[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by djgreedo

Digital media is not the same as physical media. The laws, rules, and practices for digital media should be based on the medium's strengths and weaknesses, not on comparisons to the physical equivalent.

It's a nice thought, but there's no legal infrastructure for it. All of our legal rights involving nonphysical things require pretending they're physical in some way. Some scholars suggest this is a limitation of the human brain & our communication patterns--we need metaphors that relate to the physical world.

I agree, however, that trying to treat ebooks as just another format of book, like hardcover or paperback, is not working well. But the consumers aren't the ones who have to stop that; publishers have to stop pretending that ebooks are just a book format that they can put extra locks on.

I don't believe there should be secondhand ebooks - it makes no sense. It would destroy publishing prices.

No, it would put the current publishing business structure into spasms. It might destroy the current industry. It would *not* destroy author-as-a-career, because (1) no amount of free copying will create new content and (2) people are, in fact, interested in new content. This means we're interested in figuring out how to compensate the people who create that content, and if the current business model(s) fall apart, we *will* find something else.

The transition would be (will be) rough, and a lot of people who are very comfortable with the current regime would (will) wind up being hurt. This includes a lot of authors that many of us would like to see continuing to write, failing to do so because the economic foundation for their careers collapsed. However, it doesn't mean authors would stop writing, or books in general would be less available.

I don't know what new model(s) can or will take the place of what we've got now. I just know that the current system is crumbling, and no amount of sandbagging the edges against the flood of new free content is going to fix it.

Digital media needs to be sold with prices and conditions that protect consumers' rights as well as the rights of the content producers to run their businesses.

The problem with that, is that *none* of the legal discussions have allowed input about consumers' rights. Extension of copyright is an obvious example--consumers paid for that material with the promise that, in X years, it would be free to copy. Then it became X+14. Then X+28. Then X+Y+life of author.

Changes in copyright law and enforcement strategies have always been negotiated between governments and corporations, with the EFF struggling valiantly to point out there's a third party to these decisions.

"Consumers' rights" have traditionally been either "what corporations can't figure out how to take away," or "what prevents large numbers of deaths." Consumers have a right to physically safe products; their right to know what they're buying is limited. (How many ebook stores don't explain DRM, other than "click here to download this before buying"? How many sell ebooks with no filesize, word count or page count?)

With no particular "right" to even know what a purchase includes, how can we expect legal changes that allow reasonable use of what we've bought? We can't even negotiate about what's "reasonable."