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Originally Posted by queentess
The publishing industry is against casual sharing?? This is news to me. Please provide data and facts to back this up. Because last I checked, casual sharing drives sales.
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The fact that many Big 6 ebooks are locked away from the Kindle & Nook sharing features, as limited and pathetic as they are, says that the publishing industry thinks the ability to share books is bad for them.
Mike Shatzkin asked some questions of publishing industry execs and high-profile agents, and
12 of the 13 agreed ... that DRM’s main benefit is to prevent casual sharing.
Amazon used to claim it was a violation of their TOS to loan your Kindle with books on it to someone else. (They initially said libraries couldn't loan out Kindles, either.) And Fictionwise's TOS says
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All eBooks at Fictionwise.com are the exclusive property of the publisher or its licensors and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. The download of these product(s) is intended for the Fictionwise Member's personal and noncommercial use. Any other use of eBooks downloaded from Fictionwise.com is strictly prohibited. Users may not modify, transmit, publish, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the content of these product(s), in whole or in part.
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I think their TOS is unenforceable. I think they're selling, not licensing, and the fact that the button says "ready to buy? add to cart" and the shopping cart says "Buy Item(s)" not "click to license use of this content," along with other aspects of buying, means the TOS isn't valid. But it's very clear that they intend each ebook to be read by only one person, the one who paid them. Can't hand them to someone else, not even on your own device.
The publishing industry is, for the most part, considering ebooks as a market for single-use products, and trying to enforce that concept with clickthrough licenses that don't explain their terms.