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LibrieWhen will Sony listen? Yuri Kageyama, an Associated Press writer Tokyo, is the latest journalist to complain about the Librie’s Mission Impossible approach to DRM–books that self-destruct after 60 days. Like most everyone else, he loves the screen and the machine overall: it’s the DRM that makes him uneasy. His thoughts:

…you can’t copy and paste passages to another computer or device. And copy protection built into the software garbles your books into useless data after two months. There’s no way to digitally archive texts for later reference. That’s a lot of restrictions, though the books available for this first Librie do cost only $3 per download….

I’m not wild about buying books that self-destruct after 60 days. But the idea behind Librie makes impeccable sense.

It’s not that far-fetched to imagine receiving our morning newspaper of choice – call it the Daily Download – into an upgraded version of such a gadget. We’ll save a lot of trees.

Exactly! But only if people will purchase the Librie in the first place. Sample books included with the Librie don’t count; people want to buy and keep their own books. Get it, Sony? $3 a pop for self-zapping books is a gouge. Except for a comatose and perhaps overpaid guy writing for the New York Times, most everyone seems to agree that Sony’s technology-enforced business practices for e-books are a real rip-off.

Detail: The cost per download was originally to be somewhere less than $5 ($4.95 in the Real World, based on my past experiences). Anything change, or did things just come in on the low side? Or is the $3 or $5 figure wrong? Even $3, though, is too much for a book that vanishes after 60 days. What’s more, consumers should be able to own books for real. Hey, I’m rooting for Sony to get this right!

Update, 1:49 EDT: Added more details from the AP article and about the download cost.

(Found via eBookAd.)

 
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