"When you sold your Sony Reader," Garson O’Toole sensibly inquires, "what happened to the library of books associated with the machine may I ask? What happens to the e-books with Sony-type DRM? Are e-books inherited by the new Sony Reader owner or can they be transferred to another machine in the future?"
Thanks, Garson, for yet another chance to point out the follies of DRM. Answers:
1. I’ll decommission the DRM for my Sony PRS-505, as soon as I get further confirmation from the buyer. If I don’t buy another Sony Reader, I’ll lose access to books in the proprietary BBeB format. But guess what. I avoided that stuff. I didn’t buy DRMed ePub, either, preferring just to borrow books from public libraries. My favorite kind of copyrighted book is still a used paperback. That sounds awful for a writer, but I’ve got the usual budget challenges, and if I buy books, shouldn’t I be able to own them for real? I’d much prefer to pay $5-$10 for an E book I could keep. I’m proud to say that people will be able to buy The Solomon Scandals for a reasonable price without DRM, and with ePub among the options.
2. If the books came with the machine, then the new owner is SOL. So much for right of resale, eh? But guess what. Unless I’m forgetting something I don’t think that any still-in-copyright books did—just samples of mainly junky books. As for Sony-DRMed classics, what a laugh. They’re available at $0 via sites such as Feedbooks, Gutenberg and Manybooks.net.
3. To keep the new owner happy, I advertised that I would download ten public domain books of his or her choice. I have not yet heard back from the buyer.
OK, there you go. Does anyone still wonder why DRM is about as popular in TeleBlog Land as cracked E Ink screens or dead batteries?
For those tuning in late: You can both dislike DRM and like copyright. One possibility is social DRM. It has flaws of its own, but, all in all, is much better in that it doesn’t interfere with the ability of e-books to be displayed on a number of devices.
Image: CC-licensed photo from jbonnain.
