Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That's a very nice idea in theory, but if the "only pay if you liked it" business model actually worked as well as the "pay in advance" model, don't you think we'd have cinemas where you made a donation on leaving if you liked the film, or supermarkets where you only gave whatever you felt that the food was worth?
|
The problem is that digitalizing books changes everything. Copyright laws worked when they are applied to the non-digital reproduction of books. It is a way to incentivize the writing and publication of books, when the actual process of publishing was restrained by physicality.
But when physicality no longer exists, it can't support copyright. The digital world is a vast copy machine, so that the world is turned upside down, from a "hard to copy things" place to an "easy to copy things" place.
I think that the argument against copyright is simply that it is outmoded, sort of like old time traffic laws. In some places, a hundred years ago, the the traffic law required a driver to stop at every intersection, get out of the car, go into the intersection and make sure it was safe to cross, and that there were no horses to scare.
I think that there is going to be a new commercial structure for ebooks. But don't ask me what it will be. Right now, we are just seeing the destruction of the old one.