Quote:
Originally Posted by Jdschi
I love books, whether they are ebooks or paper. This means that I want to keep them around, indefinitely. I do reread books I like 2-4 times, 5-10 years apart. I really can't remember what happened in books I read 10 years ago, so I can enjoy them anew without spending anything.
With paperbooks, you just have to lug them around and store them somewhere, but then you can take a book out of its shelf once in a while and read at your leisure.
Now come DRM ebooks. With them, you have to hope that the format they're in does not become obsolete in the next decades and that the seller storing your "license" will still be around during the next decades.
I seriously doubt that. Digital things change FAST (anyone still remembers video tapes? LOL), and I highly doubt that many ebook retailers today will still be around in 30-40 years. But in 30-40 years, I still want to enjoy the books I've bought. Books are timeless. Without DRM, I can have as many backups of the stuff I want, in any format I want, so if the retailer I bought them from goes out of business, I still have my copy. If the format they're in does not match the device I read on, I can simply convert them.
I also don't think that it's valid to say one could simply rebuy the ebooks if your "license" becomes void one day - because just as books go out of print and become unavailable, ebooks might too if no one was interested in selling them. There is no guarantee that my favorite authors of today will still be read by anyone except me in 30 years, so there is no guarantee that I will be able to replace unusable ebooks by buying new "licenses" in the future. Of course it might happen that ebook readers got out of fashion in 30 years and I wouldn't be able to get a device to read them on - but I highly doubt that. As long as I can convert the files, I'm sure there will always be a way to read ebooks.
TL;DR: If DRM couldn't be broken, I would only buy cheap ebooks of which I knew that I wouldn't want to reread them or buy/read DRM free. I would go back to paperbooks for everything else. In fact, this is exactly what I did before I learned of the Apprentice, I think I bought exactly two ebooks before that and read only free classics on the reader. Only since I know of the Apprentice do I spend a substantial amount of money on ebooks, because I know that I will hopefully be able to keep them around indefinitely (or at least as long as my backup(s) holds out).
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Not all that well researched. Video tape players are still available and probably will remain available for at least the next 20 years despite the fact that new movies don't seem to be available on video tape any more. The players will remain available as long as a substantial number of people still have tapes. Which we do. Our kids don't so our tapes will probably be thrown out when we die-but as long as we're alive we'll want to have a player so we can watch them.
Regarding ebooks, it's a question of the type of DRM & how you want to (re)read them. I have several ebooks in (or were in) secure eReader format. eReader software is still available. Secure eReader used your credit card number as the security code. Believe it or not, I was smart enough to store those expired credit cards in the same place where I store my other security information-so I can re-read those eBooks, in the original format, whenever I like and I anticipate being able to do so 30 years from now assuming I'm still alive. I may no longer be able to read them on my reader (haven't even checked to see if an eBook reader is available for Android to tell the truth) but I'm sure I can read them on my Windows laptop. Even if the software isn't compatible with whatever version of Windows is available then I'm sure I'll be able to set up a virtual PC running a compatible version. I do it often enough now for older games.
In short, the ability to (re)read DRMd ebooks in 30 years depends on two factors. 1) that you can download & store the ebooks. Streaming has been discussed & decided to be very unlikely. 2) that the DRM security is based on storable information, e.g. some sort of passcode. It's quite true that a lot of the current DRM is based on information specific to the device or software installation and is therefore likely to 'die' but not DRM is so based.
Of course this is theoretical as I don't believe unbreakable DRM is practical. The only method I can think of would be requiring a buyer to create a public/private key pair for each bookseller. The bookseller could encrypt the purchase with the buyer's public key so only the buyer could decrypt it. I'm still not sure it'd actually work but even if it did I suspect it would so greatly increase the seller's administrative overhead, and decrease their sales, that it wouldn't be practical. But that's just MO.