New Sony e-Book reader learns from DRM mistakes of the Librie?
That fount of all knowledge, the BBC News website, has a story this morning on the launch of Sony’s new e-Book reader, the rather dully named ‘Sony Reader‘.
Sony have been here before, of course, with their Librie. Technologically impressive, as you’d expect from Sony (types the owner of one of their televisions, one of their cameras, and a long-time fan of the Vaio, now converted to Powerbooks), but badly let down by a truly draconian Digital Rights Management implementation that deleted books after 60 days, whether you’d finished reading them or not.
The device uses E Ink technology to offer books that are
“as easy to read as the printed page”.
Sony are working with a number of publishers, to ensure that there is plenty of content available for the device when it launches, and it’ll be interesting to see whether or not it finds much of a place in libraries, where e-book lending would certainly appear to be on the rise.
Let’s just hope they’ve learned their lesson, and implemented a different DRM solution that is fair, reasonable, and unobtrusive instead of unfair, stupid, and in your face.
Readers, like listeners and viewers, actually have rights too. Content providers could do with remembering that, instead of trampling over the rights of the many in a vain attempt to curtail the illegal actions of the few!
Technorati Tags: Internet Law, Libraries, Sony Reader
