In other words, they consider it perfectly fine that the purchaser of an ebook be considered as having purchased not the book but a license to use same. They have no problem whatever with requiring that same individual to purchase a new copy if their computer crashes and the original file is lost, or should the original seller go belly-up and that version no longer be available. In short, the consumer should be required to “upgrade,” and pay full price for the privilege.

I suspect that if you were to poll the hold-out publishers who demand draconian DRM, you’d discover that’s their attitude in a nutshell, and I assure you they will NOT change their minds. It’s all about “what’s mine is mine and if you want to have it you have to pay me,” and no amount of logic or common sense or statistics about how the Internet is changing the way consumers perceive THEIR rights makes a dent.

They will adapt to less stringent protection methods only when they discover their competition is killing them on ebook sales.

Like I said–keep breathing.

I can’t read Amazon’s mind, but, yes, legal as well as marketing reasons could be at work here. Maybe. One other reason could be that some technophobic customers won’t mess with a memory card and will delete titles past the 200 limit or whatever it is. Happy holidays. David

I wonder if the promise to have books available for re-downloading from the Amazon site is a way to simultaneously satisfy customers and also avoid FTC complaints or lawsuits that might stem from problems such as Harrie Frericks’s.

Well, as I’ve said, the best solution BY FAR is no DRM or social DRM. Keep speaking up!

Meanwhile the plan I’ve proposed would make it easier to update people when formats changed. Ideally .epub will be around a LONG time. But like Greg, I believe that no format is forever.

Happy holidays,
David

Look at the work around, a world wide identification system. Just to ensure that something I already purchased and possessed will still be usable in the future.

Along with identifying every customer, every work that is DRMed will not only have to be preserved (a good thing) but also its particular method of DRMing, plus some kind of crack/master key for each and every work, despite how technology may change.

Open formats can be translated. Perhaps in the future PDF and every other format will be deemed archaic. Whoops there goes all the DRMed ebooks.

It just might be me, but I see the digital world on the brink of another revolution in technology, how long can we give any scheme of DRMing? Five years, perhaps ten, is there anyone silly enough to propose that it is at all likely that in fifty years time that anyone will be using even remotely similar software? Or that many of the current publishers will still be in business?

And what in the meantime will be the increase in ebook publication, and if current trends persist even for a few years, how many of them will be locked away in DRM schemes no longer supported?

One aspect of my opposition to DRMing literature is that it is so shortsighted, technologically speaking.

Also, DRMed ebooks are nearly always more expensive than non-DRMed ones, and often more expensive than the hardbacks! Just take a look at Fictionwise’s offerings, for example.