The Future of Reading

Some of the ‘Acts’ are a little meh, and I’m particularly sick of everyone comparing everything to 1984, but there are some goodies about Amazon’s new Kindle, which I expect to have completely forgotten in 6 months time.

Act I: The act of buying

When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.

Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002

You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007

Apropos of the link, I’m starting to get the feeling that 1984 is like palm reading or a horoscope: if you want to see a point of comparison between your day and your horoscope (or between 1984 and…anything), you just need to look hard enough.

via Daring Fireball.