Lending e-books
economist.com
Lending e-books
1–9 of 9 posts
Re: Lending e-books
#2The fact that you aren't buying the e-book, but instead paying the fee for a very restrictive licence, needs to be made much clearer to e-book users.
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.
Nudges, and informed consumers, FTW.
Re: Lending e-books
#3The fact that you aren't buying the e-book, but instead paying the fee for a very restrictive licence , needs to be made much clearer to e-book users. 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. Nudges, and informed consumers, FTW.
Why not just word it as "Read this book"? You pay $X to read the book, you can't lend it, copy it, re-sell it -- just read it (and re-read it if you want).
Re: Lending e-books
#4So unnecessarily restrictive!
Does anybody have any online resources they can point me to that details the legalities of lending physical or electronic books?
Thanks.
Re: Lending e-books
#5I 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.
I'm giving up some rights I'd like, for much lower cost item. For the most part I'm ok with that.
Obviously if there was a better option for lending ebooks I'd take it.
Re: Lending e-books
#6Frankly 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.
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]".
Re: Lending e-books
#7So unnecessarily restrictive! Does anybody have any online resources they can point me to that details the legalities of lending physical or electronic books? Thanks.
in what/which jurisdiction(s)?
Re: Lending e-books
#8The fact that you aren't buying the e-book, but instead paying the fee for a very restrictive licence , needs to be made much clearer to e-book users. 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. Nudges, and informed consumers, FTW.
Why not just word it as "Read this book"? You pay $X to read the book, you can't lend it, copy it, re-sell it -- just read it (and re-read it if you want).
That'll probably result in less conversions for Amazon (compared to "Buy this book").
Re: Lending e-books
#9The fact that you aren't buying the e-book, but instead paying the fee for a very restrictive licence , needs to be made much clearer to e-book users. 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. Nudges, and informed consumers, FTW.
Except it's only a dollar cheaper than getting the actual, physical book shipped to your house the very next day (without any S&H charges) via Amazon Prime.