Why Amazon's Kindle Should Use Open Standards 315
Tim O'Reilly wrote in Forbes a while back that he thinks the Kindle only has another two or three years of life left, unless Amazon wises up and embraces open standards. He came to this conclusion, in part, because of his experience deciding how to publish documents on the web back in the mid-1990s.
"You see, I'd recently been approached by the folks at the Microsoft Network. They'd identified O'Reilly as an interesting specialty publisher, just the kind of target that they hoped would embrace the Microsoft Network (or MSN, as it came to be called). The offer was simple: Pay Microsoft a $50,000 fee plus a share of any revenue, and in return it would provide this great platform for publishing, with proprietary publishing tools and file formats that would restrict our content to users of the Microsoft platform. The only problem was we'd already embraced the alternative: We had downloaded free Web server software and published documents using an open standards format. That meant anyone could read them using a free browser. While MSN had better tools and interfaces than the primitive World Wide Web, it was clear to us that the Web's low barriers to entry would help it to evolve more quickly, would bring in more competition and innovation, and would eventually win the day."
Use ODF (Score:2, Insightful)
They should make it support ODF. But I guess its all about profit to them.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh, ya actually think the DRM on the kindle works?
But you make a good point. Amazon has to at least pretend they are making an effort to "protect" the content.. it doesn't really matter that its trivial to defeat, the publishers don't know the difference and the authors obviously don't either.
iPod and iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
A better analogue is the iPod and the iTunes Store. The iPod became the dominant mp3 player not because it supported proprietary and non proprietary formats. It became successful because it made the process of acquiring and transferring content (ripped and purchased) seamless and easy. The Kindle has something very similar in its ease with which you can purchase books and put them onto your Kindle.
Commercialism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:1, Insightful)
We don't want your non-skilled non-ambitious average run of the mill shit anyhow..
I can tell all this by your complete lack of passion of wanting people to read what you write!
Re:Use ODF (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iPod and iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM, and other artificial restrictions (e.g. regional restrictions on sales) are some of the major reasons why "piracy" persists. Drop the DRM and offer products and services for a fair price using innovative business models and you'll find that the issue of piracy will be of little concern.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
But it comes at a cost that can be quite high. As soon as you start having to worry about being paid, one has to worry about whether or not the piece is going to be marketable and that is a terribly damaging environment under which to create innovative work. It's not really much of a surprise that most of the masters were doing portraits, working for patrons or downright broke when they were turning out works that would later sell for millions. It's rare to say the least to be able to be a professional artist without putting a muzzle on ones own creativity.
DRM isn't going to help that situation out much, in fact it's probably going to hurt by eliminating people that are likely to get work that's somewhat out of the ordinary or in other ways unconventional.
Re:iPod and iTunes (Score:3, Insightful)
I would call the iPod a lot of positive words/descriptors. "Affordable" would not be one of those. I love my current iPod, but you pay a premium for quality/capabilities of such a device.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Insightful)
No way on Earth I would work hard writing or creating something to have it passed around the Internet for free.
That is fair and I'm certain you are voicing a very popular opinion among editors, artists, writers, etc. As O'Reilly mentions, though, Apple seems to have balanced this both with music (MP3s are pretty "open" to play on anything). I think what the article means by "open" is that it would be nice to be able to read this through multiple devices and not just the kindle. Your username starts with DRM and, although insanely flawed, there are ways to implement it so that numerous devices and programs can use it. Yes, I realize that a skilled developer could write a simple application with the sole intent of converting DRM files to plain text but I'm pretty sure those who want to are doing that already.
Once the Internet community stops ...
Let's just step back and look at the facts. Don't make any assumptions about what I'm trying to convince you.
I don't want to steal your book. But if I want your book, I sure the hell would prefer paying 2/3 the cost of the hardcover and having it instantly in front of me. And, I would be making far more purchases. I may not be the general populace but I think that's a pretty safe rule. The music industry is enjoying iTunes, you would enjoy it more since no one wants only Chapter 23 of your novel.
... being one of the largest tech book publishers and author himself, I'm going to side with him. Especially since everyone at work talks about how awesome the Safari book service is (two coworkers are toying around with full subscriptions).
With or without DRM/closed standards, people are stealing your work. Do you really think that making the standard in which they are saved/read/transmitted an "open standard" is going to increase your losses that much?
I don't know what your numbers look like but I would speculate that the increased sales from people walking around with iPhones and Palm Pres and mobile devices would outweigh that. I agree there will be people trading these files online. But you can't stop that now. Do you not agree that you, as a writer, would benefit from this move? O'Reilly seems to think so and he seems to think it's great for Amazon too
I wish I could tell you that you have full control over this but the facts indicate that you really just have the power to delay the inevitable.
Re:iPod and iTunes (Score:3, Insightful)
The article did recognize that, and also explained why that didn't work for O'reily (lack of features.) Really it didn't seam the article cared as much about the hardware, as about the publisher side. I also think this open format discussion was also more about letting it be developed and improved by some community, than leaving it locked to being developed by a single group of developers.
It seams the only way to meet this definition of open is to make the kindle platform open to developers, it was unclear how amazon was supposed to match that on the publisher side though.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that file sharing is not going to vountarily go away, this statement becomes "information will continue to be locked down until the entire internet is locked down", which is probably true. We can't stop DRM any more than you can stop piracy.
That's not quite true, pirates are much more likely to win than that. It's a matter of will, and if you get enough people cracking the protection schemes quickly enough at launch, DRM will eventually go away. DRM is about control and profit, if the schemes are broken fast enough there's definitely a question of why spend many thousands of dollars locking something down that'll be cracked within a few weeks. Sure it does help with sales initially, but you're typically having to sell a hell of a lot of copies in order to break even and it does put one at a competitive disadvantage to those that don't need to sell those extra copies.
Not to mention the fact that there's a surprising number of people that don't pirate software that doesn't have DRM incorporated into it.
Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I checked, taking advantage of someone's enjoyment of their work by not paying them is called exploitation. How about, if because you like to program, your employer decided not to pay you.
Artists work. They deserve to be paid for what they do. If you don't want to have art on your computer, you can choose to not pay for it. But if it is valuable enough that you might be motivated to go out of your way to get some DRM breaking device, chances are, that means it is valuable, even to you. That means, don't steal it.
The question isn't whether, for example, Paul McCartney made a billion dollars off of his music, or Steven Spielberg made a billion dollars off of his movies. The question is, is a Paul McCartney song worth a $1 to you. If so, then pony up. Otherwise, don't listen to it.
It's pretty simple, really.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:1, Insightful)
Problem is, the art that people do for themselves tends to be rather self obsessed.
Which is fine, it's just that it probably won't be that attractive to you. It might all seem rather boring and meaningless, as there is no need for the artist to make their ideas accessible.
Most people not involved in the creative world have a rather naive view of popular art. You see the final result, which is often intentionally made, through great effort, to seem natural and effortless. It's an illusion and a clever and attractive one, but people are taken in by it.
I always find it funny that people think the music industry is full of megastars who spend their lives with expensive cars and fine clothes. In fact that was mostly just an image sold to people, back when people found success attractive. You can hire that stuff for a few days for the video, then it all goes back.
Nowadays, the image is often toned down to seem more 'gritty', 'real' or 'authentic'. It's just as much an illusion, and the artist may be making exactly the same profit, but it sells better right now.
"It's not really much of a surprise that most of the masters were doing portraits, working for patrons or downright broke when they were turning out works that would later sell for millions."
That was how many hundred years ago? And do you actually like any of it?
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:3, Insightful)
The same is true on a much smaller scale. Someone may enjoy reading Anne Rice, but will go to a library and read The Mummy for free. This doesnt mean she doesnt like the book, or appreciate the artist, or the art.
Not everyone is going to PAY for you to not have to work. Sorry.
Some things... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is why museums were created, and...lets face it, most painters are no da Vinci.
Actually, most painters today in good art schools are better painters than Da Vinci could ever have hoped to become. We don't study old masters because they were somehow better than the people that came after, but, because they broke new ground and showed the way to do things. Seriously, go walk into a good art school, and you'll find 19 year olds kids painting things that DaVinci could never have even dreamed up, but then they get bored and go onto looking for something new.
it doesn't necessarily mean they enjoy paying $10m for the privilege of looking at it.
But to see a DaVinci painting or a painting by any major master is probably not free. In the very least, the musuem has an active and ongoing fundraising drive in addition to charging for major exhibits.
The same is true on a much smaller scale. Someone may enjoy reading Anne Rice, but will go to a library and read The Mummy for free
Yeah, but those people are stupid. They would pay an easy $10 in gasoline, public transportation and possibly a library membership to go to the library and read the Anne Rice book, when could have just gone to Amazon.com and bought the thing and had it delivered to your doorstep.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally,
I think the key here is what the "artist" thinks his "art" is worth, and what the consuming public thinks it is worth are two totally different things. Make a DVD of a decent movie and sell it to me at twice the cost of a rental, and I am more than happy to buy it, Sell garbage that is entertaining only once, if at all, and I will stick to Redbox. The same goes for music. There is a reason Apple is making money at the price of iTunes, They have the right price point. In the end, the "artist" will get sick of being screwed by the media giant who only pimp them out at their convenience, and realize that self promotion is the only realistic promotion.
Re:Some things... (Score:5, Insightful)
In my case, I have a free (tax paid, no memberships) public library 15 *walking* minutes from my house that lets me take the book home for one week.
Amazon takes at least 3 days to get the books to my doorstep, and as I'm never home in the morning when the mailman comes, I have to pick up the books from the post office.
Libraries clearly win in this case.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:4, Insightful)
No way on Earth I would work hard writing or creating something to have it passed around the Internet for free. I create for my own profit, not your entertainment.
And that's why I've heard of David Wong and Cory Doctrow, and would buy books by either of them in hardcopy if I spotted one in a book shop, but I still have no idea who you are.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems obvious to me that you can't achieve the former until *after* you've achieved the latter.
Re:Some things... (Score:2, Insightful)
.In my case, I have a free (tax paid, no memberships) public library 15 *walking* minutes from my house that lets me take the book home for one week....Libraries clearly win in this case.
Unless you are the guy that has to drive 20 miles to get to the library, to find out that you've taken out the book that they wanted, for a week....
So... libraries don't win, overall. In your example, they only win for you.
Re:I almost got a Kindle.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but Apple made the device support plain mp3s and such and then made a store to go with it. Who would have bought an iPod if it couldn't play your mp3s?
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, just because someone works hard doesn't mean they deserve to be paid. "Artists work. They deserve to be paid for what they do." A fool who works hard first digging holes, then the next day burying them, doesn't deserve to demand a paycheck "because he works hard all day." Who was he working for?
If an artist is hired to do work, he deserves to paid for the work he does as per the agreement. If an artist choses to produce art, there is no guarantee of payment. None. Why should there be?
Agreed: "The question isn't whether, for example, Paul McCartney made a billion dollars off of his music."
But then, disagreed, because the question is *not*: "is a Paul McCartney song worth a $1 to you".
A sweet smelling rose bush is worth a $1 to me, for sure. But do you have the right to ask me for $1 to enjoy that rose bush?
The real question is should we continue to pretend that nonmaterial productions should count as property? Does the societal benefit of such an artifical and arbitrary distinction outweigh the cost? That is the real question.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Insightful)
You're free to make that choice. But:
(1) There are other strategies that may be more to your economic benefit. [...]
(2) History has shown that DRM doesn't work.
And don't forget:
(3) You'll be competing with millions of people who are willing to create something to have it passed around the Internet. Through all but the last tiny slice of history, pretty much all creative works were produced for the joy of creativity, and to share ideas and expressions with others.
In the 21st century, there are a *lot* of people in the world, and lots of them have time on their hands and some of them have creative talent. You could write a Drake-type equation calculating the intersection of people that have time, talent, resources and desire, and the resulting fraction would be small, but as Internet connectivity reaches the corners of the Earth, it's eventually going to be multiplied by several billion.
Sure, most of what all those amateurs create will be crap, but not all of it, not by a long shot. I think a significant portion of professional content creation may well get squeezed out by crowd sourcing. Not all, certainly, but I suspect that even those who want to do professional work will end up doing a lot for free, just to get known.
Free content is big, and just going to keep getting bigger. Those who recognize it and figure out how to work with it and profit by it will do well. Those who refuse had better plan on getting/keeping a day job.
You would still turn a profit (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, why are you so worried about people who trade files? This is a minority of people, and they are probably people who would not have purchased your book anyway, had the content not been available on some file sharing network. Seriously, the publishing industry is not threatened by people downloading books, it is threatened by people not bothering to read in the first place.
Re:Apple tablet (Score:4, Insightful)
e-Ink is really a crucial part of the Kindle experience. If you've never played with it IRL, you can't really appreciate it - it just sounds a bit ridiculous to say "Works in full sunlight!" and "Long battery life!" until you've gone outside in full summer sun and found it easier to read than it was inside, and then gotten through 3 or 4 long books before you have to recharge. If used heavily, the battery STILL lasts a week when wireless is off. No tablet based on currently available tech can touch this, and I know of no tech in the pipeline that will change that.
And the Kindle has an edge - in some ways, to most people - in that you can shop wherever there is Sprint access. I'm in a 1xRTT area, and though it's slower, it works. So you get the big-buyer power of Amazon opening up the catalog, and the universal access, and it gets a major edge over other readers in some ways - especially if you're in an airport, e.g., that doesn't have free WiFi.
Re:That's all just backwards. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is our way of saying that we are tired of being made into cash cows, and even more to the point, tired of being called communists, criminals, and terrorists just because we have a decent understanding of how computers work. We are sick of living in a society where everyone is trying to monetize everything -- now they even want to monetize our friendships with other people.
"It's the guys at Microsoft and Apple that have to sweat deadlines, do focus groups, sift through the complaints of millions of users, the genuinely work for everyone else. They get paid for it."
I am a Fedora contributor, and yet I get complains from Ubuntu, Debian, and Gentoo users all the time. Millions of bugzilla entries have been filed in various open source projects over the past year. The Fedora development list receives hundreds of messages a day discussing how to solve end user problems. We are not getting paid for it, but we still do it.
"Windows is for the people that use it. Mac is for the people that use it. But, Linux is for the people that write it."
No, Windows is for Microsoft and their investors. Mac is for Apple their investors. The fact that they have users is secondary to the fact that they can turn a profit. Linux is for anyone who wants it, for whatever they want to do with it. That is why we give it away, and grant everyone the right to use, study, modify, and share it.
"You can rip me all you want, but just look at all the project managers of various Linux things, and their postings, and the things that strike you is that they are all about 'me' first."
That would explain why the swfdec developers were so busy getting Youtube to work correctly with swfdec back when Torvalds sent them a message about how his wife was having trouble. That would explain why the Fedora developers took the time to create graphical configuration utilities even though we could configure our systems using ed as a text editor. That would explain why the Ubuntu developers bothered with creating an easy to use system. Yes, you certainly know what you are talking about.
"Stallman, Torvalds, etc, are all pretty self-centered people. Me. Me. Me."
Oh yes, that is why Torvalds had it out with Stallman over whether or not it is better for Linux users to deal with GPLv2 or GPLv3.
"This solution is evil, that technology is terrible."
Which is why the NSA uses it for mission critical systems.
"Everything to them is black and white."
Which is exactly why Stallman admitted that not everyone is going to take free software to the extreme that he takes it, and why Torvalds rejected GPLv3 for Linux because he wanted to leave open the option of using Linux for TiVo and similarly locked-down platforms. Yup, real black and white there.
Re:Some things... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you are the guy that has to drive 20 miles to get to the library, to find out that you've taken out the book that they wanted, for a week....
So... libraries don't win, overall. In your example, they only win for you.
What library doesn't have their card catalog online these days? If you're driving 20 miles without checking to see if they have your book first then you lose. Maybe libraries don't win, but you still lose.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually if an "artist" is a member of a guild or union that pushes legislation the end result of which is to steal from the commons, then I make sure that I not only don't pay for it, but I will help other people take it without paying as well.
Until the Copyright Term Extension Act is rescinded, I consider all media produced by "artists" affiliated with the companies/guilds/unions that bought the law, to be free. Furthermore the act of refusing to pay for their work while actively distributing it to others for free is not only ethical, but an important bit of civil disobedience. Those who pay for works created by said artists are in fact the real transgressors.
It really is unfortunate that so many people end up buying these works simply for the sake of convenience.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Insightful)
Well yes. There certainly is a chilling effect. You can't publicly make these tools and try to sell them. Which is what his employer was doing. But everyone knew this, long before the DMCA came into effect. It really does nothing to change the "scene", and that's where the cracks come from.
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I hear Cory Doctorow is starving.
Re:That's all just backwards. (Score:4, Insightful)
You?
I trust the OSS guys to protect my interests a thousand times more than any random corp.
Re:Kindle Coverage (Score:4, Insightful)
You think Slashdot has a wide reach? For every eyeball on the internets reading your Slashdot post, there are probably 10,000 old women watching Oprah on TV.
Re:Some things... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but those people are stupid. They would pay an easy $10 in gasoline, public transportation and possibly a library membership to go to the library and read the Anne Rice book, when could have just gone to Amazon.com and bought the thing and had it delivered to your doorstep.
I think your statement is stupid. If I didn't have a bus pass the total cost to me of going to the library would be 75 cents per trip. Since I do have a bus pass it's not even that much; I ride the bus so often that the cost per trip is probably closer to a quarter for me. I don't know about you, but I would be very hard-pressed to find a book whose total cost- including shipping- was 25 cents on Amazon and arrived at my house an hour after I decided I wanted a book. I think it would be pretty difficult to do that for 75 cents, as well. Additionally, when I go to the library I don't have to scour their catalog looking for such a book like I would have to do for Amazon.
Just because in your particular circumstances, it may be more cost-effective to buy from Amazon in general doesn't mean that the people for whom the library does work are stupid.
And if you're paying $10 in gas every trip you make I'd consider getting a hybrid.
Re:Some things... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some things... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:1, Insightful)
Eliminate property ownership and there will be no theft, for that matter. Eliminate laws against murder and there will be no murderers, only people who kill.
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:4, Insightful)
Well yes. There certainly is a chilling effect. You can't publicly make these tools and try to sell them. Which is what his employer was doing. But everyone knew this, long before the DMCA came into effect. It really does nothing to change the "scene", and that's where the cracks come from.
Why not? Where the tools were being made and sold (the Russian Republic.... not even in US jurisdiction or the jurisdiction of the court under question) the "tools" were perfectly legal.
In this case it was also about academic freedom and being able to make commentary about perhaps a sensitive subject to peers who are engaged in similar research (in this case cryptology). Ultimately what happened was that this person was arrested purely because of his speech, in an academic forum no less, but on the grounds of violations of the DMCA.
This legal issue, together with 1st amendment conflicts and other similar problems with the DMCA, still hasn't been completely resolved in a legal sense, nor has SCOTUS had their crack at trying to form an opinion on the topic either. The point here really is that this law continues to be a potential sword to hang over the heads of software developers that might seem to piss off a U.S. Attorney... for whatever reason that may be.
BTW, you asked if anybody had been prosecuted, and the answer was given to the affirmative. It doesn't matter if eventually the DOJ was embarrassed to the point of dropping charges in this case, it still was used and can be used in a heavy handed manner as demonstrated with this example.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Insightful)
The charges against Sklyarov were later dropped [..] He was allowed to return to Russia on December 13, 2001.
Way to fail to even read the article you linked to.
Idiot.
The charges were dropped in exchange for his testimony against his company. He was still jailed. Exchanging cooperation for freedom is a common practice. It doesn't change the fact that he was jailed and charged.
You asked for a single person that had been jailed in violation of the DMCA, I provided one, then you start the ad hominem attacks. Who is the idiot?
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine that, commissioned or sold? Are you saying he didn't retain lifelong copyright on his works and they could have been freely imitated without recieving royalities? That means he would have to keep on working rather than resting easy after the Mona Lisa and making the next project?
I find it 100x more disgusting that his descendents don't recieve their due royalties as copyright obviously should be artist's life + 9999999999999999999999 years.
Open Formats with Accountability (Score:1, Insightful)
Rather than use all this DRM crap, couldn't we just use open formats - PDF or similar and place the purchaser's personal information inside the files?
I know that I'd be much more careful with a purchased file if I knew it had my name, phone, address, and credit card information attached.
Obviously, someone will come up with a method to remove that data, but many won't bother and will live with the consequences after sharing.
Re:Some things... (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus the understanding of perspective drawing was very poor prior to 1700ish
...and so the current generation builds on the knowledge and experience gathered by their predecessors.
[sarcasm]Great thing we now have "Intellectual Property" and virtually unlimited copyright, DRM, DMCA ... to drive innovation[/sarcasm]
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:2, Insightful)
No, the question is: What is the value of the work overall? Markets don't provide an answer to that question any better than a Joe Random's subjective assessment.
If you still don't understand, let me put it in terms even the typical mercantile-minded drone can understand: Copyright is a monopoly, monopolies misprice everything, the price of copyrighted material cannot be determined by a market. Moreover, the market clearing price of something which has a zero marginal cost is zero. Information no longer has to be packaged up in physical blocks, so the true market price of information is zero, just as Adam telling Joe a joke has no cost.
Perhaps with no laws against non-commercial copying a large number of authors will stop writing. Perhaps so. But people will still want to share their ideas with one another and will write them down. And without publishers making a pointless cut on an artificially created scarcity (i.e. via DRM and copyright) there will be no gatekeepers determining what can be published or not. A conservative should be appaulding this! Or is liberty and the individual enterprise only a concern in limited situations?
Using the market as a means to determine the value of information is becoming more and more untenable, both technologically and ethically. Using the market requires that the natural inclination to share information (i.e. to communicate) is fatuously characterised as "piracy", and can only work by sabotaging free market mechanisms with government-backed monopoly selling of artificially created scarcities.
But no! Apparently conservatives are all in favour of monopolies, against free markets determining price and in favour of BIG government in the form of law enforcement of non-commercial copyright infringement!
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:1, Insightful)
That point would only be relevant if Cory Doctorow's sole source of income was self-published ebooks. Since Doctorow gives away his ebooks, I'm betting that his income from ebooks is close to zero.