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This Book Will Self-Destruct In 10 Hours

Posted by timothy on from the and-then-there-were-none dept.

extrarice writes: "See here The "rent-a-book" concept is here. Pay a buck, and you're allowed to read for a cumulative total of 10 hours. After that, the text is inaccessible (unless you somehow access the content you purchased...)"

3 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. The Right to Read... by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It didn't take that long.

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

    I'm a whore.

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  2. Re:Don't make me laugh by Wraithlyn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    A month? Are you kidding? Try a day or two. Hell, I could crack it right NOW with some sort of jerry rigged automated screen capture and OCR scheme. (Uh oh, I just violated the DMCA by saying that. Good thing I don't live in the States or they'd throw me in a cell with Dimitry)

    When will content publishers realize that security/encryption isn't worth a damn when the end party is NOT TRUSTED. Guess what? If I can read/view/hear it on my computer, there is a way of capturing it, and re-releasing it with no protection. This simple fact will never change. And yet the industries will waste countless millions of dollars trying to invent secure delivery/viewer systems, which is a complete fool's crusade.

    The only answer is to add enough value, that consumers are willing to pay the money to avoid the hassle. What these guys are doing is ADDING MORE hassle, and no real added value.

    --
    "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
  3. Re:Well... by acceleriter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It doesn't actually sound terribly bad. You have the option of buying the "full", untimed version, for $5, or paying $1 for the ten-hour version.

    Let me get this straight:

    Option 1: I pay almost the same price as for a paperback book. The manufacturing cost is essentially zero, and the royalty to the author is probably unchanged. In return, instead of a paperback book which I may read, trade, lend, give away, or sell at my pleasure, I get an ebook that's locked to one physical device and is not transferable in any way.

    Option 2: I pay a buck for what I essentially can get from the public library, except for less time, less portability, and one dollar more. In addition, I no doubt get to "agree" to some Draconian license that disallows anyone from reading over my shoulder or talking about the book in a negative manner.

    Yep, sounds good to me. Not! Being a Luddite, I'll do just fine reading what's already been published on paper if this actually were to take off. Unfortunately, one of the first big markets for this crap is already a captive audience: college students . If you think this topic doesn't fit into YRO, you haven't been watching the direction things are headed.

    --

    CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.