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I was with you right up the the false analogy to the "lend me" feature on Kindles. The entire benefit of ebooks is that they're digital, yes. This makes them co

I was with you right up the the false analogy to the "lend me" feature on Kindles. The entire benefit of ebooks is that they're digital, yes. This makes them convenient to buy, to carry around and/or read from multiple devices. Sharing is not implied. The fact that it's easy to copy an ebook doesn't make it lawful. There's still a little thing called copyright, granted by governments to encourage the arts and allow artists to be paid for their work. The extent to which an ebook can be copied should be up to the copyright holder. That doesn't mean that ebooks can't be posted publicly or loaned out, either to a friend or by the public library, as asserted in the better reasoned argument by Richard Stallman. http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/richard-stallman-on-freedom-or-copyright-why-not-an-information-utopia/ http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/richard-stallman-on-freed... Stallman, at least, is forthright about his desire to eliminate copyright. Authors don't have to agree with him and clearly many - for example, all who sign up with Amazon and price their works at greater than $0 - don't think it is in their interests to do so. Authors don't even necessarily think the Kindle lending feature is a good idea and have to be enticed into the program by the possibility of pro rata royalties.

drcube 15y ago
What an author charges for their book on Amazon doesn't have anything to do with copyright. You can charge a million dollars for a public domain work if you want. I believe a lot more content creators are on my side than you seem to think. But yes, I have been forthright on these boards before about my desire to eliminate copyright. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in this post. Also, you are correct, there are many benefits to digital works over their physical analogs. The increased ability to share is only one of them. Personally, however, I think it's the biggest benefit of all. Sort of like how modern cars have electric locks and air conditioning, but still their main benefit is their speed and carrying capacity. Hence my horse analogy. Esstentially, we're already in a post-scarcity society when it comes to information, and that change threatens people. But your mileage seems to vary, and that's cool too. It will be fun to see it all play out.

drcube 15y ago

What an author charges for their book on Amazon doesn't have anything to do with copyright. You can charge a million dollars for a public domain work if you want. I believe a lot more content creators are on my side than you seem to think. But yes, I have been forthright on these boards before about my desire to eliminate copyright. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in this post. Also, you are correct, there are many benefits to digital works over their physical analogs. The increased ability to share is only one of them. Personally, however, I think it's the biggest benefit of all. Sort of like how modern cars have electric locks and air conditioning, but still their main benefit is their speed and carrying capacity. Hence my horse analogy. Esstentially, we're already in a post-scarcity society when it comes to information, and that change threatens people. But your mileage seems to vary, and that's cool too. It will be fun to see it all play out.