Pocket PC eBooks Watch - eBook and beyond  
 http://cebooks.blogspot.com 

The demise of copyright
New paradigms needed
One thing that will help is providing a mechanism for allowing people to do the right thing. Most people believe that creative professionals have a right to profit from what they create, and don't mean to steal their livelihood.
I would happily pay an author the same amount he now gets from a publisher (which is far less than retail cost) if I could download his books, read them on a handheld device, and delete them afterward. A little PayPal button on an author's download page would work fine. If this became the rule rather than the exception it is today, publishers would all but disappear, and editors would be paid by writers, not publishers.
With no corporate publicity organization working to promote new works, critics and magazine editors play an important role. They sift the available works and highlight those they feel are most worthy of attention. Also important are Web sites where buyers can exchange comments about the works.
The democratization of access to the mass media in the form of the World Wide Web is transforming many businesses, eliminating others, and creating new job categories. The experiences of open source software developers may point the way for the larger community. A Creative Commons license may become the natural heir to copyright a few years down the road.

posted by Jerry permanent link