On: Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books

[emodendroket]

But is it necessary for ebooks to succeed? You can't resell a digital movie, video game, or song you bought either.

[mastax → emodendroket]

For now. https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/19/french-court-valve-steam...

[ethbro → emodendroket]

It'd be interesting to have a resale tax for used goods, on top of any negotiated price, that followed royalty payments for a new digital good.

As is, we're essentially artificially creating disposable goods, for the primary purpose of enriching distributors at a cost to consumers.

[snuxoll → ethbro]

I think restoring copyright to sane periods is a better solution, resale of digital goods requires online DRM systems to continue functioning indefinitely and we’ve seen the issues that causes.

I would be less annoyed by essentially consumable digital goods if I knew sometime down the road they would enter the public domain in a reasonable timeframe, and not well after the eventual death of the current generation of children.

[jjeaff → snuxoll]

I shudder to say this, but that might actually be a use case for blockchain. A shared distributed ledger that an ebook reader consults before opening an ebook.

[est31 → jjeaff]

Yeah the "don't let people sell used books twice" problem maps pretty well to the "prevent double spend" problem that blockchains (try to) solve.