I had to laugh out loud when I read the release notes about the Amazon eBook reader.

But it wasn't because of the price - the 'Kindle' will retail for $399 (£195) and will launch with 90,000 titles available for download in the US.

As we reported in our overnight news roundup, blogger John Scalzi sums up the reader better than any of us ever could: "I can pay $400 for an eBook reader, and then pay $7.99 for an electronic copy of a book, or I can just pay $7.99 for the actual book."

He's bang on, Amazon! To my mind, digital music is a bit like this too. I pay for CDs online that I can rip myself for the same money as I would pay for protected digital versions.

Land of the free?

And so we come to the other teeny tiny little bit of idiocy attached to this merry potential failure. Every book on the machine is DRM'd!

I mean, HELLO? Perhaps, in 1484 or some such year, Richard III thought it would be a really good idea to chain copies of books to people's arms so only the owner could read them. That way, reasoned the King, people wouldn't be able to share books around. I mean, if they could share them, surely it would put the scribes out of business? Okay, so it's not quite that draconian, but it's pretty close.

If I'm paying that amount of money for an eBook reader, I'd expect to pay $7.99 a month for a subscription (a bit like Microsoft's ZunePass) that would mean I could download any eBook and share it with whoever I damn well want to.

I don't think that's unreasonable, in the same way as I'd expect to borrow a book from a mate without Amazon emailing to tell me that I needed to cough up for it again because I'd lent it to someone else. We're enthusiastic about new tech on this website, but not when it's clear, unbridled lunacy.