Digital Book 'Ownership'

February 6, 2021

I like books. Hardbacks. Paperbacks. Ebooks. Audio books. Old books. New books. Comic books. Dusty old programming books. I love them all. I hoard them where I can. I get a bit of anxiety when I can’t. In theory, digital content should help with that. In reality, it makes my anxiety worse.

I’m old. I’m grumpy. I DO like new tech, but I don’t always like paradigm shifts. I can go to a store and buy a book. Heck, I can even go buy an aged used paperback that is out of print. And it is mine – for as long as I can keep its crumbling carcass intact. I don’t own the content, but I own the paper. I have some power to preserve it and have confidence I can go visit its pages whenever I want.

No so with digital content. In most cases, as best I understand, when I “buy” a digital book, I own – nothing.

I get permission to access the content – through a particular vendor – for as long as they deem the “lease” to be in effect. .Or until that vendor goes out of business. Or has a squabble with a publisher and THEY decide the lease is no longer in effect.

I. Hate. That. Model.

I also don’t have a great solution that would avoid piracy. I still don’t like the current model.

Right now I’m paying to rent content. One of my problems is I still treat it like I’m buying it. So I do stupid stuff like buying it before I’m ready to consume. I know it isn’t something that I can invest in and trust to be there later. But the little kid in me (that wants candy from the checkout lane) didn’t get the memo.

I would be willing to pay more (up to the cost of physical content, perhaps even a little more) to have an easy, reliable (and legal) mechanism to back up my content for later use. I want “insurance” against the company going out of business or themselves losing access to the content.

Re-selling “used” digital content is a non-starter. It never wears out. No used digital bookstores. I get that. No problem. But when I “buy” content, I don’t want to have to later get someone’s permission to access it.

With the way things are now, I don’t see this happening. At least not anytime soon. It makes me VERY grumpy.