Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Just because the company selling you the ebook says that you have less rights, doesn't make it true. The crux of the issue is that when they say you have considerably less rights, is that really enforceable.
|
Not allowing reselling is definitely enforceable in two ways.
First is drm and making stripping it illegal - see Amazon vs MobileRead controversy for a recent well knwon example here
Now of course people can and do strip drm on a wide scale and in all kinds of e-products which is the moral thing to do imho - march against darkness whenever possible and practical and drm is insidious darkness - but of course we have people even here shouting "criminals" on top of their e-voice the moment drm stripping is even whispered
Second is the lack of availability of places to resell your ebooks - no known "used" legal ebooks store that I know of, tons of used print bookstores, some like Amazon, Alibris, eBay where you can set your used p-book "store" up in seconds
Not allowing giving the ebook away or sharing it with friends - this one is of course unenforceable as long as you strip drm, but see the point above and the chorus if you talk about it.
While again I can talk freely about giving my copy of *** pbook to my friend Larry and receiving a copy of **** pbook from my friend Robert
So for print books none of the negative things above apply, so this is what I mean that ebooks come with much less rights than print books, irrespective of my personal beliefs in the morality of stripping drm - which again to my mind is not only moral but imperatively so as a fight against darkness and obscurantism.
Now to be fair, ebooks come with some capabilities that are worth something, for example instant availability is one that's very important for me, not taking physical space is another one relatively important, ability to carry many such on a device, change font, also search sometimes is useful...
The fundamental question is how much do those capabilities are worth to you against the clear limitations above. The whole "sale vs license" as well "content in ebooks is the same as in print books" obscure all these issues which actually are crucial in determining utility...