dodging piracy with e-books?

Nikolas · Sun 10/10/2010 18:29:08

Ok.

A tricky one here and need all the suggestions I can possibly get!

I will be opening a publishing house for music scores. All is good, all is dandy! But customer reports appear to also want PDF as an option. Which makes sense in all.

But this is equal to me taking my own eyes out! Someone buys a PDF and it is spread like candy all over the place!

I am trying to find a way to contact adobe about this, but are you aware of any way to protect a single PDF file? I mean password won't really work, since you could just transfer the password? A challenge/response system would seem too much, no? Some kind of self deletion after printing the file would also seem weird, at best, and illegal at worst?

Any ideas?

Am I being completely worried over nothing here?

GarageGothic · Sun 10/10/2010 18:39:11

Not anything that's gonna prevent piracy. Since it's sheet music I assume you're permitting the document to be printed? All a pirate would need is a virtual printer driver that writes the postscript data to a new PDF and they'd have a non-DRM copy.

Edit: On the other hand, that also means if your current formats allow printing you may as well distribute it as PDF too

. Problem solved.

Buckethead · Sun 10/10/2010 18:50:31

Maybe you could put a watermark on each document with the customers name. But that is probably going to be alot of work.

Nikolas · Sun 10/10/2010 18:56:53

Even if I did put the customers name on, I don't think that would stop anything. I mean who would care if a score they wanted had the name "buckhead" on?

(smiley for the example I used, but it remains a fact).

Either way, if I person is set to pirate a score he can photocopy it, or scan it. It's just the extra work and money used that's keeping it less...

The ideal situation could be this:
1. Does not allow more than 1 print (or 2 perhaps). People needing more can contact the publishing house directly
2. Does not allow printing to PDF somehow (no idea how).
3. Doesn't open unless you use a password which you need to get from the publisher directly.
4. If the publisher sees an e-mail which has not been used to buy a PDF, he simply does not send the password (which is individual in every PDF, generated automatically).

And all this is SO huge for scores costing $20 I think. Then again the gaming industry is suffering because of that, as well as the music business. But I'm SO AGAINST DRM that I can't help feeling weird to say the least...

Thanks for your posts guys!

Tuomas · Sun 10/10/2010 19:58:13

We get our e-books free at the uni. But they're not pdf-files, but ones you can only open with Adobe Digital Editions http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/

Of course a lot of them are pdf too. Most do not allow printing or copy/paste, and exist on your computer only for 7-14 days. After that you have to download a new file on you account. I suppose you could make them use Digital Editions, it's pretty handy, and just let them have the scores for longer or something. Really can't help you more.

GarageGothic · Sun 10/10/2010 20:06:25

Sheet music that cannot be printed is pretty useless though - I'd hate to try to balance an e-book reader on a sheet music stand

Radiant · Sun 10/10/2010 20:26:39

The money you would invest in either developing a DRM system yourself, or licensing one from the big companies, would be significantly less than the money you would lose from piracy.

Do not forget the BTO problem (which stands for "Better Than Original"). If for whatever reason your copy protection is annoying, because e.g. it asks for passwords all the time, then a pirated version is going to be Better Than the Original in that it does not repeatedly bug you for passwords. This is a big incentive for people to either pirate your stuff, or stop using it.

LimpingFish · Sun 10/10/2010 20:29:33

Though you have a right to protect your product, the ideas you have mentioned, like all DRM, only bring more hassles on paying customers. DRM is anti-consumer. There's no other way around it.

You could, though, offer a subscription-based service; something that gives full (or tiered) access to everything you have to offer. Perhaps even through a proprietary portal (such as Steam or iTunes), where the scores can be viewed/printed/edited/whatever, using a compatible proprietary format. It's not ideal, rather a lesser evil, but it would be better than hobbling paying customers.

But if printed scores being passed around is what you're worried about, that there really is no way to stop that from happening. Aside from not allowing printing at all.

And that would be commercial suicide.

Nikolas · Sun 10/10/2010 20:44:50

Radiant, Chris: You are right. And I'm against DRM. Just considering options here. And to be honest I think that my client base would be rather grown ups, who are mature enough to buy the scores instead of pirating them.

You are right, not allowing printing is commercial suicide to begin with!

BTO is also a reason I'm thinking about it. Plus if I'm thinking my pricing right, the customers would normally prefer to get the physical book, rather than the PDF.

Finally, as far as I know, no other music publishing house offers PDFs and all classical score websites also do not offer PDFs... So perhaps my idea is good from the uniqueness side of it, but also reduntant? :S

Anian · Sun 10/10/2010 20:52:06

If I were to look for a .pdf of such a thing, I wouldn't know where to look. I mean, if it's not a popular file (say a Harry Potter book or something) it probably won't be available on torrents and searching through some sites and stuff like rapidshares is really a busy work that might result in a virus infection...basically, what I'm saying is that a password protection might be enough.

blueskirt · Sun 10/10/2010 21:36:47

I think watermarking is supposed to have a deterrent effect. There will always be people who'll just upload the scores on p2p networks but there will also be casual pirates who'll think twice before uploading scores with their names on it in fear they will get their account banned on your store. You won't eliminate piracy, but you might reduce it.

LimpingFish · Sun 10/10/2010 23:01:23

Quote from: Nikolas on Sun 10/10/2010 20:44:50
And to be honest I think that my client base would be rather grown ups, who are mature enough to buy the scores instead of pirating them.

Plus if I'm thinking my pricing right, the customers would normally prefer to get the physical book, rather than the PDF.

Fair points.

You could drive yourself crazy trying to second-guess what might happen, but, given what you've said above, I think something like the watermark option (as Blueskirt suggested) should be enough of a deterrent. People are a lot less likely to share something if the know they'll be fingered for it.

RickJ · Mon 11/10/2010 04:15:03

Many moons ago I bought Quatro, a spread sheet program, from Borland. In a time when copy protected software was all the rage (using techniques such as, seri9al port dongles, "vandalized" floppy disks , etc, Borland simply used a common sense, human readable copyright statement. It's basic theme was "Copyright means it;s just like a book ... as long as only one person uses it at any one time the copyrioght agreement is not violated. It made me a loyal customer of Borland to this day.

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Borland-International-Inc-Company-History.html

Borland started out by selling TurboPascal for $49. At the time compilers sold for $1000s of dollars and one for $49 was unheard of. The conventional wisdom was that it was necessary to sell compilers for $1000s because people would make illegal copies. Borland's response, at the time, was that they were counting on it. People did in fact make illegal copies of the software which was simply a matter of duplicating a couple of floppy disks. There was also a nice user manual that came in the form of a nicely bound soft cover book. Making photo copies of the book was expensive (if you couldn't get free copies at work) and more importantly very tedious and time consuming. People quickly realized that it was worth $50 just to get the book.

There are two things to take away from all this:

1. Have a no-nonsense copyright statement, user-license agreement, or whatever kind of statement making it clear what people can and cannot do with the material.

2. Assume that there will be some copying, sharing, etc among friends and colleagues and make that into a marketing advantage.

- I thought the personalization idea is quite good. Presumably every page would have a copyright statement, so why not add an additional line stating "this copy - property of John Q Public " so similar. The first page could have more personal information, even custom text entered by the customer (think gift, dedication, etc).

- Consider option of customer ordering high quality hardcopy.

- Are there other amenities that could be offered to paying customers.

- Include some ads in each print for other products, composers, etc client may be interested.

- Include reference to your company and website on every sheet printed out

Just some ideas to help you find the right formula for your new venture.

I hope you are successful.
Rick

InCreator · Mon 11/10/2010 08:26:03

Honestly, I don't think anyone would pirate scores, and even if there's a torrent, there would be probably no seeders.
This is very specific thing, people who can actually read & use & need scores would not resort to pirating and if they did, market is specific enough to track them down rather quickly.

ThreeOhFour · Mon 11/10/2010 08:29:11

On the contrary, I clearly remember reading about people pirating musical scores somewhere (it was an interesting article where the actual composer emailed the people putting up the illegal copies and asked them to remove them, and the back and forth communication he had with one of these individuals).

People will pirate anything.

Anian · Mon 11/10/2010 08:51:24

Quote from: Ben304 on Mon 11/10/2010 08:29:11
On the contrary, I clearly remember reading about people pirating musical scores somewhere (it was an interesting article where the actual composer emailed the people putting up the illegal copies and asked them to remove them, and the back and forth communication he had with one of these individuals).

People will pirate anything.

What profile are we talking about, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, J. Williams and such? Cause, as InC said, torrents wouldn't have that mcuh seeders.

Nikolas · Mon 11/10/2010 09:04:06

since I'm part of the classical music industry, I can safely say that scores ARE being pirated, one way or another. It still boils down to the basic question:
Since we are talking about rather small numbers in general (and not millions of scores), is anti-piracy control worth the trouble? Especially since pirated scores WILL advertise the end product...

I've no answer to the above, but I'm sure I'd like to know that my stuff and the stuff from other composers are being protected somehow... Even if it's a tiny protection...

ThreeOhFour · Mon 11/10/2010 09:05:23

A quick google search shows up the name "Jason Robert Brown" (I've never heard of him, but there are a lot of famous people I've never heard of).

Apparently his search for people sharing his music illegal returned roughly 4000 results.

Here is the story from his perspective, as found on his website.

Nikolas · Mon 11/10/2010 09:29:49

Yup, I know about the case... A sad case really, only because of that Brenda girl who had no clue about what she was talking about...

Other than that, believe me: scores ARE being pirated, that's a given fact. Let's not discuss that.

Calin Leafshade · Mon 11/10/2010 09:36:31

I'm afraid to say that I pirate sheet music all the time. Although that comes in the form of guitar tabs.

I would not be able to figure out all those songs by myself. Especially if they were in a tuning other than standard.

Tab books do exist but only for bigger bands. It's pretty much impossible to find a tab for small bands. (I do own a couple of tab books like Buckley, Paul Simon and so on)

I also pirate lyrics as well in order to sing the songs.