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I have two answers to Are DRM free ebooks considered a better quality ebook? one was deleted. It was sarcastic, It was funny, It got the point across (mostly) The initial criticism was vague and unhelpful, and when the moderator was called on this we got

An answer is not a great place for sarcasm. Especially not during the private beta.

I never got a response when I asked for some expansion of this thought. My response to this if we don't make fun of DRM someone might think it is a good idea. then we got this message:

It's funny, but come on - we're trying to tidy the place up for a public audience, I think we can stand to be serious about the topic for a few days.

Well boys we're out of private beta, lets get serious about cleaning the DRM out of ebooks: It's mocking time, lets vote to reopen.

Just so we aren't voting blind here is my original answer:

I always recommend drm to folks on bsdm chat-rooms, These folks like having their hands tied behind their backs, forced to do unnatural acts line using cryptographic software to change the font size, and being beaten for things that they were forced to do.

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Stack Exchange is a place to get answers to specific questions. Not to advance agendas or advocacy.

Getting rid of DRM is an agenda.

Asking about pros or cons of DRM, so people can make their own mind about whether DRM is good or bad, is a good SE post.

The only time an answer that advocates against DRM is appropriate is when:

  1. It is answering a question about downsides of DRM
  2. It answers with facts. "this is like BDSM" isn't a fact, it's a subjective (and poor, and invalid) analogy.

Also, if you think that folks on BDSM chat rooms all like to have their hands tied behind their backs, you are woefully underinformed about BDSM. But sadly, the Sexuality.SE proposal on Area51 was killed so I have no proper place to address that in SE setting.

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  • yes there are doms as well, and I recommend they give it to their subs ;) – hildred Dec 29 '13 at 5:27
  • I will abandon my position If I hear one advantage of drm -- just one. – hildred Dec 29 '13 at 5:29
  • @hildred - ask about that on the site and I'm sure you'll get an answer :) – DVK Dec 29 '13 at 5:31
  • 2. true it is a pore analogy but swearing is not allowed. – hildred Dec 29 '13 at 5:32
  • Swaring isn't facts either. Sales figures is facts. – DVK Dec 29 '13 at 5:34
  • so you don't count returns? – hildred Dec 29 '13 at 5:36
  • Return counts are facts to. – DVK Dec 29 '13 at 5:38
  • so here is a return fact, most vendors have a no return policy on digital goods so the count is 0 with lots of swearing. – hildred Dec 29 '13 at 5:42
  • @hildred DRM prevents casual sharing of ebooks. Yes, it's trivial to break and it's easy to find pirated copies of any given ebook, but you might be surprised at the number of people to whom those option would not even occur. – evilsoup Feb 23 '14 at 12:58
  • @evilsoup so where is the advantage? – hildred Feb 24 '14 at 3:08
  • @hildred The advantage is for the publishers. Of course, this is dubious at best (there is a sizeable minority who completely refuse to buy DRM-laden ebooks), but that was the most reasonable reason I've come across for it. – evilsoup Feb 24 '14 at 12:42
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Stack Exchange has a very large English as Second Language audience. I'm not sure how big it is here. (I would guess it is almost 40% on SO, (purely guessing)) I wonder if a Data Explorer query could be made.

Sarcasm, and other "word play" is loss to alot of ESL readers. A good answer can be understood by all readers. Thus by using sarcasm, you are inheritly making your answer not as good as it could be. Why would you want to write a poor answer?

(many reasons I know)

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