Comments on: A proto bill of ebook management rights http://peterbrantley.com/a-proto-bill-of-ebook-management-rights-221 Peter Brantley's thoughts and speculations Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:21:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: bowerbird http://peterbrantley.com/a-proto-bill-of-ebook-management-rights-221/comment-page-1#comment-231 bowerbird Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:24:46 +0000 http://peterbrantley.com/?p=221#comment-231 every word of every book ever published should be accessible at any time by every person on the entire surface of the earth. or else there will be a revolution. greedy capitalists beware... -bowerbird every word of every book ever published should be accessible
at any time by every person on the entire surface of the earth.

or else there will be a revolution. greedy capitalists beware…

-bowerbird

]]> By: John Mark Ockerbloom http://peterbrantley.com/a-proto-bill-of-ebook-management-rights-221/comment-page-1#comment-123 John Mark Ockerbloom Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:09:22 +0000 http://peterbrantley.com/?p=221#comment-123 It's an appealing list, though I haven't really thought much about "cloud"-based services and their interaction with these principles. Personally, I think I'd prefer personal, local management of my own ebookshelves, with the "cloud" only being used as a backup, transport, and transaction mechanism. There's a certain tradeoff of convenience for privacy in doing that, but I think I'd prefer that. There's one other tension I *have* thought about some, that's worth thinking out, and that's the tension between lack of DRM (in the sense of technical restrictions) and the secondary markets that arise under a robust right of first sale. In a nutshell, the problem is that unscrupulous sellers can "sell" the same DRM-free ebook any number of times, instead of deleting it after sale like they're supposed to, and in the largely anonymized marketplace of the web, even a few such unscrupulous sellers can push out the honest ones by undercutting the prevailing "honest" price. If your marketplace mostly consists of honest people, though, as I believe the book market does, there are ways to deal with this problem. One is with softer "social" DRM, such as electronic bookplates that don't technically prevent you from doing what you want with the books, but that contain data helping certify that your copy is from a genuine sale, and that you have rights to it. You can have trusted brokers to help you verify the certification, and update bookplate data appropriately when you sell the book to someone. Honest customers will deal with trusted bookplate services when making ebook transactions. Making such a system also protect reader privacy is more of a challenge, but one that's addressable as well. Some of the CS research on "digital cash" (which is also designed to support transactional privacy, while at the same time keeping a hard limit on certified copies) may help with this problem. It’s an appealing list, though I haven’t really thought much about “cloud”-based services and their interaction with these principles. Personally, I think I’d prefer personal, local management of my own ebookshelves, with the “cloud” only being used as a backup, transport, and transaction mechanism. There’s a certain tradeoff of convenience for privacy in doing that, but I think I’d prefer that.

There’s one other tension I *have* thought about some, that’s worth thinking out, and that’s the tension between lack of DRM (in the sense of technical restrictions) and the secondary markets that arise under a robust right of first sale. In a nutshell, the problem is that unscrupulous sellers can “sell” the same DRM-free ebook any number of times, instead of deleting it after sale like they’re supposed to, and in the largely anonymized marketplace of the web, even a few such unscrupulous sellers can push out the honest ones by undercutting the prevailing “honest” price.

If your marketplace mostly consists of honest people, though, as I believe the book market does, there are ways to deal with this problem. One is with softer “social” DRM, such as electronic bookplates that don’t technically prevent you from doing what you want with the books, but that contain data helping certify that your copy is from a genuine sale, and that you have rights to it. You can have trusted brokers to help you verify the certification, and update bookplate data appropriately when you sell the book to someone. Honest customers will deal with trusted bookplate services when making ebook transactions.

Making such a system also protect reader privacy is more of a challenge, but one that’s addressable as well. Some of the CS
research on “digital cash” (which is also designed to support
transactional privacy, while at the same time keeping a hard limit on certified copies) may help with this problem.

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