Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiderMatt
...So if it's OK to strip DRM or format-shift books that came without DRM, why is it ridiculous to request Amazon make it easier/cheaper to get digital copies with physical books? ...
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It's not ridiculous, but it is unrealistic and for the following reasons:
- Amazon owns a right to sell the content, and pay the publishers an agreed upon unit price for the content they sell. They do not own what they sell, they are a distributor.
- If they offer customers low cost/no cost "upgrades" they would need a separate set of agreements with the publishers for this. This is not an easy thing; publishers already have a love-hate relationship with Amazon, and they are unlikely to give Amazon additional concessions when they won't see profit from it either.
- There would be little profit in it for them, therefore the have little to no incentive to do so.
None of this concerns morals, none of it has to do with p2p file sharing, none of it has to do with the customer's possession of the original book. They have no financial incentive, and they are a commercial company driven by financial gain, as are the publishers.
If I'm going to push Amazon for anything, I'm going to push them to adopt ePub. Regardless of any problems it may have, it's a vendor agnostic format that publishers, book vendors and device makers widely support. For myself, that's a much more constructive use of my time.
- Ed