New digital rights management in scientific literature
I long back to the days in academia where we had university wide licenses for full text pdf of journals. Just received one document from the British Library today with the following note:
The document contains 8 pages, is 514KB, was posted on July 23, 2008 and is now available. It must be downloaded and printed within 14 days and can be accessed only one(1) time
Hello? Anyone out there? Those restrictions are ridiculous!
What seems ridiculous about that?
These new DRMed articles are not full text, just full image. you cannot search them, cannot archive them. Only print a certain amount of times, and only within a certain time. Where is digital in this? This is worse than analog. And much less useful than just full text pdfs.
This is true. It is worse and these guys even make ridiculous demands with respect to the software to be used to access these files. Special plugins that are a nightmare to get installed in a tightly controlled corporate IT ecosystem.
That is one way to alienate your customers:
Treat them like thieves and they will turn to thieving as it will be the only resort left to them to use and gain access to information they are actually willing to pay for!
After all they start to compete with a freebie without these restrictions and want to get money for it…. so offer a good product and don’t annoy your customers.
Else people will find ways arround…. They always have…