Hey Dave.

Interesting question. I think my personal take is that the “book question” (future, scaleability, copyright, etc) is largely determined by the user interface in question. Ben T and I had a long discussion about this a long time ago and decided in a drunken way that the book is pretty much perfect in terms of utility, portability, usability etc. As I say in this post, there are areas (in this instance, directories) where technology brings something new to the party. There are others – like reading – where nothing beats the real thing.

Amazon’s Kindle is going to be interesting to watch – the new use here is getting titles quickly and easily, but as many commentators have pointed out, the initial investment is huge, PLUS it’s a pig ugly device. I’m suprised Apple haven’t jumped on the eBooks market yet – it seems an obvious addition to the iTunes functionality, and given the sitting market of iPod users, would seem a no brainer to me. But hey, I’m not Steve J 🙂

So…in answer to your question – the preferred means of reading is from paper, not from screen – and so I reckon that copying just isn’t demanded as it is for music or images…