[LINK] The Amazon Kindle e-book

[Richard Chirgwin]

Scott Howard wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Eric Scheid <eric.scheid at ironclad.net.au>
> wrote:
>
>   
>> So .. what *are* the advantages of reading a book on the kindle vs reading
>> it on paper?
>>     
>
>
> The need to only ever carry one single "thing", and always being able to
> have a book available.
>
> No getting half-way to work on the train and finishing your book, and then
> realizing you forgot to bring another.
> No carrying that 2nd book backwards and forwards for 3 days, just in case
> you finish the first one today.
> No need to go to the bookshop to buy a new book, or waiting days for the one
> ordered over the internet to arrive.
>
> Personally I haven't bought an ebook reader yet, but I will eventually - for
> the exact same reason everyone else in my team has already bought one.  I
> spend over 50% of my time on the road (or more realistically, in the air),
> and there is only one thing worse than having to carry multiple novels so
> that I've got a new one when I finish my current one - and that's running
> out halfway across the Atlantic because I didn't end up bring enough (or
> left them in my checked-in luggage).
>
> Yes, there are disadvantages to ebooks in general and the Kindle
> specifically, but the simple fact is that most people either don't care,
> and/or rate the convenience of the Kindle greater than the disadvantages.
>   
Scott,

It's the "don't care" factor - exactly that factor - that worries me. 
People who don't care about their rights lose them; and frequently, the 
"don't care" attitude is encouraged by the cargo-cult mentality: never 
mind the license, look at the gadget.

And nobody expects to get bitten in the bum, right up until it happens, 
by which time it's too late to complain (a practical example of this, in 
a previous thread: people who assigned their rights to use a house 
design to the builder, which went bust, and they can't build the house 
because the local council is acting as copyright cop). There's lots of 
ways e-books could bite the user in the backside - for example, 20% of 
the ebook readers listed on Wikipedia are discontinued.

But I realise I'm swimming against the tide: toys are real and 
immediate, rights are intangible.

RC
> At the end of the day, it's exactly the same reason that I carry an iPod
> rather than a CD player and a few dozen CDs.
>
>   Scott.
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