Not Pictured: Gene Hackman off to one side gloating about finding my one weakness.

Not Pictured: Gene Hackman off to one side gloating about finding my one weakness.

The Kindle is my kryptonite.  A device that stores my entire book collection on one convenient gadget?  Where do I sign up?  Eye fatigue, once a major problem when reading on any screen, has been all but eliminated by e-ink technology.  Coincidentally that takes care of the battery issues that plagued early dedicated readers and that still plagues smartphone-based readers.  And the price for new books is far more reasonable than anything in a local bookstore, even with all the coupons Border’s has been throwing my way in a desperate bid to avoid bankruptcy.

Some will wax poetic about the look, feel, smell, and ambience created by books in their criticism of the Kindle, but you won’t hear any of those arguments from me.  I’m a technophile of the highest order who prizes the look, feel, and smell of a shiny new gadget above all else.  And anything that saves me from packing up twenty boxes and two bookshelves worth of “ambience” the next time I move is fine by me.

The big problem with the Kindle right now is Digital Rights Management.  As one gentleman who was kicked off the Amazon service after making too many big ticket returns found out recently, you are entirely at Amazon’s mercy when it comes to accessing content.  And Amazon is shaping up to be a jealous god that smites at the slightest provocation.  Books purchased and downloaded from Amazon are locked so they only work on a Kindle registered to you, and you can’t sell or transfer those books to another user.  I don’t tend to lend out my books that often simply because I don’t have many nearby friends whose tastes run along the same lines as mine, but I am worried about having my book collection tied to a digital ID rather than just being able to buy, trade, and sell as I please.

Amazon hasn’t quite hit the digital rights sweet spot yet. I can take a paper book and loan it to a friend or sell it to a secondhand store if I feel like it. Anything that I purchase with a Kindle is presumably mine forever, or at least until consumer pressure forces them to change their terms of service. It’s a pity, really, that the specter of file sharing has turned such a promising device into the DRM equivalent of a jail with a particularly harsh warden, but until that situation changes I’ll be sticking with old fashioned books.