Among the reader comments to my recent column on "license revocation" of content was an interesting observation concerning the evolution of e-books.
"Around 1990 I had a big argument with a friend about e-books," the anonymous reader wrote. "I thought they would become seriously available in about 15 years, he thought 50 years. He thought that they would only be of interest to the small fraction of the population that read many books, I argued you'd end up with multi-purpose devices where reading was just one function so you weren't just paying for the book-reading function. It may not be as good for just READING as a regular book, but you could back up the e-books easily, electronically search your library, read them on any computer you wanted, have them reformatted, resized, or even read out loud to you. In other words: Great flexibility. And I couldn't wait. When I saw good PDAs and started hearing about the real commercial e-books, I knew I had been proved right, and was ready to jump in.
"Then I found out that most publishers INSISTED the contents be encrypted, in a proprietary file format, that could only be seen on specific (usually only one or two) computers. You couldn't do anything unless they specifically allowed you, and had thought of it. And there were numerous comments from publishers and others stating that nobody would want or need to do more, unless they intended to steal the e-books. I was stunned. They had made these e-books USELESS. I knew this version of the product was doomed.
"There are a few publishers who aren't doing this, and there are some programs that can break some of the idiotic DRM and convert format," the anonymous reader wrote. "The same is and will continue to happen with audio and video formats. Ultimately, if you can see it or hear it, they can't stop you from copying it. But they can make it illegal, or at least difficult. It is sad that to do the things you expect you should be able to, you have to WORK AROUND the rules, and more and more, break laws. It is sad the people at the companies don't realize that they are probably hurting their own sales more than helping, making a lot of people mad, and forcing them to find ways to break the gimmicks just to use their products. And consumers then get in the habit of breaking the rules, and come to feel justified doing it, which never would have happened if the companies just played fair."
11:53:44 AM 
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