Quote Originally Posted by Man of Steel View Post
An idea I just had regarding ebooks and the library system led me here...

Say a library wanted to set up a proprietary program and ebook format to offer ebooks from their website that could be downloaded, but would 'expire' in a set period—say 30 days. This way they could offer the same selection for download as they did at the physical location, but on the same principle. Would C or C++ be the preferred method of designing said program, or would another method be better? At the simplest level, what would be involved in something like this?

Just a thought I had, while I was wishing I could just download any book I wanted to read—legally.
Better reduce the "loan time" on those
anymore than 48 hours and you risk having your "restriction" cracked

Something like an expiring book just wouldn't work....
I know you know better than this,
but anyhow

Step though the program with a "legitimate" book
Step though the program with an "expired" book
find the fork
redirect the expired fork down the legitimate fork

In all honesty, kids stuff

As a book publisher, you have just spent god-knows how much money buying this DRM mechanism from someone, and it's cracked in hours

About the only way to realistically overcome this, is to require authorisation over the internet each time you open an e-book
which would be crap, and only annoy people

The "loaning" of things is a mechanism devised in the physical world of scarce products that cost money to reproduce
It doesn't translate (sanely) over into the digital world