Quote:
Originally Posted by Hardboiled
Part of the problem with eBooks, is there is no viable legal 2nd hand market in them. It's connected with the fact that we don't really own them (the individual copy that is, obviously not the copyright) in the first place. IMV, this has to change. The DRM technology could provide for this, in a similar way to how Overdrive works, i.e, if you sold your book, your device/s serial number access is removed.
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Because a resold e-book would be identical to a newly purchased one there would be no incentive for anyone to purchase a new book as long as a used copy existed. After an initial burst of popularity a publisher would never sell another copy. The price of e-books would have to increase to several times the current value to make up for that.
Instead of resale I would like the possibility of being able to return an e-book to the original place of purchase at any time for something like ten percent of the original purchase price. That would put e-books on a more even footing with paper books in terms of what the original purchaser would likely receive in compensation for relinquishing the right to read that copy of that book.