Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
That a used paper book might be "good as new" is irrelevant. You can do whatever you want with your used paper book: read it, loan it out, sell it, make hats out of it. One thing you can't do with it is make a copy of it. You can't sell your copy of an e-book without making a copy of it.
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That's about what I was going to say. When you resell a paper book, you are selling the only copy (unless you spent time making a photocopy which would likely cost more than the original). When you resell an e-book, you are making copies of it. Even if you are going to erase the original (or just say that), you still have made a copy of it. So you are not selling your one and only copy and you still have access to it for as long as you like.
Selling a paper book does not rely on the honesty of the seller (much), selling an e-book would rely on that completely and is not something that the publishers or authors should be expected to accept.
If a way is made to ensure that there are not duplicate copies after an e-book is resold, then that should change things. But, at least with current technology, would anyone accept such a solution? The only way I can see this happening with current tech would be to have a 3rd party (or the original retailer) have some form of access key that could be passed to the new owner. Hmmmm, kinda sounds like DRM to me... Plus it wouldn't then be able to be sold by me to my neighbor without getting Amazon involved.