Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
Why couldn't you have a digital model that was a kind of transferable license? That doesn't strike me as a laughable idea. It would be possible, for example, for Amazon to allow a Kindle book to be transferred to another user. I'm not promoting this as a great idea, but I would support it as something worth discussing. The point of the thread, I thought, was to ask the question as to whether there was a legitimate model or not.
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The problem with that idea is that it requires DRM, and DRM is almost always a bad thing.
Couldn't we just find new ways of reaching the same goals? I like the Kindle sample idea, for example. I can get 15 pages of a book sent to my Kindle with no obligation. If I like what I see I can then buy the book. This is the digital equivalent of picking up a book in a shop and skimming through it.
There are so many ways of 'sampling' a book these days, and it should be much easier for people to make educated buying decisions.
Of course all of these problems will melt away if the concept of paying for digital media goes away and we and the creators find other (indirect) ways of funding, such as advertising, etc.