So I just bought the Humble eBook Bundle because Pete-Damn-It is this the type of thing that needs to become a)Legit, b)Common Place, and c)Easy. Like to the point where book publishers don’t try and pull stupid ass bullshit like DRM or limited number of reads or anything like that.
When you have a digital product, be it Movies, Music, Books, Videogames or whatever, there are really three types of people.
1) People who want it, and care enough about it that they want to reward the content creators so that stuff like it is created in the future (or even just to say thanks!).
2) People who don’t want it, and won’t buy it no matter what.
3) People who want it, but don’t want to pay for it.
Draconian DRM (which in many people’s opinion is ANY DRM) does one thing and one thing only, it moves people from category 1 to category 3. It never moves people from 3 to 1, because the technology to “steal” a product is always going to be superior to the technology to prevent that theft.
I have bought games before where the DRM was such a pain in the ass, that I then had to go online and acquire a cracked copy of the game so I could actually play it. And that frankly is ridiculous. I don’t need music CDs putting what amounts to spy-ware on my computer. Over 95% of my music I have legitimate physical copies of, even though I mostly just use Google Play and Pandora these days … I don’t even own a CD player. I do have several discs that have attempted to install DRM onto my computer.
I especially love the granularity of assigning where the money goes that you’re allowed with the Indie Bundles. Buying the bundle primarily for one or two of the contents? Push the majority of the money to them. Like Charity? You can do it. Want the Humble Bundles to keep happening? You can make it so. Just hate that one guy? You can cut him out of the loop (at least, as far as your portion goes).
I’m looking forwards to the day when these bundles stop being so humble, and become ubiquitous.
