Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
Please give me one moral or ethical reason for not allowing me to buy or sell used ebooks in our free enterprise, capitalist society.
Barry
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I wouldn't mind seeing used ebooks sold, but it would have to be done with the help of the original vendor if you want to be able to transfer the DRM key to the new owner. This is technically possible, but since the publishers don't want it, I really don't see it ever being implemented. Selling someone a cracked version of an ebook so they don't need the key will probably never be legal, since you can always keep the original for yourself and resell it as many times as you want. Even if the key transfer is implemented, there is no real way to prove that you no longer have the ebook for yourself. You may have cracked it, or still have it installed on an ereader under the old key. So, I can't see any way of allowing the selling of used ebooks unless there was a truly effective and draconian way of controlling whether someone still could read an ebook, and I wouldn't want that to ever be the case.