Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisI
My frustration stems from the fact that the publishers could have given us a DRM solution that granted all the rights we currently enjoy with a p-book and still protected their copyright, but they chose not to.
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But publishers don't WANT you to have all those rights, even with paper books! There have been lawsuits from publishers trying to shut down used book stores on the basis that nobody but the publisher has the right to collect money when the copyrighted material changes hands. The courts however, so far, have ruled that the customer owns the paper he or she has purchased, and the publishers have no control over what the customer does with the paper so used book stores are legal. Until the courts rule that the intellectual property on the paper is more important legally than the physical ownership of the paper.
There have even been attempts to fight the concept of public libraries, which didn't get very far either.
But in the electronic field, with the strength of the Sonny Bono Act which makes it illegal to circumvent Digital Rights Management even for content which a person actually has legally purchased (remember, you're only buying a license to use that content, not actually buying the content itself), publishers have a new ability to shut down the second-hand market where they make no money at all.
There's no incentive for the publishers to do anything other than what they're doing. In the electronic media field they're the only game in town, and if you want to read a specific author's works in digital format you are at the mercy of however tight or loose the controls are that they wish to use.
Remember that all the rights we now have in paper books are only our rights because of court rulings -- they are not part of the copyright law (at least in the United States). Court rulings change over the years so the rights we currently enjoy may be eroded in newer court rulings.