent more money on CDs than their non-pirate peers.

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By foolishly insisting on DRM, and then selling to Amazon on a wholesale basis, the publishers handed Amazon a monopoly on their customers—and thereby empowered a predatory monopsony.

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And the only viable Plan C, for breaking Amazon’s death-grip on the consumers, is to break DRM.