Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozric
Thanks!
My only concern is that I plan on buying a number of things from Sony Connect, and with Amazon poised to potentially become a juggernaut in the digital book field, it seems possible Sony might one day decide it's not worth the effort and pull the plug on the whole thing. I suppose that's a chance one takes with any device that uses DRM, including the Kindle.
|
I think it's more likely that, in the short term at least, Connect gets a boost in both hardware and book sales, as sort of splashback from Kindle fever. The number of titles at the Connect store will probably also increase considerably as publishers begin to distribute their Kindle offerings elsewhere (it would appear the most publishers do not have an exclusive deal with Amazon for the expanded ebook selection).
If, at some point in the future, Sony decides to just pack up and leave, the hacker community will probably really dig into cracking their DRM, so the books can be read elsewhere.
If you're very concerned about not being able to read your books on another device down the road, consider buying books in Microsoft's .lit format, then converting to lrf for use on the Reader. Google "convert lit" and "libprs500" to get more details (the legality of these things is sketchy at best, so it's not really kosher to give out explicit instructions on how to crack DRMed books 'round these parts).