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Originally Posted by djgreedo
Really? Have these people not heard of Vista and Windows 7? I cringe every day when I have to use XP at work.
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I despise Vista. Hate the stupid permissions games; hate that I have to login as an administrator to find out why it's not letting me do things. Haven't tried 7, but haven't heard that it fixed what annoys me most about Vista. (Top of the list: that I can't search by filetype+word-in-filename, and can't set individual search parameters without changing the standard ones.)
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Absolutely. I don't think we have a 'right' to buy and own a work of art. If the best way for the author and publisher to 'sell' their work is via a licence only, then I'm happy with that. Obviously consumers will vote with the wallet like they do with everything else.
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The issue isn't whether they'll sell with licenses; it's how long it'll take them to spell out the terms they want. Right now, they're insisting that ebooks are licensed without explicitly saying so in a spot that connects to sales (the Kindle info pages say that content is licensed--but the "download Kindle app + purchase books" page doesn't.), and the specific terms of the license, and penalties for breach of contract, aren't mentioned.
And it's not that publishers don't know what terms they want; it's that they know the public will reject those terms at the prices they're demanding.
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I don't like DRM in principle. Personally the only DRM I actually use is Kindle DRM and that frankly doesn't inconvenience me in the slightest. I suppose if I one day buy a non-Kindle ereader I'll either lose my books or be forced to convert them, but I generally buy to read once.
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I read on three computers and a Sony, and once in a while on a Clie. I don't tolerate DRM at all, and don't currently have any software installed that deals with it. If I ever run out of quality books from Smashwords and DriveThruRPG, I'll consider changing my mind about that.
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Good point. This is not just about the economics of ebooks but also the social aspect. I probably didn't pay for a book out of my own pocket until I was a late teenager. Until then books were gifts, borrowed from a library, or shared from friends and family. I probably would not be paying for books now if I wasn't exposed to those 'free' books in my youth.
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It's a big problem that publishers aren't addressing, because they've never had to actively cultivate the used book dynamics. They've existed outside of publishers' attention ranges. Now, with publishers insisting that secondhand ebooks are not legal at all, we're in danger of setting up a weird double system, where an elite has purchased ebooks that they can discuss in public, and an underclass has bootleg downloads that they can't.
Guess which category inner-city pre-teens are going to fall into. Guess which category will include college students living on loans & grants.
This can work fine for several years--but when those kids, and those college students, get stable jobs later and could afford to join "the elite"--the legit versions have to be at least as good as the bootlegs to make it worth their while.
At best, you get inner-city kids & poor college students growing up reading legit free & cheap books from Smashwords and free downloads from indie author sites, and the "elite" reading books by the Big 6 publishers. And those publishers' sales will plummet when those kids become the dominant buying group, because the now-adults don't know or care about Big 6 books, because they grew up without reading them.
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This is essentially how TV works - ads keep the content free. Same with radio.
I know that whenever ads are mentioned some people have a knee-jerk reaction and start rambling about the purity of books,
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It's not a matter (IMHO) of the purity of books, but the effectiveness of advertising. In order to use ads to decrease the cost of ebooks, the ads have to bring in the advertisers more revenue than they spend on the ads (or the advertisers have to believe that).
How many of what kind of ads would it take to make an $8 ebook cost only $3? Would people recommend the ebook to their friends and get them to buy it? Or would they crack the DRM, strip the ads, and send their friends the plaintext version?