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Originally Posted by pdam
I'm not sure the physical token, although intuitive, is the way to go - a universal online personal library would work for me. The idea is that books I own are registered with the librabry. I have a book on a device and it gets authenticated for say 3 months, if I own the book it simply get re-authenticated every 3 months (in a similar way to DHCP). I can put it on another device as I wish (say a max of 3 copies which is reasonable). I can sell the book second hand (as I could with a paper book, it simply gets taken off of my personal list). The cost of the library is built into the cost of the book.
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Actually, this is unworkable too. While this gets around the reselling/give-away issue, it has all of the same drawbacks as any other proprietary solution.
In order to really make it work, you have to have DRM. That means that the reader must be locked down. Now, if the prices they charge are reasonable, these may not be an issue to most people. But so far this hasn't been the case (except for libraries).
If the Universal Library goes under, or has a data loss, you lose your book investment.
If the UL doesn't support the device you want to read your eBook on, you are out of luck.
If the UL drops a book you want, you can't re-authenticate to read it and you can't read it again.
Basically, the Universal Library gets to control what you can/can't read and where/how you can read the eBook. Therefore whoever controls the Universal Library can control what you can read. That's a bad thing in a free society.