November 8th, 2009 / 12:57 pm
 Snippets & Technology
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Here’s Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing, introducing this Guardian article about the Kindle. (Link clicks through to the Guardian piece.)

In today’s Observer Business column, John Naughton discusses what a ripoff it is for ebook vendors to “sell” you books with abusive, multi-thousand word “license agreements,” pretending that because you bought your book over the network, it wasn’t a sale, and so you don’t get to own it. These “licenses” aren’t about upholding copyright (if they were, you could replace thousands of words of lawyerese with four simple words: “Don’t violate copyright law”). They’re about overriding copyright — which has all kinds of guarantees for the rights of book-owners — with a private law that gives every advantage to the publisher or retailer, converting you from a noble reader to a wormy, contemptible licensor who doesn’t deserve to own books.


2 Comments

  1. November 8th, 2009 / 9:14 pm Ken Baumann—

      B&N’s Nook: native .pdf support, a lending option for locked/proprietary formats, cheaper.
      Kindle sucks, and hopefully it’s only a matter of time before booksellers follow suit and open up to DRM free formats, like Apple with iTunes. People will pay more, buy more.

  2. November 8th, 2009 / 5:14 pm Ken Baumann—

      B&N’s Nook: native .pdf support, a lending option for locked/proprietary formats, cheaper.
      Kindle sucks, and hopefully it’s only a matter of time before booksellers follow suit and open up to DRM free formats, like Apple with iTunes. People will pay more, buy more.