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by BBonifield 5646 days ago
It's really too bad that Amazon dropped the ball on this. You get to loan a book once, and the recipient only gets two weeks to read it. What a ridiculous implementation of such a great concept.

One of the major things that's kept me away from eBooks is that I can't share them with friends. In the office, we often pass a book around from person to person when we like it, and online lending should be just as simple and straightforward. Instead, we get a restrictive and janky process. Well played Amazon.
3 comments
allwein 5646 days ago
I'm toying with the idea of getting another Kindle just to user borrowed books from friends.

1. Give them my "Lending Kindle"

2. Have them register it against their account

3. Download the book(s) I want to borrow

4. Turn off wireless

5. They can deregister my Kindle right away and I take my good old time reading the books I borrowed.

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spicyj 5646 days ago
In fact, you don't need to turn off wireless. You can even deregister from the device's Settings menu and it'll keep your downloaded books. (Even if those span multiple accounts!)
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weej 5646 days ago
I couldn't agree more. Being a Kindle owner, I was really excited with this proposal when it was initially pitched. Amazon took a great idea and implemented it horribly.

It's not clear if this is the publishers or Amazon (out of fear from pubs) imposing such limitations on the lending process.

It really pisses me off that in the digital world with DMCA and DRM you don't have fair use of a product/art you purchase legally. You should be able to disseminate it freely. If I want to loan a friend a music album or book, it should be my right.

Lastly, has Amazon or anyone thought of modifying the DRM to allow ownership transfer? For instance after reading a DRM Amazon book I could transfer ownership to my local library.

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davidw 5646 days ago
> I can't share them with friends

Friends? I still don't see a good way of sharing them with my wife without either physically giving her the Kindle or registering her with my Amazon credentials.

That's more than a minor annoyance. I like the device a lot, but mostly because I live in Italy and getting English language books is a Major Hassle and not that cheap, either. With the Kindle, it's both instantaneous, and cheap to boot. If I lived somewhere with a decent used books store, though, I don't think I would have bothered.

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