Quote:
Originally Posted by KenJackson
I don't follow. I'm just proposing that books be read.
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That is all that anyone can ever propose, but what we further recommend is the free sharing of books that you have scanned.
Selling a used ebook is a bit of a strange idea to be sure, given that an ebook is never really used. But selling a disposable ereader loaded with an assortment of books that you have purchased, say an entire publishing house's catalog is another matter entirely. The market is insanely huge as you can surely imagine.
But how much should a third party charge for an ebook? Used mass market paperbacks are essentially free, you simply have to pay a shipping and handling fee, with ebooks there is no shipping fee, the seller can simply send you the file via email. As you can quickly imagine, the selling of used ebooks and possibly by extension new ebooks makes no sense at all.
A rapid proliferation of lending sites once DRM is lifted would be inevitable. ebooks would be collected onto servers, uploaded by those who have finished reading them and downloaded, one at a time, so as to be within the rights of first sale, by anyone who wished to. You would essentially be able to read anything.
Someone would have to of course purchase the books, and that someone would be you and I. But we can imagine sites setting up lending ratios, something like buy one book and get the option to download ten more. I would most likely be more willing to buy into that sort of scheme. Given that my pool of available book choices would in effect only be limited by the amount of users and books available in the lending network...