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Microsoft Ebooks and Copy Protection

Posted by michael on from the this-isn't-the-first-ebooks-story,-and-it-won't-be-the-last dept.

Richard Pennington writes "I just saw this article in Computerworld about Microsoft's copy protection scheme for its ebooks. According to this article, Microsoft's ebooks cost as much or more than paperback or hardbound editions. To top it off, if you upgrade your computer, you may not even be able to keep the ebooks you've purchased. Who exactly is Microsoft's market for these things?" See a previous ebook article.

1 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. My (Redundant) Opinion by raygundan · · Score: 4

    It's been said before, but in the great tradition of slashdot, I will say it again. This is stupid! I will never pay for a book that is tied to my hardware configuration, OS version, or a single player of any type! If I buy a paperback, I can take it anywhere, period. It goes wherever the heck I want it to, can be sold to someone else when I'm done, or loaned to a friend for a while. I can give it as a gift, quote bits of it, or make a huge pile of xerox copies of it and keep them in my closet. An ebook that removes a substantial portion of these rights without a drastically reduced cost will never fly. People may purchase these at first, but just imagine for a second how confused a non-computer-expert would be if they tried to read their book at work, or had a new harddrive installed at Best Buy (complete with data transfer...)-- and their book quit working? After the first round of public acceptance, there will be public outrage at the ridiculous restrictions.

    In the meantime, thank god for Project Gutenberg, a source of free, unrestricted ebooks.