..."On the Internet, though, words are much more like the mythical story of Faust, available to anyone and everyone for zero marginal cost. Each of you reading this article is creating a new version of this site on your computer, and it’s not costing anyone a cent.1 Unfortunately for those accruing those fixed costs, it’s much more difficult to convince customers to move from $0 to even $0.01 than it is to go move from $1 to $2 (or $10 to $20).
This reality, unsurprisingly, terrifies the publishers, which is where we return to Faust: just as the doctor made a deal with the devil, so have publishers, but in this case the devil is Amazon, and Mephistophilis, the devil’s agent, is DRM."...
