DRM sucks, kids. Don’t buy it. (In deference to Damaso, I will stipulate here that I am singling out Digital Rights Management schemes and the bullshit they spawn, not necessarily eBooks in general or eBook devices in general).
Ramblings of Jeff Somers, author
Yep, that sucks…
Thanks for posting this; a pal of mine just bought a Kindle and I was thinking it was kinda cool. Good to get a reminder that it ain’t.
Blueman,
Actually, from what I’ve seen the *kindle*, as a piece of technology, IS cool. eBooks are cool. What ruins them is the shite DRM publishers insist on and Amazon allows.
While publishers have every right to protect their investment (though I’m not convinced book piracy is really a threat), they have a resopnsibility to their customers to find a way to protect their rights without destroying the rights of said customers.
So it’s not so much don’t buy a kindle as don’t buy an eBook that doesn’t give you all the rights of purchase that a paper book does. Or else buy your eBooks knowing that you’re realyy borrowing them, and be fine with that.
J
Good point(s) – but Kindle is Amazon’s, and as you mention they allow the DRM. I’m not willing to have to suddenly employ a whole new thought process before buying a book, to evaluate DRM, ESPECIALLY when one of the “cool” bits of Kindle is to allow you to get a book almost any time, anywhere, effortlessly. Amazon’s a bad guy here; they’ve chosen making a buck over doing the right thing.
Ah, technology, that old friend of ours that keeps making our lives worse. No ebooks for this man, as there’s enough goofy technology out there as it is (DTV, cell phones, and DRM come to mind).
They can have my paper books when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. Assuming any of them survive, as I intend to put up one hell of a fight. Epic, I would imagine.
And why would anyone buy something that they can’t own ?