(Please, please, please, don't bring up Cory Doctorow. He doesn't make a living on his novels. He is not representative of most professional writers.

Ok. John Scalzi, then. Or TOR, for goodness sake. And, yes, books can already be traded like mp3s. However, currently people, for whatever reason, still prefer physical books to electronic ones, though that may change.

Let's get to the real heart of the matter, the secondary market. The secondary market is a more traditional part of being an author than copyright. There has always been a secondary market, but there hasn't always been copyright, which is a government granted and enforced privilege that allows an author to have a monopoly the right **to copy** a written work for a specified period of time. Copyright is not a right to control whether people can re-sell a work they legitimately purchased.

With physical books, the secondary market is inefficient. Books are expensive to acquire, market, store and ship. And physical books get damaged and degrade with time. Authors and publishers fear a digital secondary market because it is very efficient. Books are inexpensive to store and ship and they stay perfect over time.

However, digital copies don't last forever either. Consider that I don't know where the license keys to old software is and my computer either crashes or has to be upgraded periodically. So, the digital secondary market isn't perfect.

What is the answer? I don't know, but I suspect that trying to change laws to support a technologically challenged business model may not be the answer. Change can suck, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.

Skeptic

@jchasse: Hmm...never thought about leaving a book like that. Kind of a cool idea. They don't clean out those pockets between flights? Kind of scary, actually.

szrimaging

Face it this isn't for us any more than microwaves were for our grandparents. This is for our kids, but if your onboard fine. Personally I am sticking with paper.

I just can't see my myself pulling this out of my pocket when I'm on the throne. How many books can you read at one time anyways? And just how cool are you going to feel when you forget this on the plane.

ONE MORE GREAT PLUG FOR THE PAPER BOOK....
I found myself on a long flight one evening. Nothing to do. Reached in the seat pocket infront of me to grab something to distract myself, and what do I pull out? Heinlein's Starship Troopers. "That crappy movie" I says, then commence to read for lack of anything else to do.

Wow, almost missed not 1 but 2 connecting flights.

Want to do a little bit to improve your fellow man?
Bring a book on a trip, then leave it.

I do it everytime now and just wanted to take a moment to say "Your welcome, it was my pleasure."

jchasse

by dr_when at 02:25 PM Reply
Well duh... do you think you own a movie when you rent it or see it at a theatre?

Not analogous. They don't say "purchase this movie" when you buy a ticket to the performance of the movie or when you specifically rent the movie on DVD.

Amazon and Sony claim they are selling you an e-book rather than renting it. They do that because people pay more for purchases than rentals. If they just want to rent you the content they need to call it a rental and charge less, but they want to have it both ways--but legally, they can't.

Skeptic

by szrimaging at 02:33 PM Reply
Basically, if you loan someone a book, you can't read it at the same time as them. They have the physical media, and it can't be in two places at once. If it was an e-book, you could make a copy of it and give it to them. You retain your copy, and they have theirs. You can both read it at the same time.M

The issue is more subtle than that. Books can be copied, too, as can CDs. The issue with digital downloads is that there is no easily definable "original" to give to some one that will automatically deprive the seller of the use of the original. But, we still rely on the honor system that when books or CDs are sold that the seller is not keeping an un-authorized copy, hence the re-sale of a digital download is fundamentally no different than the re-sale of a physical book or CD.

However, many currently implemented DRM schemes already have provisions for de-authorizing specific songs on specific devices and transferring the authorization to another device, so such a concern about people keeping copies is really a red herring. The real issue is that copyright maximalists don't want there to be a legal secondary market for copyrighted works. If they were a car maker, for instance, they wouldn't want you to be able to buy used cars. Instead, everyone would always have to buy cars new from the maker, even if a friend or relative had a spare care they didn't need.

Skeptic

I make my living as an author, and the numbers involved in publishing are tiny compared to music and movies. That is, a book that sells 10,000 copies in a week can easily make the New York Times best-seller list. That kind of number would be a joke in music or movies.

When MP3 downloading took the profit out of selling recorded music, bands changed their revenue model to performance. What used to be a long commercial to sell the record, now is the main source of income for performers. Authors can't charge $60.00 and up per ticket for performance. All of our income is based on royalties, which is based on sales. We accept that people will borrow books, will get them at the library, and will sell them back to used book stores, and that is built into the business model, but I'm a little worried about a time when books can be peer-to-peered the way music is. I think a lot of authors are going to have to go back to waiting tables for a living.

(Please, please, please, don't bring up Cory Doctorow. He doesn't make a living on his novels. He is not representative of most professional writers.)

For those of us who make our living on this, I think it would be better for Amazon and Sony to change the "term" for electronic books. Yes, you rent them. You can keep them as long as you'd like, but you rent them. Like Amazon Unbox, say. I have the movie on my Tivo or computer, but I have limited use of it. The average e-book of my novels costs $9.99. The hardcover usually goes for $24.00, the paperback $14.00. So there is a discount for the cost reduction in production and distribution -- maybe there can be a limit to use as well. It's all how you look at it.

Oh hell, nevermind. Would you like rice or baked potato with your steak?

Christopher Moore

The.Ubertard

*gets headache

effin hell...

Klappstuhl

by dr_when at 01:25 PM Reply
You know, this debate is stupid. Forget for a minute that you are "buying" a book but just renting it. People rent movies daily from Blockbluster, etc. and don't mind paying $5 to rent and not get to keep the movie. Well, pretend when you "buy" your ebook you are just renting it but for a couple more bucks

Why would I want to pretend the things I bought are rentals? It isn't my job to give up my legal rights just to make Sony or Amazon happy.

The problem is that Amazon and Sony are pretending to sell the book to you, using words like "buy" and "purchase." If they are going to just rent you the book they need to charge less and call it a rental.

@by WD40 at 02:01 PM

Actually, WD40, you are buying the product when you buy a book or CD. You own the physical media and the right to re-sell it at any time for any amount of money and without needing permission or paying royalties to the copyright owner thanks to the Doctrine of First Sale. That's why used bookstores, record stores, video rental stores and libraries exist. Really.

Skeptic

Hmm....thinking about it, the best way to do it would be some kind of read only flash drive. Like those mini-SD cards. then you just have to pass that tiny little guy around and insert it into your Kindle.

szrimaging

@WD40: You are slightly wrong on this point. With a book, CD, or DVD you are selling a physical product that cannot (legally) be reproduced. You do own it, no licensing about it. You do not have any kind of legal reproduction rights to it, hence no xeroxes of a book.

Basically, think of it as buying a CD that just happens to have music on it.

The issue at hand is that digital media breaks the bond of having to transfer the original media when you sell it. This allows you to make multiple copies of it, in its original form, and distribute them.

Basically, if you loan someone a book, you can't read it at the same time as them. They have the physical media, and it can't be in two places at once. If it was an e-book, you could make a copy of it and give it to them. You retain your copy, and they have theirs. You can both read it at the same time.

szrimaging

Well duh... do you think you own a movie when you rent it or see it at a theatre? People this day and age are so blasted worried about ownership... all the "me" people. Do you think you really own your home? Your property? Good luck with that. You'll be worm food in a few years anyway.

dr_when

Kinda sux to think that "buying" an e-book has nothing to do with owning it. Basically your not buying anything even though you forked out your cash for it, your just getting a right/privilege.

Out2gtcha

Whether it is a book or an e-book, a music CD or a music download make no mistake that by law you are NOT buying the product, you are buying rights to use it.

Many people confuse that, no you can not do whatever you please with it...you have the freedom to use it as much as you desire but is limited to monetary gain, which in this case includes selling the item.

Granted selling the copy you have to someone else is no one's business but it is a tougher task to do with digital DRMed products.

WD40

I don't care about this. I'm not planning on openning up a book store anytime soon. I don't sell back many of my physical books anyways as I like to keep them.

What I do care about is DRM. What if Sony comes out with Reader 3.0 that puts Amazon's Kindle 2.0 to shame? Or vice versa? I can play a rented DVD on any DVD player I choose (or blu-ray player or computer). I can listen to MP3s on anything including a computer, iPod, Zune, etc.

Amazon sells its music in MP3 format killing all DRM. If they would get smart and DO THE SAME FOR BOOKS and I just might buy a Kindle. Till then, I will use my Sony Reader.

berribrand

How much do e-books cost anyway? Because if it's around 15 bucks, pretty much how much actual books cost, then buying a book is -baaawww, what the hell am I saying? Books FTW!

JesusDeSaad

Perhaps flash memory will become so inexpensive in the future that selling the physical media issue will be moot.

Hey, Joe. Here's a 64k SD card with Harry Potter on it. Enjoy.

Murph1908

Books should be free like everything else. Fuck the system!

daftrok

JPEG. Nuff said.

daftrok

You know, this debate is stupid. Forget for a minute that you are "buying" a book but just renting it. People rent movies daily from Blockbluster, etc. and don't mind paying $5 to rent and not get to keep the movie. Well, pretend when you "buy" your ebook you are just renting it but for a couple more bucks. I mean, most people don't read a book more times than they would a movie unless it's technical in which case you wouldn't buy an ebook anyway. I love my Kindle and the "rental" price of the DRM'd material suits me fine. If you don't like it, go to the bookstore, buy the hardcopy, and quick whining!!!!!

Dr. When

dr_when

I find the question of "what happens if it's content locked in some google on-line storage locker" particularly interesting; while I'm a huge fan of the right of first sale, and a huge enemy of restrictive licensing trends, here's the thing: while the right of first sale means that the product-maker has no legal mechanisms to stop you, there's also no onus on him to make your life any easier. There's no reason he can't just say "Sure, you have the legal right to sell your digital content to anyone you like. It's yours. But there's no advantage to us in facilitating it, so we don't offer any mechanism to transfer content between accounts." or even "Sure, you can sell your DRM'd music/software to whoever you like. But we're not going to update the DRM key for the new owner. Caveat Emptor"

rraszews

I think amazon and sony have a great point. Unless people were forced to sell the actual MEDIA (hdd, thumb drive, etc) that the file is on, they could just sell unlimited copies to as many people as they wanted. That's not right either

vicsells

y HeartBurnKid at 04:35 PM Reply
This is exactly why I won't buy a Kindle -- and I also won't buy songs from iTunes or the like.

Actually, many songs are available now on iTunes as DRM-free high bit rate downloads. But, that still isn't the same as having an uncompressed CD as your backup. CDs are, perhaps, more future proof than a collection of ACC files and, if you tire of them, you can re-sell CDs. The possibility of an iTunes secondary market is much more iffy due to industry pressure to destroy any such thing.

So, if you die can you will your DRM'd iTunes songs and your DRM'd Kindle Books to people. This is an area that is still fairly new.

What do you think Christopher Moore? Should all that investment in digital media purchases disappear in a puff of smoke when you die or should it be transferable like physical copyrighted media? Likewise, should my bank account not be transferable or inheritable just because it is electronic and not a deposit box full of paper currency? What is the difference? After all, the government just licenses the currency to me anyways--I'm not allowed to make copies!

Skeptic

This is exactly why I won't buy a Kindle -- and I also won't buy songs from iTunes or the like.

Give me good old-fashioned books and CDs anyway. At least that way I actually own my library.

HeartBurnKid

errata:

"TOR" should have been "Baen Books." Sloppy writing on my part. The point being that Baen **gives away** free electronic copies of their books. Cory Doctrow is not the only example of this model.

Does that mean it will work for you? Not necessarily. But we aren't necessarily **entitled** to the success of any particular business model, either. So, just because the author's market is becoming more complex doesn't mean you are entitled to have the government shore it up anymore than VHS duplication houses are entitled to force movie distributors to distribute their movies on VHS tape.

Skeptic

@Namtillaku:
You know I have been a handheld software developer for just over eight years. And for the longest time I used a ppc to read ebooks I found off usenet. I loved the fact I could read in the dark, a godsend on overnight flights. Not to mention being able to listen to music and read a book all in one little package.

I may be in the minority but usenet led me to buying a shi#-ton of books by authors I would NEVER have found on my own. (I'm not kidding when I say a shi#-ton either, I just had to move a bunch into storage.)

Its been a long time since I used an ebook reader though. I still develope but now I appreciate "getting outside" a bit more. An ebook does great for the first night(s) of a weekend hike then its just extra weight to schlep.

That said, I recently purchased an ipod touch and based on the screen and touch functioanlity could really see myself getting into an ebook reader again. Except I noticed that , atleast for this class of device, the usable battery time has not improved a whole hell of a lot.

Shoutout to Baen Books! Their model led me to buy more books from them than any other publisher by a factor of 4 or 5 to 1.
[www.baen.com]

jchasse

@The.Ubertard: You know I specifically buy my reading material because of this. My Fiance rolls her eyes when I spend money on books instead of just going to the library, but I think its important to support the authors I enjoy.

As for the digital model, maybe its fair for your books, but most paperback novels are $7-8 these days. $10 for electronic versions plus having the shell out for a reader hardly sounds like a deal. I'm not worried about the rent vs buy. I just want it to make financial sense to move to digital.

1roll20s

Ok, I stand corrected. If you are really renting an ebook then is should be stated and priced as such. But, I understand both sides of the coin. I love ebooks and don't mind the price but I do believe it should be possible to transfer ownership to a different device. That is why I convert all music to mp3. oh well.

dr_when

You can keep them as long as you'd like, but you rent them. Like Amazon Unbox, say. I have the movie on my Tivo or computer, but I have limited use of it.

You have a Tivo? You realize, of course, that a Tivo deprives the copyright owner of revenues they could make by selling you a copy of the work you recorded for later viewing? Fortunately for you, the Supreme Court denied the demands of the movie industry to ban all devices capable of recording broadcast television. The MPAA said the VCR was to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler was to women.

BTW, Unbox is evil. Amazon reserves the right to remotely revoke your purchases at any time for any reason, it's like you being able to remotely make the copy of Blood Sucking Fiends vaporize Mission Impossible-style at any time of your choosing, without warning or recompense to me. It would give you the ability to hold our culture hostage--and yes, I do consider your works a part of our culture, though don't take that to mean I think your books should be nationalized or some such. But, I don't think you should have the right to control whether there should be a secondary market. To do so would be to reverse course and allow authors to retroactively control our collective culture.

Skeptic

Get a PocketPC & uBook - you'll never look back.

Namtillaku

y androver at 05:35 PM Reply
If we want to eliminate DRM from e-books, we have to be prepared for the resulting effects on the literary economy. People will undoubtedly send e-books that they bought to friends, so authors will get less money for their work

People already do this with physical books by sending the original. That, too, has "effects on the literary economy" and has always been thus.

Digital publishers are trying to take advantage of DRM to make sure that not even the "original," or the original license, can be transfered, ever, so that even model of limited secondary market for books where only the original can be sold is not possible. It isn't a matter of digital copies being freely copied and distributed, it is a matter of book publishers trying to destroy the secondary market they have always hated but couldn't get rid of because of the Doctrine of First Sale. Publishers are now trying to use DRM technology to do what copyright law doesn't allow them to do, prohibit a secondary market.

Skeptic

@HeartBurnKid: Again, musicians changed their income to performance, from recording. Authors can't do that.

The.Ubertard

Dillenger:

Just got back from the Baen site. You're right, they do have a free library of e-books. But you don't see Greg Benford, or Robert Silverberg, or many other authors there. What you find there are books that have, more or less, lost their revenue stream. They aren't making any money anyway, is what I'm saying. I couldn't find a single book in the free library that had an Amazon ranking above 109,000, and most were over 200,000. (to be fair, I only check six, randomly) That's effectively, no sales. I'm friends with a couple of the "free" authors, so I'll ask them what their say was in going free. I suspect that it was that or let the book go out of print. Faced with the same question, I'd give my books away, too, hoping they'd motivate people to buy my "in print" books.

The.Ubertard

@androver: Because that totally happened in the music industry after MP3 came out.

Oh wait, it didn't.

HeartBurnKid

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against a secondary market. The key word being market. By the same token, the "change or die" model many of you are advocating puts an author in an awkward place. Especially a new author, who doesn't have the name or resources to promote his work. "Market" does not imply unlimited distribution of digital copies.

While Prince or Motorhead might be able to sell their work directly to the public, bypassing publishers and distribution networks, most artists and authors function in a much smaller world. As I stated before, musicians, who were, at one time, recording artists who performed to sell recordings, changed their income source to performance and selling merchandise at performances to make their living. Authors can't do that. And unlike film, we don't have Box Office, a limited content delivery system, to offset the losses from copying.

Heartburnkid asks about inheiritance of digital media. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with a secondary market -- with people selling one copy of a digital book to a used book store, or
leaving it to their kids. DRM pisses me off, too. Every time I want to rip a Sony or Columbia DVD so I can watch it on my Iphone I'm irritated by DRM. Yes, I've paid for the DVD, but now I can't watch it on the machine I choose? So I get that part.(I'm sure there are tools out there to foil the Sony DRM, but I don't have them.)

I don't stand outside of the library yelling at people who take my books out. And I think the DMCA is deeply flawed, so I'm not some shill for "the man".

If as some of you suggest, that authors don't deserved to be paid for their work, then so be it. I'll go back to waiting tables, but the quality and availability of the books you have to choose from is going to suffer in the long run. Maybe that, too, is inevitable. The latest best-sellers in Japan are written on cell phones, in text-speak. Maybe books will die out as an art form. So be it. I'm only saying that it worries me because in the mean time, I have to pay my bills, and if the shift in revenue models comes as quickly as it did in music, I'm going to be standing in line for soup with a lot of my writer friends. Just a point of view as a creator and a consumer of content.

There's not that many of us. It probably won't really have an effect on anyone else.

The.Ubertard

not only does BAEN give away free samples and have DRM free files, a group of fans got together to bring a DRM free reader to the people.

[naebllcc.ipower.com]

1. This is a reader by us for our own use and for any other book lover who just wants to read books without being trapped into anyone else's business plan.

2. We will not lock you into any one format, or try to dictate your choice of download sites. We don't want anyone doing that to us and we're not going to do it to you.

3. This is a bare bones reader. That means you can carry a small library with you and we don't have to charge you the earth for it. If you want something that does text messaging you've bought the wrong device.

4. No DRM and no hidden "gotchas" what you see is what you get.

5. We intend this reader to support as many formats as possible.

It currently sells for $375.00
They are working on bringing the price down eventually.

Dillenger69

If we want to eliminate DRM from e-books, we have to be prepared for the resulting effects on the literary economy. People will undoubtedly send e-books that they bought to friends, so authors will get less money for their work. This will cause some authors to stop writing because it isn't worth their time or effort anymore. There will be less variety in published works; probably only a few authors (the very best-selling ones) will keep writing professionally.

We have to consider this before we decide whether DRM should really be abolished. Think about what's in the best interest of society. Maybe there are enough people willing to write for free on web sites that professional authors are obsolete, but my gut feeling is that we'll be hurting ourselves if we let people freely copy every book.

androver

There is an error in the article. Kindle books can be read on up to 6 Kindles registered to the same account.
From Amazon: "Content from the Kindle Store: Books and other non-subscription items you purchase from the Kindle store may be downloaded to up to six Kindles registered to the same Amazon.com account. If you have exceeded your download limit, you must delete the item from one Kindle to transfer it to another."
Subscriptions are limited to one Kindle at a time but deleting from one permits its download to another.

quatermas

And when the thing dies? Do I get to re-download the things again for free, since it's still for me?

I have...books. I will continue to buy...books.

And this 'business model' bullsh-t strikes me as hinky as well. It's more expensive to buy/rent a non-physical product? Do the publishers pull a record company on you and charge you for the 'printing' like the record companies charge the artists for 'pressing' MP3s???

What if I want a 'digital' copy of something I already have as a physical book?

doctor_cos

I think amazon and sony have a great point. Unless people were forced to sell the actual MEDIA (hdd, thumb drive, etc) that the file is on, they could just sell unlimited copies to as many people as they wanted. That's not right either

Same is true for DVDs, CDs and books since you could always keep a copy regardless of whether you give up the physical media, but re-selling them is legal--regardless of how much the MPAA, RIAA and the publishers association object. Would you really ban used books stores? Because that is what Amazon and Sony are trying to do to the digital age.

Skeptic

Loved the Ender's Game series, though.,

...a great start, with a slow decline in quality over the length of the series. Not sure what it has to do with sleeper hits, though. But, public domain in 25 years sounds good. Or, automatic 1 year copyright with 2 13 year extensions by registration and payment of a token fee--Registration prevents works from becoming orphaned and insures that people can find out whether a work is copyright or who to contact about possible licensing.

Skeptic

@Xenobiologista:

I hated Lord of the Rings. 10 sounds good to me.

Loved the Ender's Game series, though.

androver

...I should add that while transfer is technically enableable under certain existing DRM technologies, that doesn't mean any vendors actually allow it between different individuals, and especially not in a context of a secondary market created by an un-approved, un-affiliated 3d party akin to a private used book store.

Skeptic

@androver : Say more like 25. Some books are sleeper hits that take several years after publication to become popular - The Lord of the Rings, for instance.

Xenobiologista

@ Androver

Transfer is already technically possible and has been implemented by many vendors. iTunes is capable of doing this already, as it has authorization/reauthorization ability, as do Zunes and all Plays for Sure players (which they have to have due to the "subscription" model that necessitates revocation of authorization when a subscription ends.)

"Are we moral enough to pay authors if we like their work, even if we could get the same thing for free almost as easily?"

That remains to be seen. However, for certain works the answer is "yes," but perhaps not for the broader category. But, it is possible to market products that we can get for free. Bottled water is actually no purer than the nearly free tap water we have at home, which has far more stringent government mandated quality standards, yet the bottled water industry is very profitable.

However, I think bringing copyright terms back to a reasonable length is important. We don't have 90 year corporate patents or life of the author plus 70 year patents, neither should we have such terms for copyrights. There are works from the 1880's that are **still** copyright, but that fact isn't causing those authors to generate more work. --And to those authors who will claim that they deserve to make money off their efforts forever, well why should it be any different for you than any other worker? We have to work, save our money and live off our savings. I don't get royalties for every car I put together for ever or some such. Why are you so special?

Skeptic

@Skeptic:

I agree that, fundamentally, you should be able to transfer your ebook freely to someone else, as long as you no longer have use of it. If someone would come along with a way to implement this, I would be completely for it.

However:
1. I'm not sure if it's technically possible.
2. It would still be a form of DRM, so I don't think most people would go for it.

My main point is that we, as a society, created "copyright" to encourage innovation. We said that it's in society's best interest to prevent unlimited duplication of creative works. We're free to rescind that right, of course, but there may be consequences that we don't like.

Are we moral enough to pay authors if we like their work, even if we could get the same thing for free almost as easily?

Personally, I think that DRM on books is fine, but they should go into the public domain much faster...maybe 10 years after first publication.

androver

by The.Ubertard at 06:01 PMReply
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against a secondary market. The key word being market. By the same token, the "change or die" model many of you are advocating puts an author in an awkward place. Especially a new author, who doesn't have the name or resources to promote his work. "Market" does not imply unlimited distribution of digital copies

I'm not **advocating** a change or die model, just reporting reality, which is really more "change is an inevitable component to continued success." You don't keep writing the same book do you? No, unlike a factory or office worker you don't do the same thing every day, you **change** what you write each time. Your business is all about change. And no business model is immune to change.

You say that ""Market" does not imply unlimited distribution of digital copies." Indeed, not, however the publishers aren't just trying to prevent some sort of new fangled unlined free for all, they are trying to use technology to eliminate the traditional secondary market where people can re-sell their individual copy of a work. Publishers have always hated the secondary market since it limits their ability to create artificial scarcity, and their ability to receive royalties every time a work is transfered. They want all book sales to be new sales, regardless of what copyright law allows, thus they are using DRM as an end run around the legal Doctrine of First Sale. It remains to be seen if it will work. I hope to goodness it doesn't.

As it is, the secondary market is the only reason that many books even still exist. Due to the fact that many, perhaps most, copyrighted works are orphaned works they only are available as used. If DRM is used to lock up works, many will die like seedless plants. Granted, the most famous and profitable may not be among these since they will be **actively** hoarded under electronic lock and key by publishers but many works would wither away and disappear, as vendors, publishers, media and DRM go through various changes.

Already there are examples of people being left holding useless media from Google or Major League Baseball, media that they purchased but that the seller has decided to no longer support the DRM for, leaving the paid for media to rot and taking customers for a ride. That's DRM. That's culture and value being desiccated. That's BS we shouldn't stand for.

So, the problem I see with your position is that you want DRM because it could be used to prevent piracy--seems reasonable--but in reality DRM is used to completely crush a legitimate secondary market ; DRM locks content forever, even when the media is obsolete and needs to be format shifted to watch; and DRM makes your purchases unilaterally rescindable without recompense. DRM is just bad all around.

Skeptic

In addition, in real life, bookstores don't generally sell used books next to their new books. Why would they?

Actually, there are some used bookstores that co-mingle used and new. Others sell new and used in different sections, but they are divided thus because that is how people shop. And no, they aren't competing against themselves because the bookstore isn't the publisher, the used bookstore makes money whether you buy new or used.

As to the Amazon Marketplace idea by Noobs-R-Us, that isn't a true secondary market because the original e-book vendor has full control of the DRM and can set all the rules and pricing.

However, androver is correct that "used" e-books are identical to new ones, thus there is a potentially paradigm shifting difference between a traditional secondary book market and a digital one. Technology causes business model disruptions. Of course, the movable type printing press did that, too, allowing "perfect" (for the time) copies of books.

Skeptic

@Noobs-R-Us:

There is a difference, though. With used books, there is physical degradation with each purchase. With ebooks, there's literally no difference in the product between first and subsequent sales.

In addition, in real life, bookstores don't generally sell used books next to their new books. Why would they? They'd be competing against themselves, *especially* if the used book was sold in pristine condition.

androver

This is really stupid. Some of you are clearly not thinking straight including those legal heads at Columbia. Let me teach you a few things.

First, Amazon keeps detailed records of e-book buyers. They know who bought the book, when and how much they paid for it. They have been keeping track of all customers purchases since the start of the company.
Second, because they keep track of who owns what, it's really easy for them to CREATE a secondary market since they already have one, the Marketplace. When you look at ANY item on Amazon, you get to see a list of people who are selling their used or new items alongside Amazon. This is the "secondary" market. Again, it would be extremely EASY for Amazon to let Kindle users resell their book rights by listing it in the Marketplace.

The mechanics of this is so easy that a 3 year old can understand. For example, a kindle user buys a new book for $9.99. He/she reads it and decides that he/she will never read it again and wants to sell it or give it away to a friend. He/she goes to Amazon's web site and transfers the right to that book to the friend by listing their e-mail address. Amazon then transfer the right of the book to the new user and removes it from the original buyer. If the original purchaser wishes to re-sell the book instead, he/she would again go to Amazon's site and just list it under the book's page. Amazon could set up a rule whereby all re-sale eBooks are 50% off. When a buyer buys the book, the original buyer is credited with $4.99 and the right to that book is transferred to the new owner.

The beauty of this system is that it works even better than the physical book resale market. First, ALL of the parties benefit. In the physical book secondary market, the writer and publisher does NOT GET PAID in the resale. In the Kindle model, the $4.99 is split between Amazon, the publisher AND the writer. Everybody wins! Secondly, it works just like the physical world in that no NEW copies of the book are created to supply the secondary market. The secondary Kindle e-book market exists ONLY if there are enough sellers from the original buyers. Thus, you're not cannibalizing new book sales. In fact, you're creating new sales that might not have existed before.

Noobs-R-Us

Licensing is a DRM'ed Sale.
DRM sucks.

So what's new?

aec007

No, Noobs, that's not how secondary markets work, that's how a monopoly works.

As for your textbooks, you don't have to sell them via the place that sold them to you, you can sell them anywhere, without aid or permission from the publisher or the orginal bookstore. Not so with DRM'd media where you need the permission of the seller, untill the Doctrine of First Sale catches up to them, that is.

Skeptic

@Skeptic: That's how secondary markets work. When you try to sell your school book you don't get to name your own price. Most places where you sell books, you don'tget to determine the price either.

Noobs-R-Us

@Skeptic: Duh?! The original vendor IS AMAZON! They have FULL control over Kindle and everything you buy to read on it.

Noobs-R-Us

@Skeptic: i want very badly to read your comment like i was reading all the others. but your overuse of quotation marks and asterisks has honestly just hurt my eyes past the point where i will consider viewing your comments, be they in printed physical form or 'pressed' onto cds or **viewed** on the internet

deucailion

@deucailion:

Hmm...I guess you couldn't find fault with my argument so, instead, attack the form. I've reviewed my posts for "excessive" use of quotes or emphatic asterisks and I consider the posts to be reasonably orthographically restrained. I have to say you have an extremely low tolerance for formatting. But, hey, if you don't like my argument it makes perfect sense to attack my orthography--well, not really.

Skeptic

what about buying the real thing?
no drm, unlikely to break, no batteries...

pek

The arguments that you should consider Amazon's and Sony's sales of digital media to be like rentals is not applicable. If I rent a movie, I can turn around and rent it to someone else. I have the ability to do anything I want with it for the duration of the rental. The Kindle and Sony Ebook are different in that the only thing I can do with my purchase/rental is view it on my reader. I suppose I could rent my reader, but then I am being forced to bundle the reader with my rental of the media.

macrumpton

I can think of a pretty simple way to handle the sale (or transfer) of DRM'd files. In the case of the Kindle, Amazon keeps a record of the user account that has access to any specific DRM'd file. If an ebook is assigned to my account, I should have the right to transfer that license to another user account. This would remove any right that I have to read this book.

cob666

@pek: and no killing trees...oh wait! :-)

It strikes me that digital-era decisions are going to require a real eye for long-term sustainability, not just short-term profit-making. And sustainability includes everything from motivation and recompense for creators all the way to environmental responsibility.

These decisions require increased wisdom on the part of governments, corporations and the public. Just trusting a system, or just bucking it won't work. I appreciate the engagement that is going on here!

el-emeno

I disagree with the conclusion here. It makes no sense for it to be okay to sell the device with content on it but not the license for the content separately.

I put up a response post to this:

Coming to a Rational First Sale Doctrine for Digital Works.

'The first sale doctrine has to apply to the license, not the bits themselves, because under the scenario in which it applies to the bits, arguably Amazon retains no rights whatsoever. They had no direct hand in arranging the bits of your copy the way they are - they merely sent instructions to your computer about how to arrange them in a certain pattern. The article asserts that you can't "transfer" the bits, but in the same way, in downloading a copy, Amazon hasn't actually "transferred" anything to you, either.'

I think the proper conclusion is that this kind of a transaction is a de facto sale, and should be treated as such, regardless of what terms the seller tries to work into the ToS.

Adam Fields

the kindle is way overhyped

zc2009