I agree with Poul Wehner. I love owning the physical book, pulp, paperback, dvd, or cd. I have a house full of these collectibles and cannot imagine just depending on the Kindle, etc. Perhaps the Kindle is of value if I'm ever away from my collection for an extended period of time, for instance on vacation for a few weeks or traveling on business. Otherwise, it's just not the same holding a Kindle instead of a book. The book has been around for 500 years and I doubt if e-readers will be around for a similar period.
It wasn't that long ago that amazon deleted a book from the Kindle because of right's violations and buyers were complaining that the book simply disappeared from their e-readers. As we all know it's pretty difficult to ban and burn the physical book! There are aways copies hidden away somewhere.
-----Walker Martin.
--- On Wed, 11/4/09, Poul Wehner <poul.wehner@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Poul Wehner <poul.wehner@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: kindle query
To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 8:42 PM
" He swears by it. Buys ten books at a time."
Wrong,
He buys a license for 10 books.
There have already been more than a handful of DRM companies/services that
have gone belly up and any media attached to these became useless.
I'm not familiar with the licensing details but I believe Amazon will only
allow a limited number of downloads and, once reached, whatever book in
question has to be re-purchased.
I'm a little amazed that people who who buy into DRM'd media apparently do
not consider the full implications.
But aside from the DRM crap I don't understand the motivation of why would
someone pay nearly $300 for a device and then pay even more to use it. I'm
not surprised that media companies are extremely interested in moving from
selling products to merely licensing them.
I'll never buy one. I'd rather own my books, cds,& dvds outright rather than
pay a fee for ephemeral bits and merely 'think' I own it.
I probably swimming upstream on this. I work in higher-ed and I believe in a
few years time many textbooks will be delivered digitally and likely at
cheaper prices.
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