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This Book Will Self-Destruct In 10 Hours
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...)"
- Don't reduce the incentive, or the desired behavior will decrease. (What you're saying.) Or:
- Increase the incentive, so the desired behavior will increase. (implied).
So let's declare all published authors and musicians exempt from taxes. That would be an increase in the incentive to produce creative works. Likewise, let's give them all free cars at taxpayer expense. If you deny these requests, it looks like you're just supporting the status quo without any real logic - how did you decide the that current level of incentive is the correct one?We need more people helping little old ladies across the street. Let's offer a million dollar reward for doing this. It will be expensive, but it complies with your logic. To turn it around, if the reward were already established policy and I advocated repealing it, you'd point out that this reduction in incentive would lead to a reduction in the desired behavior (helping little old ladies across the street).
On another note, it is the investor's job to make his investment profitable, not mine. I suggest investing in things people are willing to buy, rather than investing first and then seeking legal protection to make your investment feasible.
My two cents. You might try appending "I think that ..." before every sentence below.
Argh. This will fail, for the same reason that the DMCA will eventually fail.
If we assume that we are using a device that you own and control (such as your personal computer), then what follows is a universal truth:
Companies who try to evade this universal truth by creating an artificial scarcity of information in an effort to make more money are doomed to failure. Of course, until they accept the hopelessness of trying, we are going to see companies flail about with their lawsuits and congress-bullying to get laws made to protect their budgets from the advancement of technology.
As the amount of available bandwidth continues to increase, I think greedy corporations that deal in the sale (or, rental) of information will finally have to stop suing the world and devise a new, sane to make money. Right now, corporations wish for us to think of information as a scarce, limited-availability, tangable substance. Because companies that deal in the sale of limited-availability tangable substances can command a good price. While electronic information is becoming an unlimited-availability, non-tangable substance, money-hungry companies would have consumers think otherwise through the misuse of laws and congress-bullying. This is why this book-rental idea, and the DMCA, are so stupid.
Predictions:
In the coming decades, as technology improves, I think information in and of itself will become much less monitarily valuable. Instead, the real value will have to be placed on the immediacy of the information. Meaning: Information can and will be disseminated. But, some may wish to pay a premium to be the ones to get at said information first. And that is where the value will lie.
Some folks have also compared this scheme to Blockbuster Video. You can charge rent for a video because said video is a scarce, limited-availability, tangable substance. Namely, a videocassette containing a video in a conveinient-to-use format. You cannot, however charge "rent" for an electronic representation of said video. Because once that electronic representation exists, it instantly becomes an unlimited-availability, non-tangable substance. You can, however, Still charge rent for the conveinience of using a videocassette.
Let's look at music. You can command a huge price for a live performance. You can charge a decent price for a conveinient-to-use piece of media containing a musical performance. But once that media can be read and represented in an electronic format, the representation of that performance loses all value except for that of the immediacy of its availablity.
Let's look at literature. You can command a huge price for a piece of literature written just for a client. (Say, documentation, or a poem, or a biography... etc.) You can charge a decent price for a conveinient-to-use piece of media containing a work of literature. But once that media can be read and represented in an electronic format, the representation of that work loses all value except for that of the immediacy of its availablity. So, as soon as there exists a device which can rip a paperback book into an electronic format the with the speed and ease that a cd-rom can rip cd-audio into an electronic format, we will see the same DMCA, IP, and copyright turmoil in the literary industry that we currently see in the music industry. Even if the DMCA has already been overturned and forgotten about.
This is just the way it looks to me like things will work out. I don't advocate for artists making less money in the future, or for "stealing" the electronic representations of an artist's work. But I think the approaching shift in the way things work will really show the world how much the creators of information are really worth to the consumers of their information. And how much more valuable a live performance is than a recorded one. People will be paying for quality of information, rather than availability.
-Mike
(Who just purchased two music CDs after he had downloaded and evaluated the electronic representations of their entire contents.)
What, me worry?
Why pay $5 for a convenient, low-tech copy that may be read by you and others at will when you can pay $1 for every 10 hours of reading on a headache-inducing CRT?
Yep, sign me up.
for learning to speed read. I like this model personally. I might not want to subscribe to Salon.com for a year, but I might pay a buck to have ulimited access for a day if I ran across some content that was really compelling.
I doubt this will work very well for ebooks though. The average consumer is too used to owning (books, CD's, DVD's, tapes, etc.). It will take a real shift in consumer habits to pull this off successfully and I think we've already seen how resisitant people are (DIVX DVD's for example).
You rented the use of the book for a cumlative total of 10 hours of reading time.
If you want to BUY a book, do so. If you want to borrow a book, go to the library or get a buddy's book.
If you agree to the terms laid out in the agreement, is that really a problem? Now, if there were no other options around, or the book renters decided to destroy all other ways of reading, that would be a baaaaaaadddd thing, but since other ways already exist and people are already used to owning books (or borrowing) this will be a big hoohaa about nothing.
Ignore it and it'll go away.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Also, if you look near the bottom, it says that you can buy it (and presumably own it as much as you own any print book.) for $4.99. So your precious rights aren't being abused. Unless, of course, your "rights" include getting the product for 1/5 of the price it's being sold for. If that's true, I've been wasting an awful lot of my money...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
This sounds a lot like the ill-fated Divx DVD format of two years ago. With Divx, you could buy a DVD and 'unlock' it for any 48-hour period for a few dollars.
Divx failed because it just wasn't convenient enough for the price ($100 more for a compatible DVD player, and you still had to go to a store for the discs), but this rent-a-book concept doesn't suffer the same problem if the books can simply be downloaded.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. If the rent-a-book concept succeeds, that means that renting bits (CD's? software?) might catch on again; if it fails, then don't expect to see anything else become rentable on your computer in the next few years.
Good God, I hope the man was joking, and not just Freudian Slipping us an advance warning.... link1 Link2.
But paper is bulky. My standard ruler is the King James Bible, about 1000 pages, 5 megabytes. One CD-ROM is equivalent to some 130 Bibles, about 5 meters of bookshelf.
I still get almost all of my casual reading in paper form, but, for reference works, digital is definitely superior.
You know blockbuster, where you go to get those cheap videos? Well those evil corporate bastards have made it so you can only watch it overnight, or for a few days, and then you have to take it back! TAKE IT BACK FERCHRISSAKE!!!! Not only that, but now thanks to the ADMC it's illegal to make my own copy for personal use for free whenever I want. Man, they must have bribed a few senators to get that one through! We must rally against it, this corporate mastery! It must be a scheme to keep the little guy, the grass-roots video publishers out of business- CONSPIRACY!
What the hell am I on about?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
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.
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
Let me get this straight:
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.
Warning: the following is an illegal device!