Quote:
Originally Posted by spindlegirl
And I so wish that was not the case. I'd love to be able to give away a bought e-book (Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, I bought that after seeing the movie Stardust and thought I'd try out a book of his, but didn't like it one bit) that I didn't like and just have it be a given that I didn't keep a copy for myself. But nope, so that is 10 dollars that I have sitting there rotting, with no appreciative recipients. It taught me that I don't want to buy e-books unless I have had a chance to read the entire book for free at the library and know I will love it. I learned my lesson.
With Printed books, had I bought it in printed form, it would have been no problem. I could give the book away if someone saw me reading it in the park, and they said, "Hey, I've always wanted that book!" I could say, "well, here you go, I am not enjoying it, have fun!" No need to share an ADE account, or whatever, easy peasy.
Go to bookcrossing.com sometime and see how many hands a SINGLE copy of a book gets sometimes. I've watched single copies of popular print-books get tracked (each copy has it's own personal "tracking" number) to dozens of people and still going strong.
It's largely why I prefer (to buy) physical media over digital media (one could argue that my DVDs and CD's are digital, but they are on a standalone physical unit that I can just give, nevertheless) I'm not stuck with some piece of crap that I bought and then changed my mind about. That's why I use my e-reader largely for the public domain stuff.
I wish it were legal to pass on e-books, because morally, if a person actually does delete all traces of it from their personal e-reader and computer etc, and practically, it is no different than physical book. Unfortunately e-books reproduce faster than rabbits, which is to their disadvantage rather than their advantage, when it comes to stuff you may want to pass on.
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With photographic images it is possible to "watermark" an image by embedding a code (serial number) in the image in a way that is very difficult to find, let alone remove. If parts of the code are removed, the image becomes effectively corrupted and can't be viewed. The code is scattered throughout the image and can only be read by the software designed for it. There is something similar nowadays on many DVD's and software installs, making it easy to trace duplication. There will always be people who reverse engineer any security code, but it would keep the less dedicated and less computer literate honest.
Something similar for eBooks would seem to be a better option than DRM.