The Cellar - eBook dis-satisfaction

It's not about new tech. We all love that :).

It's about people attempting to put artificial restrictions on tech, ostensibly for the purpose of copyright protection, which also restrict usage of the product.

If someone wants pirated content, they're going to get it, no matter what. The rules of the marketplace dictate that one (see: Xbox, Playstation Mod Chips, pirate DVDs, pirate copies of Windows Vista and XP).

People will accept a lower quality pirated product than a full quality retail product (see: Windows XP that fails WGA and half the movies sold on the streets that are bad cam copies of the original) as long as they are easy to use.

Companies haven't woken up and fully realized that no matter what, protection of digital data from unauthorized duplication is never going to be a 100% solution. They (esp. in the case of these eBooks) are taking measures which are very draconian to protect this content. They are taking measures reserved for governments to protect their innermost secrets by compartmentalizing the OS and its programs. Like I said before, the only other time I have seen the copy-paste functionality disabled in such a way is by the systems used to enforce Bell-LaPadula type security on TS workstations.

They need to strike a balance by realizing the usage patterns of their users, and designing a scheme by which users wish to pay for product (see: iTunes) by providing financial incentive to do so (see: iTunes costing less than the record store and allowing single-track purchases most of the time), and most importantly an easy way to recover lost data (when you transfer your paid-for tracks from one machine to another, you just need to reauthorize yourself).

In other words, they need to provide good customer service :).

In this case, if the eBook vendor offered these incentives, we would not be having this discussion.