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Monday, September 15, 2003
Reading is, far and away, my favorite pastime. At any given time, I am reading several books, and newspapers. My preferred way of porting these numerous tomes: e-books. Given that technology is relatively new, I can understand the hesitance of publishers to embrace e-books. However, I am disappointed at the extent to which the medium is ignored:
"For now, e-books are an afterthought in the publishing world. Less than 500,000 electronic books were sold in the United States in 2002, compared with more than 1.5 billion printed books, estimates research firm Ipsos-Insight in Chicago."
Why is this the case, when clearinghouse like Palmgear report selling as many as 2000 books per day? It's the same demagogery that exists in the music business. The execs are told that content cannot be encrypted, and can be copied literally hundreds of times. This will hurt sales, they are told. "We must stick to paper books" is the mantra.
I really believe that this is going to be the next combat zone for the intellectual property activists vs. consumers. I would gladly pay for books that were in electronic form, just as I pay for e-delivered songs. However, if the industry keeps fighting the technology, they will be left behind, as thousands of books are already being scanned into the public domain (just check out the newsgroup alt.binaries.ebooksLabels: Archives_2003
.: posted by
Dave
1:52 PM
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