Given, also, publishers' ongoing war with Amazon over what they perceive to be control of the industry, they weren't going to do anything to give Amazon's customers any more reason than they have already to shop there. But I'd guess that the chief resistance to any such system would come from the major book publishers, which have amply demonstrated that rational pricing and customer satisfaction aren't high on their collective agenda. I speculate, first, that Amazon itself wasn't all that interested.

The Amazon executive's response was, to put it mildly, unenthusiastic. The Kindle copy was always stored online in any case (though I've made it a practice to download and store my Kindle books, just as I keep multiple back-ups of my MP3s). And if I bought a Kindle ebook, let me pay the difference between the ebook price and the physical book price, plus a dollar or two, and get the printed copy as well. Many years ago, I suggested to an executive in Amazon's ebook unit a pricing system that went roughly along these lines: if I bought a physical book, let me have a Kindle copy for a dollar or two more. The answer is probably no, but not because it's a bad idea. Now that Amazon is giving people MP3s for the CDs they bought since 1998 (on Amazon) will they do the same for books? And that leads you quickly to the question, posed on Twitter Thursday by Scott McNulty: It reminds us of the blurring lines between physical and digital versions of 'content' products. The broader meaning of AutoRip is about more than just music back-ups, however. I last lost my music collection in 2000, but I may still recover a few CDs I thought had been gone for good.' '(F)or those who have been purchasing CDs from Amazon for a long time, and have also suffered the unfortunate burglary of their music collection, this new AutoRip service could be a life-saver. I asked my followers on Twitter and LinkedIn what they made of the service, and Josh Wolf, a documentary filmmaker, responded: But for at least one music buyer, AutoRip is proving to be a great value.

Amazon vinyl digital download