Some for-profit publishers use open licenses - see the sortable table at CC:Books (detailed table), which lets you compare published books by license and publisher..
More typically, publishers and authors fear that if they open their content, they will not maintain control, and others may publish the work, competing and diluting the profits. Some have more bravely chosen this path.
Case studies
David Pogue
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue-email.html?_r=2&8cir&emc=cira1 Should e-Books Be Copy Protected?], NYTimes.com, David Pogue, December 17, 2009. When author David Pogue expressed concern about piracy, readers told suggested that perhaps "the illegal copies are just advertising for you; people will download them, try them out, then go by the physical book. Either that, or they're being downloaded by people who would not have bought your book anyway. Why don't you try a controlled experiment and see?"
Pogue and his publisher, O'Reilly, decided to try, and offered one of his Windows books for sale as an unprotected PDF.
After a year, it was all over the Web, extremely easy to download without paying.
However, sales of the book did not fall - in fact they rose slightly during the year.
Music
Music files are no longer copy protected, and the music companies are still profitable.
Conclusions
Is it too early to draw a conclusion? If there is one, it is perhaps that profit is possible, but there are risks.
See also
Interwiki links
External links
- Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you, dive into mark, October 19, 2009. Blog post about publishing under GNU FDL, and the work then being sold by someone else.