Reading Digital Ebooks

[buldog5151bass]

You don't own a copy of the book to use as you see fit. You are essentially renting the right to read it on Amazon's service. If they go under, the book vanishes. If they eliminate it from their roster, the book vanishes. There is nothing perpetual about it as everything digital could vanish with the click of a button. So you are only borrowing the right, because it could be rejected at any time. And it is only a right to read their version because you don't have a final, discrete copy of your own.

That's true with anything you get on the net - same with music - you don't own physical recordings. Such is life in our modern world. One more reason to hit up your local library. In most cases, all area libraries are interconnected, so even if your local library doesn't have a book, it can get it quickly. That's how I went through a 10 part series of Harry Turtledove novels.

 

[socialleper]

That's true with anything you get on the net - same with music - you don't own physical recordings. Such is life in our modern world. One more reason to hit up your local library. In most cases, all area libraries are interconnected, so even if your local library doesn't have a book, it can get it quickly. That's how I went through a 10 part series of Harry Turtledove novels.

You don't own the rights to the music, but you own a copy of the music. Even if I'm buying digital music, I have a copy that is mine. I can do what I want with it, store it how I wanted, use it on any compatible device, and if the place I bought it from goes out of business I still have it.
That isn't the case with digital books.

On the other side of this, at least authors are getting paid. No one has ever told them to give away their books for free, or that they should be happy that someone is reading their material.

 

[electracoyote]

iPad + Kindle for the last five years or so.

 

[Gorn]

You can apparently rent ebooks from libraries. I did it once years ago and it was a pain in the ass. Each library has limited digital copies that you rent for a few weeks if it's available. I don't know if that's still a thing.