Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
djgreedo - No, they were created for items sold to you. In law, the delivery method is not relevant. The differentiation is between product and service, not physical and digital.
There is no reason whatsoever to "think different" - if you want to strip the rights associated with sale, you can rent it or provide it as a service.
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I think we're in general agreement - the rights and benefits of a paper book are intrinsic to its physical form, and those rights and benefits are a factor in the
value of the book.
But I think treating an ebook as a service or rental is still limiting it to the current paradigm.
Over the last several years I've started consuming my media mostly digitally. I buy all my music from various online sources. I treat my music as much more disposable now. For instance I might buy a sing for $1, then a month later buy the album it's on. I will just delete the single since I now own two copies. I wouldn't try to sell that file for 50c. The amount of money involved is too small to worry about. When I was younger and buying CDs I would often swap or sell them with friends, but that was a physical item.
What I'm saying is that the way I percieve my ownership of this material is changing to suit its nature, and I think there will be an evolution of attitudes of consumers, content providers, and eventually laws to suit digital media better.
I think that digital media is in a way what the publishers want. They have always considered customers to be buying a licence to consume intellectual property, and the ability (or right) to resell that in its physical container has been a thorn in the publishers' sides. Customers have always expected to be buying a physical object that they can do with as the please (and rightly so).
Publishers therefore think that the actual value (i.e. price) of an ebook should be the same as a paper book, because it is the intellectual property that is being bought. The consumer thinks that a major part of the value/price is the physical object itself and the potential for reclaiming some of the original cost (and I agree).
But the actual value of an ebook needs to be low enough that consumers are comfortable with buying it despite having no resell value, and yet high enough that the publishers can provide quality material while earning a living for all the people involved in producing it. Most books already make very little money, and selling ebooks at a dollar each is not going to make the publishers more money than selling a paperback for $10.
Most people will happily pay $15 to go and watch a 2-hour movie (plus $45 for popcorn...). A $15 ebook entertains for far longer than 2 hours, so I don't understand why anyone would not be willing to pay $10-$15 for an electronic book that they don't have a right to sell (hypothetically, that is, as the law seems to allow reselling). And that is how I've been treating Kindle books. They are cheap enough that I feel reading them once and forgetting I ever bought them is something I'm pretty comfortable with.