DRM this!

Hi hate Digital Right Management schemes almost as much as the next guy. Sure, the direction media are moving towards prevents me from doing things I used to do. I can't loan the movie I watched last night in streaming like I could have done with DVDs or, if anyone remembers those, VHS tapes. I cannot loan the book I just finished without handing my precious Kindle as well.

However, I have to admit that I've never been much of a book loaner. In fact, books are pretty much the only things for which I write down every time whom I have loaned to, at least since losing a bunch of them forever in high school. And movies, well, I never liked buying them in the first place.

Even better: for a monthly fraction of what a single DVD would have cost me 10 years ago I can have unlimited streaming of movies directly to any wired or wireless room I enter. And  I can read a Kindle book at lunchtime on a laptop somewhere, come home after work, pick up the Kindle and continue reading exactly where I left on the laptop at work. Could I do this with traditional media? Hardly, not at least without acquiring and carrying everywhere a bunch of bulky physical objects.

Will these help me getting over DRM limitations? I'm definitely thinking about it. After all, why should any of these perks come for free?

Taking a snapshot of the e-publishing debate

The current debate about digital publishing, authors' rights might be informed by a recent NYTimes piece about digital photography:

"[...]the huge shake-up in photography during the last decade. Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets, have increasing opportunities to make money on photos but are underpricing professional photographers and leaving them with limited career options. Professionals are also being hurt because magazines and newspapers are cutting pages or shutting altogether." (For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path - NYTimes.com)

 Sounds familiar? Literary magazines are disappearing with University budget cuts. Science Fiction digests are going the way of the Dodo.

Yet, today there are more pictures and stories available and accessible than ever before. And let's not even get started about music.

Are all of them good? Of course not. As always, readers will be seeking the authoritative opinion of aggregating sites ("online magazines?") or simply their peers (think Netflix ratings). That is the next market.

Meanwhile authors fight about crumbles, and few realize that writing one novel every year or two as a profession will soon disappear.

As it turns out, lots of famous writers of the past had day jobs, and they still produced remarkable work: