The Future of Reading

A (not so funny) play by Mark Pilgrim on the DRM’ed (Digital Right Management) future of reading. Here is act I out of 6:

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 (Amazon’s CEO), 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