Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
1. This is true but I don't see how it is necessarily bad that digital content doesn't decay. I see that as a benefit, and the effect it has on existing business models is not unexpected.
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I still think that a physical book is far more likely to work than any sort of DRM'd ebook in the decades to come.
Try picking up a digital file from the 1980s or the 1990s and using it as intended.
Given that, at least with Kindle and Epub, they are well-understood and minted on a sort-of-open-standard (except for the DRM), our odds are better than opening a WordStar file or running a 16-bit program.
That said, digital obsolescence is a real issue. Do you really think the first Kindle will be supported forever? Or that Amazon or Nook won't possibly be out of business in 2035 or whatever and people won't lose their books like they did with DRM'd music from the Microsoft store that shut down?
It'll happen. It's probably just a matter of time.
Even for the people that think "That could never happen, Amazon will be around forever!"...
People losing physical books is the same as people losing Amazon/Nook account info and never get it back, or they lose the device and have no idea what the account info was. People die and digital content isn't inherited (another outstanding issue).
People's accounts can get banned.
etc.
Just because they don't wear out, per se, doesn't mean that there aren't ways for them to end up non-readable / non-usable.