Our relationship with e-books: It’s too complicated

One of the best things about media going digital is that it can be easily shared and distributed to others with just a click — except of course that it often doesn’t work like that, thanks to copyright or licensing restrictions and competing platforms.

E-books are a great example: Theoretically, it should be easy to share not just books, but passages we like, and there are a number of startups and services like OpenMargin and Readmill and Findings that are trying to make this happen. But competing rights, standards and platforms mean these kinds of features are available on only a tiny fraction of books, and that keeps most readers inside their little reading silos.