Should e-Books Be Copy Protected?

Last week, Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book reader took on Amazon’s Kindle, joining the Sony Reader and several smaller players. And that arena has only just begun to heat up; in the next few months, a raft of additional models will appear.

One of my readers is alarmed by a precedent being set:

“When the iPod introduced music lovers to the idea of copy protection, a years-long war ensued between consumers and the RIAA (and others). The primary issue was that if I purchased a song for my music player, it would only play on that player; I didn’t really own it, per se. Years later, we finally have digital music without copy protection.

“Enter the Kindle and the Nook and copy-protected books. If I purchased a Kindle a year ago, and I have 30 books for it, and now want a Nook… you can guess where this is going.

“Where are the upset people? I never see reports on how e-book copy protection is bad for consumers. Didn’t we learn anything from the music industry? Does this lock-in bother you? Am I missing something?”

Well, first of all, there ARE a lot of upset people. A minority, yes, but plenty of people are alarmed by the precedent being set.

The issues involved with copy protection haven’t changed. They’re the same on e-books as they are with everything else. Namely:

Read more . . .

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Tags: amazon, book publishers, copy protection, e book reader, e reader, electronic book store, future books, Google, nook

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under Consider This, IP, Innovation Needed, NY Times, Shape of Things to Come?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.