WP reporting:
The e-book business seems determined to repeat the early mistakes of the music industry with “digital rights management” restrictions. But this time around, I don’t feel compelled to back their early investments with my own money.
Think back to how the first good, mass-market music-download store worked. Apple’s iTunes Store seemed like a revelation compared with earlier, listener-hostile efforts, simply because it let you listen to your purchases in most cases.
All you had to do was consent to listen to songs bought off iTunes only on the five computers you’d authorized with your account, plus any iPods or iPhones you owned.
Those restrictions started to grate on some users. Then Steve Jobs admitted he wasn’t a fan of DRM himself, one major label decided it could do without it as well, Amazon launched an entirely DRM-free MP3 store . . . and less than two years later, DRM vanished from iTunes, too.
Somehow, the recorded-music business did not perish. Digital sales should finally pass CD sales next year.
...E-book DRM also disables many functions common to paper books or other electronic documents. Most stores don’t let you copy text from a book to quote elsewhere, although Barnes & Noble is a welcome exception. Printing? Forget it, unless you go to the trouble of placing an e-reader face down in a copier, one page at a time.
Lending is limited to those titles for which a publisher has authorized it and comes with condescendingly strict limits that most librarians would not recognize. For example, Amazon permits only one 14-day loan per authorized title, ever.
Reselling an e-book? Forget it.
All those limits and lock-ins make an e-book with DRM a dubious deal. Why would I want to pay almost as much as for a paper book — in some cases more — and then have my purchase constrain its usefulness and therefore cut its value?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/e-book-business-should-take-a-page-from-music-industry-and-go-drm-free/2011/04/05/AFBRbG1C_story.html
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