I have to agree with murray. The usage of ebooks compared to digital music or video files is meager.
I think someone mentioned about the advantages of ebooks vs pbooks somewhere. To me, ebooks are great because:
++ Don't take much physical space if at all
++ Portability. I can practically carry a whole library in a CF/SD card and be able to read.
++ Search. I can search an ebook with a full-text search engine. Today's desktop search apps only make it easier.
++ Search my annotation. I can annotate *AND* search my annotations. (Depending on the eReader software, mileage may vary)
++ Readability. I am one of those folks who can read text off a CRT or LCD for hours without feeling much strain. For backlit displays, I can read even in the dark or with low light conditions.
++ Instant access. I get instant access (online download) to ebooks whether its DRMed, pirated or otherwise. With pbooks, I need to look for it on a bookstore which cannot carry unlimited stock or variety. Online bookstores can carry *near* unlimited variety and there is no limit to stock, unfortunately variety is still limited for most online stores, but at least I get instant download. Amazon.com helps, but I still have to wait for delivery time. In the time it takes for the pbook to be delivered, I might have finished reading it if there were download options.
I consider mp3s to be the primary harbinger of mass adoption for digital music. Mp3s are to me better because:
++ Smaller Physically. On a CDROM, you can fit way more mp3s than raw audio. It's lossy, but its good enough.
++ Easily available. Whether its through crappy download sites or personal CD ripping, its fairly easy.
++ Quality. No apparent or significant drop in quality. Depending on encoding rate, quality varies.
++ Portability. Tons of MP3s can be stored in a notebook, DAP or a single CDROM. Compare to carrying multiple CDROMs ... or Tapes! :gasp:
Comparing my lists, I would say ebooks suffer from:
-- Quality: Most ppl find it a strain to read ebooks off CRT or LCD screens. pbooks win handsdown for readibility. After all, paper technology has grown over the last few hundred years! MP3 has little or no noticeable drop in quality.
-- Availability: Tons of available material in paper. Its *very* tedious and time consuming to "rip"/scan pbooks into ebooks. CD ripping allowed us to convert our existing CDs into mp3s easily. I don't forsee a pbook ripper any time soon.
-- Accessibility: You can take a book out of your collection and read, while others can still access the other books in the shelf. Newspapers can be split up so that I can read the main headline news while someone else read entertainment. This is not possible with DRMed ebooks, but non-DRMed ebooks would require an ebook device per person
-- Accessibility2: I don't see ASCII or HTML going away any time soon, so unless ebooks are in either of these formats, an ebook collection is at risk of becoming unreadable or inaccessible.
Piracy. Oh, this seem to keep popping up, and I believe will continue to do so. Piracy happens to provide for 1) Availability and 2) Accessibility in both instances.
If someone else already scanned and provides the digital version of a book readily, it saves time and money (scanners, electricity and opportunity cost). Most of the pirated ebooks come in ASCII txt or HTML format, so if you need ONLY notebpad to get started!
heck, you can even do a "type mybook.txt | more" hehe
But does it mean that the book you want *will* be available through piracy? Not necessarily so. Pirates, whether for public service or for profit, usually pirate the popular books. So if you are looking for a digital version of a particular book that is uncommon, piracy may not help.
So can piracy help ebooks? Yes and no. Yes, because if reading materials reach a critical mass, then ppl will see ebooks as a good alternative to pbooks. Piracy can help here only if the variety available reaches that breadth.
No, because by any measure, I doubt adhoc pirates will make a concerted effort to scan all the books we need, so it may not really help in the department of variety.
Besides piracy to help availability and accessibility, there is the Quality issue that will not be solved by piracy. Whether its a paid ebook or a pirated ebook, the reading device do not quite change. The strain on the eye caused by reading LCD screens will not go away just because the ebook is a pirated copy.
So, piracy alone can only affect the success of ebooks that much. It cannot force its success. It still need a good (and affordable) ebook device to complete the equation for sucess.