By: Dave Kempton

Dave Kempton — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:06:22 +0000

Lo these many years ago, before such devices were on the market or even well-developed in the lab, Scientific American published an article on how this all should work. Among other things, the authors proposed a software “wrapper” around the copyrighted content. The wrapper would make sure only one copy was available at a time. Thus, if I were to lend you a copy of my e-book, my device would note the transaction and make the e-book unavailable on my device until you returned it. The wrapper would even allow a time limit, so that your copy would expire in, say, two weeks and mine would become available again – useful for libraries (and unreliable friends ;)
Of course, I think all that was back when the web was barely more than a twinkle in Sir Tim’s eye, and nearly-ubiquitous wireless cell-based networks were even less. Perhaps such copyright protection through software is not workable, now, especially given the growth of illegal cracking by those who like to break things just to break them. Sad, really; after all, how many friendships have been started over a shared book? How will that happen with e-books?
But such low-level criminality takes so much from society at all levels, through wasted resources and lost opportunities.

Comments on: Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader Locked Up: Why Your Books Are No Longer Yours

By: Dave Kempton