MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Coming Soon for Kindle

emalvick · 10-25-2010, 11:28 AM

I don't know what the exact solution should be, but I do think the music industry screwed up and the book industry is headed in the same direction albeit more cautiously (which I hope will be better).

As far as lending goes, it really depends on the motivation how it should work. I agree that when a book is lended it should no longer be available to the original owner for the lending period. That is no different than a regular book. However, like a regular book, I think an owner should be able to lend a book multiple times. Ideally, I think it should be unlimited, but at the minimal, I think it ought to be 3 to 5 times.

Perhaps a solution would be for a user to have a list of "friends" they loan to and have that be limited, much like print consumers have with their books.

Contrary to an earlier statement, I don't think lending an ebook will be that much easier than paper lending. Is lending a paper copy that difficult?

As far as the sales go, I just don't see the ebook world with lending and libraries being any different than the print world was with lending and libraries. The part that is different is piracy, and that is there as soon as digital copies exist. Lending, Libraries, etc don't change how much piracy occurs, and piracy affects sales way more than libraries and lending ever will.

The same problem exists everywhere else, which is why DRM doesn't work in music or books. Pirates get around it, and the ethical users that have to deal with it suffer, and if anything it drives people to steal their digital content because of the drm. Things may not be that extreme, but I know that in a few instances that friends of mine with IPods chose to steal their music when the DRM there choked their flexibility with their music. These same friends quickly jumped into buying from Amazon when their music store opened up, and even I (I typically hate digital music period) have on rare occasions used Amazons music service because it is DRM free and the standard MP3 format.

Amazon could learn a lot from themselves on their music model.

10-25-2010, 11:28 AM	#50
emalvick Groupie Posts: 166 Karma: 5358 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Davis, CA Device: Kindle 3	I don't know what the exact solution should be, but I do think the music industry screwed up and the book industry is headed in the same direction albeit more cautiously (which I hope will be better). As far as lending goes, it really depends on the motivation how it should work. I agree that when a book is lended it should no longer be available to the original owner for the lending period. That is no different than a regular book. However, like a regular book, I think an owner should be able to lend a book multiple times. Ideally, I think it should be unlimited, but at the minimal, I think it ought to be 3 to 5 times. Perhaps a solution would be for a user to have a list of "friends" they loan to and have that be limited, much like print consumers have with their books. Contrary to an earlier statement, I don't think lending an ebook will be that much easier than paper lending. Is lending a paper copy that difficult? As far as the sales go, I just don't see the ebook world with lending and libraries being any different than the print world was with lending and libraries. The part that is different is piracy, and that is there as soon as digital copies exist. Lending, Libraries, etc don't change how much piracy occurs, and piracy affects sales way more than libraries and lending ever will. The same problem exists everywhere else, which is why DRM doesn't work in music or books. Pirates get around it, and the ethical users that have to deal with it suffer, and if anything it drives people to steal their digital content because of the drm. Things may not be that extreme, but I know that in a few instances that friends of mine with IPods chose to steal their music when the DRM there choked their flexibility with their music. These same friends quickly jumped into buying from Amazon when their music store opened up, and even I (I typically hate digital music period) have on rare occasions used Amazons music service because it is DRM free and the standard MP3 format. Amazon could learn a lot from themselves on their music model.