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Amazon Surrenders To Macmillan On eBook Pricing
CuteSteveJobs writes with a followup to news we discussed on Saturday of a disagreement between Amazon and Macmillan Publishers over ebook pricing: "Amazon has thrown in the towel and announced it will now sell books at Macmillan's increased prices; up to $14.99 from $9.99. Said Amazon in a statement: 'We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.' Macmillan has sensed Apple's iBooks opens the way for higher prices. Perhaps the question should be: do we even need publishers like Macmillian? Publishers have long managed to keep their old business model chugging along nicely despite the Internet; Academics are still forced to give up copyright (PDF) of their work in exchange for publication. Textbook publishers have a history of unethical practices like frequent edition changes, unjustifiable price increases and bribing teachers. For that matter, why do the RIAA's members still control the music business? Why do these dinosaur publishing businesses still manage to thrive despite the Internet?"
You are correct. The whole idea of buying e-books is because they are easy to carry and store and is less expensive. So an increase in price is not going to help the publishing industry in the right way. Expensive books are also encouraging people to acquire books by piracy as common man is unable to pay the high cost of getting books. http://softwareengineerspeaking.blogspot.com/
You will be able to highlight on a iPad.
Oh, wait, No. That would be MULTITASKING. Unsupported.
AND was that even possible, it would have been illegal modification of a copyrighted work, all those yellow and orange stripes.
Newer versions of the iPad will make sure that even if you ever managed to jailbreak to run an innocuous highlighting task, your ID will immediately be sent over the equivalent of RIAA for books and they will come arrest you immediately.