[clug] eBook readers.

[Robert Edwards]

Karun Dambiec wrote:
> Are there any ebook readers that ofofer similiar functionality to paper
> books including:
> Letting people borrow the book
> Photocopying the book, and 
> recycling the book.
> 
> Karu

Intriguing question. ebook readers clearly offer a very different
paradigm to a paper book. So, you need to differentiate between the
book title (content) which may or may not have copyright encumberances
and the physical entity used to pass the content into a human brain
which can be paper, a computer monitor, an ebook reader, an audio
performance by a human (which may have further copyright encumberances), 
a text-speech synthesizer, braille etc.

If you are talking about book titles with useable licenses, then all
of the above are very possible on most ebook readers I am aware of
(photocopying being replaced by making copies of the title)

If you are talking about book titles with DRM etc. then different
ebook readers and titles will allow different use cases.

If you are talking about lending/recycling the reader, I don't see
a problem, but I haven't read the EULA for every ebook reader...

Just some random thoughts.

Bob Edwards.