Quote:
|
Originally Posted by nekokami
I'm not saying this should be the only model for eBooks, or that anyone else should be satisfied with this model. I'm saying that *I* might be satisfied with this model-- if the price was right, i.e., the quantity of books I would read per month would reduce the cost per book to a reasonable rate for a lease.
|
There's also the issue of who owns culture. If all books were effectively free, but locked up by corporations forever, the corporations end up owning culture.
Here's an example:
Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950. But only about 32 of his books have fallen into the public domain. You can get them on Project Gutenberg.
The rest of the books are sitting somewhere. Now, whether it's his estate or his publisher's fault I don't know, but none of the rest of his books are being republished. Not that you can't get these other books. You can get them usually through a used book store.
But what would happen in the eBook world? There are no used book stores because you can't "sell" your eBook. So if a publisher decides to no longer lease an eBook, you have no alternate way of getting a copy.
The publisher effectively controls what people can/cannot read.
With DRM it gets even worse, because a publisher can revoke your right to read the eBook you just acquired.