keriflur wrote:
Fred011 wrote:
keriflur wrote:And FWIW, I own two nooks, two cell phones, and two laptops. I can read my books on any of these. If I lend one of my nooks to a friend, I still have FIVE other devices I can read on. I can even read THAT VERY SAME BOOK. And I haven't violated any copyright protections.
Yoiu can't do that with print either.
I do NOT own all the devices you have, nor do I ever intend to. Regarding the "lendable" books, at least as far as B&N purchased ebooks are concerned, once the book is loaned (which not all can be) it can NOT be read on the Nook until the book is "returned" to the lender. Thus sprach B&N!The issue of whether, if you have several Nooks on your B&N account, you can "loan" a book to other than one of your own Nooks and still read it on another of your own Nooks is something I can not comment on since I am not in that situation. I would think that, if B&N doesn't want you to access a B&N book loaned out until it is returned, that would apply to multiple Nooks as well, but you state otherwise. So the conglomeration of rules, controls, laws, rights and (pardon the pun) the plot thickens!
When you loan your nook to a friend, you are not "lending" in the Lend Me sense, so yes, you can still read the book on any other device. It's like reading on the nook, than switching to a cell phone. And you can definitely have the same book open on two nooks, as I've done it.
You might not own multiple nooks, but you probably have a computer of some sort, and you might have a cell phone that can have the nook app installed on it, so with your nook you own 2-3 devices that you can read nook books on. If you ask around on the forums, you'll find this is the case for most of us. Very few people own just a nook, not a computer, and many people have a computer, and a smart phone, and a tablet, etc.
You can also "give" a book to anyone who owns a nook, as long as you're willing to enter your credit card number one time on their nook. The nook doesn't even store the actual number, it store a hash that it creates from the number, so it's a lot more secure than a lot of people think.
"If I lend one of my nooks to a friend..."
Mea culpa 
... I misread nooks for books! That is what caused me the confusion regarding the loaned book still being readable on your other Nook.
Reading too fast, thinking too slow.
First of all, it is NOT a waste of bandwidth to discuss the moral, ethical and legal issues that are being debated on this thread. These are exactly the sorts of serious, real-world issues that should be discussed by citizens in the 21st Century. Since this thread is about e-books and e-readers, the contents of this thread are especially relevant.
Reading some of the posters' positions prompted me to wonder what would happen if I failed to take my rental car back to the agency where I obtained it because they didn't look very busy and probably would not have been able to rent it out to anybody else, anyway. Oh wait! I know what would happen. I once had an employee who did that, and the last time I saw him, a sheriff's deputy was leading him away in handcuffs.
Stealing is stealing. Whatever one chooses to call it, it is still stealing. It makes little difference whether the stolen goods are illegal copies of books, music, computer software or electronic games. The law is the law. We either respect it or we don't.
Look at the laws against speeding, for example. Typically, we have no physical means to enforce speed limits. One either gets caught, and suffers the consequences, or one does not get caught and continues to break the law with impunity.
An exception to this would be the use of "speed bumps." Most of the time, they work to slow vehicles down (not always). But everybody seems to hate them. We also never seem to see them on highways and expressways. Why? Because they wouldn't be tolerated by drivers.
Any physical system that could prevent the unauthorized and illegal copying of electronic media would probably be tantamount to a speed bump, and would result in great inconvenience to users. I don't see anything like that becoming available anytime soon.
Until people regain some respect for our system of laws, and unless they begin to comply with copyright laws without being forced to, this situation will not improve. A wise attorney once told me that punishment is not a deterrent. It is only the fear of getting caught that deters crime. As keriflur pointed out, it is enforcement that is the key to solving this problem:
"Regarding pirating:
I do not know of one author who has not found copies of their book being pirated. Not one. There is at least one author who failed to earn out her advance, and got dropped by her publisher because of it, but was a runaway download hit on the pirate sites. If even a fraction of the people who pirated her book had paid for it, she's still have a publisher. Her pirating "fans" effectively ended her writing career. Pirating is a big, big deal.
IMO the solution is not DRM, the solution is stronger laws and the enforcement of those laws. Pirating is theft and we need to start treating it as such. Lots of piraters wouldn't shoplift books from their local bookstore - the law needs to make people see that these things are the same, and punish them the same."
Unless a system of modifying an electronic file in a way that would provide evidence that an illegal copy had been made is developed by software engineers, I don't think this problem will be solved. The largest software company in the world (Microsoft) still fights against rampant piracy every day, and has yet to find an effective solution.
