Quote:
Originally Posted by Over
I think the most correct analogy would be: it's like pBooks. You buy a mass market paperback and you will alway have to read in that format. You can't change the size and format of the pbook. That physical paper book is all you got. The "words" you bought must be read in those paper pages. IF you loose the pbook, well, it's lost. You would have to buy another one if you really want it.
DRM'ed eBooks are not exactly the "boogeyman" people are talking about. Except those more restrictive (limited time to read, for example), of course.
|
I disagree - dvds or cds are a much better general analogy for ebooks than pbooks are. It's the difference between machine-readable and human-readable formats. I don't need anything more than my glasses to read a pbook and I can read every pbook I have wearing the same pair of glasses (or no glasses at all if I hold it about two inches from my face.) Sure it's always in the same format, but I know that I'll be able to read it as long as I can still physically manage to read.
I have ebooks bought for my iPaq (MSReader format) that I can't read on my Palm T|X because there is no reader for the Palm that supports that format. There is no equivalent to that in the print publishing world. The closest equivalent is music downloads and AAC, vs. MP3, vs. WMA, and even Sony's ATRAC. No single portable device supported all the DRM formats and the interoperability is one reason why MP3 won out.
It's all because of the need for an intermediate interpreter that a pbook does not require but other forms of media do.
We need a standard for DRM (absence would be the best standard but is also the least likely) that will allow legitimate purchasers to access content they've paid for on any device they own without artificial restrictions. Currently DRM is much more about using device restrictions to force consumers to re-purchase content to access it at a later time than about preventing piracy. It's vendor lock-in and that kind of thing is very much in the spirit of restraint of trade.