Ebook drama!

[elf]

This is *fascinating*. Really. I never get to see real ebook drama; it's usually "oh, I could never give up the smell of real books!" vs "umm, 300 books in my pocket, yay!" And then there's some mumblings on both sides, and they both move on and read books on whatever media tweaks their kinks. But not this time!

I bring you... Alan Kaufman vs Mobileread!

Who, you might ask, is Alan Kaufman? I don't know! Apparently, he's written some books. And he blogs about writerly things. And a little over a month ago, he wrote The Electronic Book Burning, in which he compares ebooks to Nazis:

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.

Serious Godwin points for that. In an opening salvo, even. (It's okay, folks, he's Jewish, and that makes it okay for him to compare technological advances to the Holocaust. Erm.)

( Aaaaand they're off! In this corner, literary blogger Alan Kaufman. In that corner, the combined membership of Mobileread forums! )