As for ebook piracy, one of my publishers says stopping pirates is like playing Whack-A-Mole. Sadly, I have to agree.

I like physical books. Mostly, I like them because my brain is hard-wired to read print on paper. I can remember where I read text in a book — which side, where on the page, which portion of the book — and I can also retain it in my memory. When I read on screen, I cannot do these things. Even tracking back to find where I read an article is difficult after I’ve been browsing around and closed tabs. (I use Firefox, if I used Opera I could use the function that allows a closed tab to be reopened but Opera doesn’t display Amazon book condition descriptions so I switched back to Firefox.)

There are particular reasons I would want to use an electronic book but I would almost always want the printed version in front of me at the same time. The most obvious is the ability to search electronic text, during those times when my memory for the printed words is not good enough. (Perhaps it’s the ability to use a search facility that weakens my memory for print on paper.)

I think bound books, with sewn pages rather than glued ones, will soon become luxury items. The print quality of new books is also not as good as it was once. E.g. The text of Joyce’s Ulysses (the 1922 text) which is very cheap at £8.99 is horrible to read. But I have no option if I want that text and to read print on paper.

What I would prefer is a publishing model whereby books were published as print on paper and in addition in electronic form with the purchaser being offered only the option to buy both. In the printed book would be a code to access the electronic book. This is a model used by some high priced legal texts. The problem is it would probably be prohibitively expensive for mass produced books and people would perceive it as a rip off in them being forced to buy the same thing twice. In effect, what I want is for the e-version to be an add on rather than a stand alone product. I know this is not going to happen and it would not entirely get rid of the problem of illegally downloaded e-versions.

Another suggestion is a sort of watermark. On your blog you link to John Gruber’s report of Carrier IQ’s ‘Media Alert’, http://daringfireball.net/2011/12/translation_carrier_iq. On his blog he carries a link to the Reuter’s article http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/05/us-apple-samsung-ruling-idUSTRE7B425D20111205 on Apple v Samsung which includes a comment on the ‘formatting characteristic’ of an electronic document that allowed redacted material to be viewable when copied and pasted into another document. What is this ‘formatting characteristic’ and could it be usefully used to include a warning visible to viewers of illegally downloaded files? I have no technical knowledge in this area but I am thinking of something along the same lines used by the music industry to protect their material.

Last thing, I like your blog, so thank you for writing it.

Best wishes.