John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has his own take on the Charlie Stross post that I wrote about yesterday. Like me, Gruber thinks it’s a great post and that Stross is right in his beliefs of what it means for publishes but he disagrees that it means the end of DRM. The reason for that is that Gruber thinks old-school media executives are incapable of shaking their belief in the need for and efficacy of DRM.
I sure hope he’s wrong because if he isn’t, I don’t see how publishers can avoid the Amazon Apocalypse. It’s easy to say they deserve it and enjoy a moment’s schaden freude but it will be bad for readers too in the long run. After all, how long is Amazon going to sell their products at loss after they have secured a virtual monopoly on the retail sale of ebooks?