I’m a staunch proponent of digital distribution and generally someone who thinks creative people should be paid for their work. Then again, the entertainment and media industry is hell bent on making paying for stuff incredibly hard by hobbling their online distribution with cumbersome “copy protections” and restricting the availability of the material to geographic areas, which make absolutely no sense in the online world. That said, how about doing a shout out for those who are doing it right? Those online stores who sell their stuff with no DRM, no geolocking and preferably without watermarks? Be it games, books, movies, TV-series, comics, whatever!

(photo by Paul Cullen)

Using the clumsy Adoble Digital Editions is totally killing the e-book sales in Finland, the regional availability of films and TV-series is the main motor driving their piracy, and getting the “This book is not available in your country” message in Amazon makes one search for a book torrent site.

Not all digital businesses function this way, though – some of them do get it right, so how about some shout outs and publicity for them! If you know of or run a digital distribution business which uses no DRM and no geolocking, Tweet about it with the hashtag #nodrmmarch and if you want to, drop a message in the comments of this blog post, and I’ll add it to the list below. Let’s give credit where credit is due, people!

Books

Angry Robot Store – Scifi, fantasy, horror and other genre stuff. ePub & subscription model available.

Baen Ebooks – Single books and bundles available.

Closed Circle Publications – Books from three authors: C.J. Cherryh, Lynn Abbey, and Jane Fanche

Wizard’s Tower – Sci-fi & Fantasy

Role-Playing, Strategy & Board Games

Black Library – Everything Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000

Video Games

Gamer’s Gate – PC- and Mac-games – some of them have DRM, some don’t, and this is clearly told.

GOG.com – Good Old Games sells old PC-gaming classics.