Frankly I don't see any indications that the trajectory of electronic book sales will go differently than music and movies. Same insanely anti-customer pathological obsession with turning sales into "licenses," same obsession with DRM, same outcome: the illegal edition is quite likely to become the more consumer-friendly version.<p>Today people torrent individual albums and movies, or perhaps a trilogy, or a collection of all the albums of a single band. Given the incredible efficiency of text compression, it is entirely conceivable that soon people might be faced with the decision to rent for $10 a non-shareable copy of a single book, or to just download in one shot, "all books released electronically in english, ever [mar 2011 edition]".
The fact that you aren't buying the e-book, but instead paying the fee for a very restrictive <i>licence</i>, needs to be made much clearer to e-book users.<p>This would mean Amazon and Barnes & Noble using the wording 'license this book' instead of 'sell', 'sale', 'purchase' or 'buy'; instead of a price, you pay a fee.<p>Nudges, and informed consumers, FTW.
I agree with many of the article author's points. However, I am also extremely aware that I typically pay under half the price of the physic book for e-books. Given that paying authors, editorial and production staff is often the most significant cost in producing a book I feel like it's a trade-off.<p>I'm giving up some rights I'd like, for much lower cost item. For the most part I'm ok with that.<p>Obviously if there was a better option for lending ebooks I'd take it.
So unnecessarily restrictive!<p>Does anybody have any online resources they can point me to that details the legalities of lending physical or electronic books?<p>Thanks.