this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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It just feels weird to me that digital version of a book is treated as having limited amount...
It's just bytes in some computer.
Why would user A need to wait until user B is finished with the book, before being able to read it?
It's just the cost model. The authors usually write as their primary source of income, so they're selling each book. If they just sold one and everyone copied it, it would either have to be tremendously expensive or it wouldn't pay their bills. I brought my kids up not to pirate music and movies for the same reason - it doesn't support the artists. I'm actually a bit uncomfortable using the library for the same reason since I can afford the books if I just reprioritize a bit.
The same happens with movies in theater. When we switched to digital, a decades ago, they was like "everyone can have the movies at the same time, not like with limited physical copies".
It was a lie. Sure, everyone can have a copy on the release day, but not everyone will have the time-key for delock it from X days since Y date. So some theaters will have it first weeks, others only the third ones.
Again, this is not because the tech is not enabling this, but an attempt to extort more money (for earlier delock) from the theaters is there.