MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Imagining a Swap Meet for E-Books and Music

JoeD · 03-11-2013, 07:53 AM

It's a simple problem to solve imo.

They cannot and should not try to stop* people copying books many times and handing them out/selling them, because lets face it, they cannot stop that, piracy happens and is already happening with DRM in existence.

Two unscrupulous users will never be stopped by any system they can create.

What they _should_ tackle though, is how to prevent a single unscrupulous person selling an ebook/other digital item to an _honest_ person. That imo is a very solvable problem.

If each officially licensed vendor had to provide a way to transfer licenses then problem solved.

Ideally there'd be a common backend that all vendors would plug into to allow license transfers, but more realistically we'd end up seeing Amazon provide their own way to transfer between amazon accounts, adobe provide ways to transfer between theirs etc

As long as it's free to sign up for an account and perform the transfer though, then it wouldn't matter if there was a single backend or multiple. Resales of digital items could now occur anywhere with the final transfer taking place in a way that the end buyer can be 100% certain the item they've bought is a legally licensed one and that the seller isn't just reselling the same item again and again.

Each vendor could also offer to handle payment during the transfer and take a cut of processing fees. That would reduce the number of scams that could occur as the site can be certain the sale is a valid license and not transfer it until payment has cleared.

The snag, well that's the people who sell DRM free ebooks and don't yet have any kind of infrastructure in place to handle licenses and transfers. But they can either trust their customers or sign up to an inevitable 3rd party offering from Adobe or similar. Books can remain DRM free, Adobe would only be there to track that a license exists and to respond to transfer requests.

Why hasn't this happened? well that's simple, it hasn't and will not happen unless it becomes legal to resell digital items. Soon as that happens, there's a need to solve the problem, until then those involved are much happier about people not been able to sell items on so there's no incentive to solve the problem.

We may see something like this start with software though based on the EU case that looked at reselling digital applications. If that eventually occurs (it'll take another law tackling the DRM side that currently makes resale worthless first imo) then maybe it'll creep into other digital sales too.

* by adding DRM, they should pursue and stop people who are illegally selling books or distributing them online but this shouldn't impact legal customers.

03-11-2013, 07:53 AM	#6
JoeD Guru Posts: 895 Karma: 4383958 Join Date: Nov 2007 Device: na	It's a simple problem to solve imo. They cannot and should not try to stop* people copying books many times and handing them out/selling them, because lets face it, they cannot stop that, piracy happens and is already happening with DRM in existence. Two unscrupulous users will never be stopped by any system they can create. What they _should_ tackle though, is how to prevent a single unscrupulous person selling an ebook/other digital item to an _honest_ person. That imo is a very solvable problem. If each officially licensed vendor had to provide a way to transfer licenses then problem solved. Ideally there'd be a common backend that all vendors would plug into to allow license transfers, but more realistically we'd end up seeing Amazon provide their own way to transfer between amazon accounts, adobe provide ways to transfer between theirs etc As long as it's free to sign up for an account and perform the transfer though, then it wouldn't matter if there was a single backend or multiple. Resales of digital items could now occur anywhere with the final transfer taking place in a way that the end buyer can be 100% certain the item they've bought is a legally licensed one and that the seller isn't just reselling the same item again and again. Each vendor could also offer to handle payment during the transfer and take a cut of processing fees. That would reduce the number of scams that could occur as the site can be certain the sale is a valid license and not transfer it until payment has cleared. The snag, well that's the people who sell DRM free ebooks and don't yet have any kind of infrastructure in place to handle licenses and transfers. But they can either trust their customers or sign up to an inevitable 3rd party offering from Adobe or similar. Books can remain DRM free, Adobe would only be there to track that a license exists and to respond to transfer requests. Why hasn't this happened? well that's simple, it hasn't and will not happen unless it becomes legal to resell digital items. Soon as that happens, there's a need to solve the problem, until then those involved are much happier about people not been able to sell items on so there's no incentive to solve the problem. We may see something like this start with software though based on the EU case that looked at reselling digital applications. If that eventually occurs (it'll take another law tackling the DRM side that currently makes resale worthless first imo) then maybe it'll creep into other digital sales too. * by adding DRM, they should pursue and stop people who are illegally selling books or distributing them online but this shouldn't impact legal customers. Last edited by JoeD; 03-11-2013 at 08:04 AM.