Amazon To Launch Digital Book Rental Service

Posted by samzenpus on Monday September 12, 2011 @02:25AM from the this-book-will-self-destruct dept.

First time accepted submitter ni5dotcom writes "Amazon is soon going to launch an e-book rental service soon for US customers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Publishers, however, have shown mixed reaction to this decision so far. From the article: 'Amazon is believed to have offered book publishers a large fee for joining the service. However, the negotiations are said to still be in their early stages. The Seattle-based technology company, which is expected to imminently launch a tablet device to rival Apple’s iPad, has also said that the digital ebook library would feature older titles and be accessible to those who pay for $79 a year for Amazon Prime, the service which allows people unlimited two-day shipping and films and TV shows on demand.'"

3 of 112 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Digital Book.... renting? by Yvan256 · 2011-09-12 02:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's ironic that as a society we were able to completely eliminate scarcity for things like books, music and movies and then we turned around and tacked on an artificial scarcity model on top of it.
1. Re:Digital Book.... renting? by betterunixthanunix · 2011-09-12 02:39 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Scarcity was not viewed as a problem by the people who published books. They are not in business because they want to spread knowledge or enable learning, they are in business to make money. Thus, the elimination of scarcity is actually viewed as a bad thing, and they want to prop up the scarcity with the law.
  
  --
  Palm trees and 8
2. Re:Digital Book.... renting? by bws111 · 2011-09-12 02:41 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I wasn't aware of the fact that we had eliminated the scarcity of authors who write things we want to read. When did that happen?