I’m always interested in e-readers, e-books and the idea that one of these days I’ll have an easy way to read books without carrying a lot of them around. So yesterday’s unveiling of the Kindle device from Amazon is an important marker along the evolutionary trail of these things. No question about it, it seems to
come closest to what I envision a reader capable of doing and the future could be bright.
So why am I hoping it ends up in the digital equivalent of the remainder bin? I really don’t want to see this sort of DRM become the template for future devices.
John Gruber’s post on Daring Fireball nails it:
So the Kindle proposition is this: You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader — and whether they’re readable at all in the future is solely at Amazon’s discretion. That’s no way to build a library.