November 16, 2006
Strangle This Audiobook
WebSlog writes about a run-in with the Play-Away Ready-to-Go Audiobook at Barnes & Noble:
“It’s like all the worst ideas in DRM in one easy-to-pocket package,” writes WebSlog:
It’s a digital audiobook player complete with headphones and lanyard for jaunty ’round-the-neck wear. It has simple controls, no apparent moving parts and contains an entire unabridged book on its internal Flash-based memory chip. [...] You can’t tell from the packaging, but you can send the player back for a 50% discount on your next book (so my next Danielle Steele purchase would only set me back $25 bucks or so). This discounted swapping scheme may be outlined in the product documentation, but it took three clicks at playawaydigital.com to learn about it online.
This is among the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Why not just put the book on a vinyl record that plays in a self-containing player with a needle that erases the content after it plays it once?
