Quote:
Originally Posted by cortman
What about removing that option and making you the owner of the ebook, free to do whatever you want with it- read it, loan it, lose it. Like a real book.
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There are some obvious problems with this idea. First, it would take some serious DRM improvements to make sure that if you loan the book to friend #1, you can't also loan it at the same time to friend #2 (or continue reading it yourself.)
But the real issue here is one I can perfectly understand. It wouldn't take long for somebody to set up a server to connect "friends" who want the same eBook, and instead of selling tens of thousands of copies, the same 100-200 copies would be "shared" with "friends" all over the world. You'd end up with a virtual library that would serve the entire world, and it wouldn't cost much to set up and run, and a few donations would keep it running. And since the eBooks would always be perfect and delivery would be cheap, there'd be no reason to buy more copies. Even people who must have the latest book the day it is released could find incentives to "donate" their eBook once they're done with it to the global library. With a physical book, the costs involved in locating other interested readers and shipping to them prevents this from being a viable option, though it staggers my mind how many books are available for $0.01 used on Amazon, plus shipping, which works out to $4/book.