Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
I cannot help but wonder where DRM has stopped anyone from reading. The entitlement to copy and/or redistribute a pbook has never been a hot issue.
I have never bought a book where the main purpose was to be able to lend it or resell it. I have done both, but I bought it because I wanted to read the book.Helen
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My sensitivity to the ability to keep my ebooks over time (DRM issues) has grown as I have gotten older.
My life experiences include videos abandoned because of format obsolescence. A library of Beta tapes (I miss "who framed Roger rabbit") lost. Ditto for VHS. Who knows how long my DVDs will last with BLU ray and online coming along.
Several online music stores have entered and left the market. This meant that any songs you purchased were limited to the machines you initially downloaded them to. Luckily, a simple roundtrip to CD/mp3 retained your backup rights to these songs.
Similar things have already happened with books. My allergies meant that I couldn't reread my 20 year old, musty paperbacks anymore. I had to leave them behind when I converted to digital many years ago. Many of my old favorites are still not available as ebooks and I can't read them anymore. For those that are available, it really doesn't seem right that I have to repurchase them to reread them. Even in the digital world we have already seen format obsolescence. Amazon and others originally entered the markets with formats that are no longer available and no longer supported. Any books you purchased in those formats are not readable today.
So, I have already lost access to many previous works. As someone who enjoys re-reading favorite works, I would rather invest time in books that I can re-access over the years than in books that are one-read only.