locked ebooks

[miriam_e]

Most people seem to assume that locked ebooks are just a fact of life; that they are needed. But I've never seen anybody mention anywhere the simple fact that every locked ebook you ever own will lock you out eventually.

It is inescapeable.

Any time you upgrade your hardware or software you will lose all your old locked ebooks. If you can find those books for sale, and if you have the spare cash you can always buy them again, I guess. If you can't and they were fiction books and you never re-read fiction then it might not bother you too much, but if they are reference books, well bad luck.

Doesn't this seem just a bit perverse???

Locked ebooks are a really bad idea. There has to be another way.
I think that other way is open ebooks. We need to start treating readers as friends instead of enemies.

Comments

[flemco.livejournal.com]

As this is something I hold a strong opinion on, I will hereby splatter said opinion all over your LJ for no particular reason other than "I can":

Go buy a paper book, you goddamned hippies.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Cory Doctorow talks about the love of paper books as a fetish.

So what the hell's wrong with a paper fetish?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't believe the number of people I have heard justifying their preference for paper because of the look, feel, and smell of paper. Sure sounds like a fetish to me. :)

I don't see anything wrong with a fetish, so long as people see it for what it is and don't hurt others. But if they try to use their personal fetish as the basis for arguing that paper is better, then they are simply wrong. Open ebooks are plainly better.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I have and I do. I have around 2,000 paper books. Last time I moved house most of the large truck I hired was taken up with books and it took me about a week to pack them all up. These days I am gradually changing over to ebooks. I now have about 3,000 (open) ebooks and they fit on a single DVD. Big difference.

I had a nightmare a little while back. I woke in fearful sweats from it but it really got me thinking. In the nightmare I had to flee my house due to a natural disaster that was about to destroy all in its path. In the dream I picked up my folder of DVDs that contain programs and ebooks, and my little Palm computer on which I do most of my reading, and my laptop computer, leaving all my thousands of paper books to destruction.

These days I can easily carry a couple of thousand ebooks on a USB drive as a pendant around my neck.

This is why locked ebooks are so worrying. Electronic books have very real benefits. They are easier to read, bookmark, refer to, carry, store, and share than paper books. If we make the mistake of moving to locked ebooks in any big way then we not only lose those benefits, but we incur other, unnecessary, draconian penalties as well.