In light of Marvel crashing Comixology and SimCity crashing itself, David Uzumeri wrote a piece for Comics Alliance dealing with the problems of DRM and software-fronted content.
Something in AOL's script broke like a month ago and I can no longer comment on CA threads. This is probably for the best.
Is there any information on the cost/benefit of this approach outside of internal memos? You'd assume EA and Marvel know enough about business to not spend more money to stop piracy than they'd actually lose otherwise, but knowing the huge cost of content servers and the minimal gains from most cost-prevention initiatives, the math doesn't seem like it'd work out on paper.
I'd really like to see hard data too. The trouble is that it hasn't had enough effect on the bottom line as yet -- the Spore debacle didn't keep Spore from being the biggest-selling game of the year, so now here we are.
I think it's going to take something on the magnitude of the Sony rootkit to turn public opinion against DRM so thoroughly that even the biggest DRM partisan has to acknowledge that it's got a net negative effect on the bottom line.
I mentioned in the other thread that BitTorrent is the ideal fucking protocol for situations like this. I'd like to add that the major reason media companies are allergic to BitTorrent is that they don't even want to acknowledge that the protocol has a noninfringing use. Hell, there are probably industry lobbyists out there right now trying to convince every ISP just to straight-up block all traffic on port 6881.
They don't use BitTorrent because, to them, BitTorrent is synonymous with piracy -- and they want YOU to make that association too.
Isn't the M.O. of the two big comics publishers to make short-sighted decisions that damage their own reputation and anger their customer base only to sloppily undo them at a later date?
Weeeeell, this outage isn't down to Marvel's decision to offer up hundreds of free comics, but it IS down to the publishers' decision to back DRM-encumbered formats and a standard client-server distribution model. (And Comixology for being completely fucking unprepared for this traffic spike, because apparently they don't read the news?)
Blaming the Big Two is reductive, because most of the indy publishers use the same model -- Dark Horse uses its own distribution service but it's basically the same model as Comixology's.
Comixology's role in all this is that it gave the publishers what they demanded -- DRM and assurances that DRM works -- and at the same time managed to finagle themselves into a near-monopoly market position, because that's what DRM does.
For my part, I don't buy DRM-encumbered comics. I have both the Comixology and Dark Horse clients on my tablet, and I've downloaded a few dozen comics on both, but I've only gone in for the freebies. Because that is exactly what I'm willing to pay for this shit.
Meantime, you guys should totally check out
thrillbent.com. Not only are the comics in DRM-free standard formats, they're also free downloads.
