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Originally Posted by Hitch
That's certainly better than piracy/thieving. I wouldn't object to that, but of course, many would, due to privacy issues. It's apparent to me that many younger people are far, far less concerned about the invasiveness of devices into their privacy. But for a lot of we older types, there's an objection to even setting location capabilities for phones, not to mention, going through our contact lists, etc. {shrug}. Nonetheless, I'd say it's worth a try.
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No one forces you to lend books (creating data about you), and it seems like it would be fairly controlled -- far more so than the mere act of owning a smartphone.
Which I agree is a problem.
The only data that is being created is the fact that you met this person/device-tied-to-specific-account. I am not sure how useful that would be.
If it turns out that ebookstores also take your location data through the reader app, they were probably already doing that -- this feature shouldn't add any
additional problems.
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Yes, just as it's an author/publisher's choice whether they want to give their work away. For the better books, of whatever lineage, it's WORK. It's not play. It's not an impromptu jam session, whipped up at the end of the night. The average novel requires 400 hours of work. For the rest of we humans, that's ~ 10 weeks of work. I'm pretty sure that there are very few of us that would be sanguine about losing any proceeds from whatever we earned, made, sold, etc., for that 10 weeks. There's simply a major disrespect for digital products.
Hitch
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Which is why my interpretation of the freedom to lend ebooks -- at least as it should be -- respects authors' rights to payment for their work far more than the current lending scheme, which is basically a license to get books for half-off via the lending marketplace.
I agree authors deserve their due payment -- just like anyone who puts in work to create a product. But I feel that digital products intrinsically have far fewer rights than physical products, in ways that are really meant only to gouge the customer. And I think there must be mutually-acceptable ways of giving both parties what they feel they deserve.
Digital products should have the same rights to sharing as physical products. Not less,
and not more!
Also, thanks Hitch for the rants. Very informative, as always.
