Reply #15: Ask the radio industry [View All]

[WatsonT]

they were decimated by the advent of television.

And VCRs were the devil as far as the Cinemas were concerned.

Likewise any sort of recording was going to destroy the music industry.

Books are not special in this way. They are simply a transmission device. The ideas in them matter, but those can be sent out in a variety of ways. Just like cds replacing cassettes and then being replaced by mp3s didn't mean we lost all previous music.

"Can you "donate" a book from your Kindle?"

I ca copy it for free. I imagine online libraries will exist that allow people to donate thousands of books for free. People couldn't afford books either for the longest time.

"They're already doing it with some library e-books; you only get to "read" the book X number of times before the file disables itself."

Whereas you can check out a library book forever?

"It allows publishing companies waaaay too much control over reading material"

"Imagine how pissed you're going to be someday when you have to keep purchasing the same books, movies, and music over and over and over again because the old physical formats are mostly gone, the file variety is all you have left, and all of those files are programmed to disable/obliterate themselves after a certain number of "loads"."

Right because that will be the way things go. Because the internet is notorious for catering to the demands of intellectual property right holders.

On the contrary. It makes publishing far easier and removes this monopoly. If you wanted to publish a book before you'd have to convince someone it's worth the expense. Now you can type it up and put it online for free, no one gets to say otherwise.

That is democracy in action.