Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I buy plenty of electronic books; nobody has control over what I read. (I no longer buy paper except for books not available in electronic formats, and never for leisure reading. I'll buy paper reference books but not novels.) What I don't buy is DRM'd books that have to be registered through specific software or to specific devices.
Ebooks like the ones here at Mobileread, or Project Gutenberg, or Baen's free library, don't give anyone control over your reading. You can download the book, install it on any device you want, convert it to another format if you care to, send it to a friend when you're done with it. (That last is potentially breaking copyright, depending on the terms of the book; Baen & Gutenberg are fine with sharing them around, and most of the ones here are public domain.)
The big ebookstores that publish the "Big 6" publishers have worked hard to convince people that ebooks are always locked to the store or the device, or that customers should expect someone to be logging their reading habits. It's not true. |
And I will state, honestly, that half my decision stems from just plain liking the feel of a real book and not merely from my own experiences with Amazon or the fact that they went into people's Kindles and took away copies of "1984" without bothering to tell anyone. If I have the book in my home, they can't do that...at least, not yet. Give the GOP time, tho'...