Digital Books

Via Slashdot, I came across this article which notes that Google is in the process of setting up a service to sell books in digital format to customers.  Google is late to the game in regards to offering “e-books,” the established competition being Amazon and its Kindle device and others such as Sony’s e-bookstore.  Google hasn’t announced any pricing structure, although it stated that it will be taking 55% of the profits, and customers will be able to access the books offline but only after accessing it online one time.

I have to admit that I don’t particularly see the attraction of e-books overall.  Portability is not particularly a factor with regard to paper books, except for multi-volume sets or extremely thick books like medical reference books.  Also, looking at the screens of computers, cell phones, or other similar electronic devices is simply inferior for reading for long periods of time when compared to reading a physical book.  Advances in e-reader technologies will narrow the gap, but I can’t see myself reading primarily digital books any time soon in the future.

The other obvious problem is that digital books will come with all kinds of digital “rights management, which I have discussed in other posts.  Activation, one-time only downloads of purchased books, and other annoyances will be part of the experience, no doubt.

Years ago, I bought sheet music online, and somehow or another, I lost the songs.  When I went back to the web site and signed in to re-download the songs, the web site informed me that I had already downloaded them (or accessed them, I don’t remember the exact wording) and thus could not download the content for which I had paid.  That’s one big reason why I hate DRM so much; it punishes honest people.  I was lucky that it was only sheet music and not some actual important item.

Businesses exist for one reason primarily: to make a profit.  Keep that in mind.  Artificial limitations on digital products, such as limits on how many times you can “activate” a product, download an item, access a product or service, or any other restrictive measure are all ways that businesses will try to make you pay for the same things over and over again.  No thanks, not for me.