Book ownership a story to tell our grandkids

“Once upon a time people use to be able to walk into something called a bookstore and actually touch the covers of books, flip through the pages of a book and then buy that book if they wanted to. There was a time when we use to have shelves in our homes where we would keep all those real books which we could pick up an read again anytime we wanted.”

That scenario could one day very soon be the type of story that we will be telling our grandchildren. As books slowly join the ranks of music that we play on our portable music players one has to wonder if, as with music if the whole idea of ownership will become a murky gray area. As eBook readers grow in popularity and books are electronically transferred questions are being raised about who really owns that book you just paid ten to twenty bucks for?

If some of the reports coming out about the Kindle and their DRM’ed books it would appear that Amazon does. With a growing number of people finding that their Amazon accounts have been closed for as little as returning too many book we are hearing that the nice $360+ Kindle is now nothing more than a brick. As well, all those books you bought and thought you owned – well think again because you don’t.

When this user’s Amazon account was closed, he also lost access to all the books he had purchased, as well as the ability to shop for new material.

This situation brings the bigger picture of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to the forefront. When you purchase any form of media from a company, do they have the right to deny you access in the future (presuming it was not purchased on a subscription basis)? The above mentioned user ended up with a $360 device that was totally worthless to him. He couldn’t even access books he had already paid for.

Source: Channel Web

Yup all this electronic versions of music and books is sounding better and better every day.