----Original Message-----
From: Craig Sanders
> it's probably illegal to give it away or lend it to a friend;
>probably true, but unenforcable.
On my Palm III I have a program called Peanut Reader that allows me to read
e-books purchased from http://www.peanutpress.com/
It encrypts the books at the point of sale with the credit card number you
used to pay for it as the password.
This is by far the most innovative protection scheme I have seen, as it is
not too onerous for users, requiring the cc number to be entered once when
you open the book on the Palm, and it very effectively discourages
distribution of the texts, as to be useful they require your cc number.
Additionally, presumably it would be almost trivial to find this cc number
with a brute force attack, so a distributor of protected material risks
compromising their credit card. Clever.
The beauty of this is that even if the reader is cracked to eliminate the
need to enter a password (which is very achievable) the texts themselves
would not be widely distributed as those who have them would be worried
their credit card number might go too (and would certainly provide an audit
trail).
If I think a little further, it almost supports fair use. I would probably
"lend" a copy to a family member or close friend, as they could be trusted
not to run amok with my cc number, but it precludes me from distributing it
more widely. Quite similar to a real book.
The downsides I have found so far are that it can be a nuisance to access an
old book (especially as I had a new VISA with a different number) that I had
stored offline then wanted to read again. The other is that the costs are
too high. With one or two exceptions (specifically a US fiction magazine) I
can buy the real books cheaper online. At this stage of evolution, I would
suggest e-books would need to be priced at a quarter of the cost of paper
versions to pick up customers.
The final idea I would put forward to people speculating on the form of a
successful e-book reader is to borrow a Palm and visit
http://www.peanutpress.com/ and try out the service with one of the free
titles. The palm is small and light enough to swap for a paperback, can
carry a dozen novels, and can be read one handed. The screen resolution
doesn't have the same text density as a page, but this just results in
flipping the page with a button press more often.
Regards,
Michael Skeggs
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.1 : Fri Aug 31 2001 - 03:10:03 EST