Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The "whole world" is not. Certain areas of business are under the impression that people no longer care about having permanent access to their purchases, but plenty of us don't trust Google, Amazon and B&N to be around in 10 or 15 years when we're fondly remembering a much-liked book and want to re-read it.
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Why do people download books from Gutenberg or from MR's library or from any other public domain source? Because some of us want to OWN the books, not just access them. It's not even a question of trusting that they'll always be there--I suspect they will, but I still want them on my own hard drive or e-reader. That way they're mine.
And, what the heck, I'll admit to some paranoia. If the only copies of books exist in the cloud, they can be bowdlerized with a few judicious clicks. When no physical copies exist, who can say anymore what was originally written?