Quote:
Originally Posted by ereadingdotcom
I think what cromag and Chi want is the ideal situation for all books. But publishers still aren't allowing it. Requiring DRM is both a huge burden on the booksellers, but also on the end-user who wants to use their purchased property as they wish (within permitted uses, of course).
One issue people seem to gloss over is that purchasing an ebook doesn't give a consumer the right to make as many copies as they like, no more than purchasing a print book gives them the right to photocopy that book as many times as they like.
One of the things that is critical to us is having full syncing ability between devices. With that in place, there should be no need for three separate copies of a digital text.
Then again, that said, I'd love to hear dissenting opinions as to why I'm wrong on this. There may very well be a reason (or reasons) for having multiple copies that I'm not properly considering.
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I'd make the comparison to music. I buy an MP3 and keep the "original" file on my external hard drive. I burn a CD for my car (the interior of a car is a terrible environment for CDs, so they go bad and I toss the old one and burn a new one as needed), and put copies on my Sansa Clip (kept in my bedroom) and on my Creative Zen (for walking and working outdoors). Since only I have access to the MP3, and since I can only listen to it on one device at a time, I don't think I'm breaking any laws -- or doing anything that the artist and/or vendor would object to.
I have a few ereaders. I keep one in the living room. The others I take with me on trips to the dentist, the doctor, anywhere I'm liable to wait for a while. I also take one of them on vacations. Two of them, including my favorite, don't have wi-fi, so it's unlikely a vendor would be able to provide a method to "sync" them.
If you're going to saddle ebooks with DRM, at least make it something I can ... *ahem* ... work around.