Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
Sometimes you guys just make me completely confused. On the one hand you complain that there aren't enough e-books available in libraries and then when a large publisher say they will make their titles available you complain about that. As a comedian would say: "Tough crowd"!
|
First of all, it is a pilot program. Read: temporary.
Second, it is a tiny pilot: 1200 titles from the back catalog of one off their smaller imprints.
Third, the book licenses *expire* even if nobody checks them out.
Dunno if you ever heard of Sony's very first ebook reader? The one nobody bought? Even in Japan? It only read ebooks you "bought" that expired after 3 months.
Or the original DivX DVDs from Circuit City? They were DVDs you bought at retail for the price of a (very expensive) rental and when you first played them they "phoned home" for authentication and started a clock ticking. You had 48 hours to watch as many times as you wanted! After that the disk became unplayable unless you paid again.
Both the Librie and DivX were Dead on Arrival; consumers know a scam when they see one, but Circuit City were at least honest enough to make it clear the DVDs were *rentals* and didn't pretend they were selling anything.
Trying to foist time-limited rentals as sales isn't particularly customer friendly unless the customer is a sucker. (Of which, admittedly, there is no shortage, to judge by sales of certain books.)
So yeah: tough crowd.
Comes from meeting the minimum requirements for literacy.
(Life in consumerist society teaches critical reading skills. You tend to get good at spotting clumsy gotchas n contracts. The subtle ones take a bit longer to figure out, though.)
