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."
I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Interesting)
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. Once the Internet community stops (I know it isn't everyone but it is enough to be a major problem) stealing content created by artists for profit, we will finally be able to embrace the open standards we all truly want. Until then DRM will live one in some for or other.
I almost got a Kindle.. (Score:5, Interesting)
But instead... I got a Sony PRS-700. And I love it. Sure the screen could be bigger, but it supports PDF natively and a lot of the tech books I get (probably not going to be the case with most other books - yet) are in epub format, which is at least an open format. I know the Kindle DX supports native PDF, but I actually like the epub format now as it seems to render better on my PRS-700. The PRS-700 also has touch screen and a SD slot; so I can just download the epub's, copy them over to the sd, and then they show up on my 'bookshelf' on the reader. Exactly the amount of control I wanted.
I can see what Amazon is doing here - they're trying to mimic the success of the iTunes music store. I suspect this will work for a while, but at some point, others will come along and force Amazon to open up. Once they do, I might buy a bigger Kindle.
All in all, I think ebooks have finally arrived and I'm ditching all my paper text manuals and never buying another one again..
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Interesting)
I create for my own profit, not your entertainment
Good luck profiting or entertaining with that mindset.
Once the Internet community stops (I know it isn't everyone but it is enough to be a major problem) stealing content created by artists for profit
This statement, especially with the word "once" in it (implying that it's inevitable) is the epitome of the "goodluckwiththat" tag.
we will finally be able to embrace the open standards we all truly want
We will be able to embrace open standards only when the entire internet agrees to do things your way. Nice.
Until then DRM will live one in some for or other.
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.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that customer service stinks and there's a belief in the entitlement to profit. Trust me there isn't one, and as soon as people start to acknowledge that the cost of an item is going to approach the marginal cost of another one, there's going to be no effort that effectively stops the piracy.
Worse still is the fact that piracy goes way up when one has to pirate in order to use the content as one wishes. You have the right to control the distribution of the copies of your work, not what people do with those copies, and as such DRM is a pretty egregious violation of ones rights. I have the right to sell any copies I've bought provided that I don't create any additional copies to sell.
I'm also sorry that you're so terribly misinformed about copyright law, copyright isn't there so that you can profit. It's there to maximize the amount of work being created, any profits you make are purely as a side effect of that goal. Fighting consumers to prevent them from using it on the platform of their choosing in whatever way they wish to is an egregious abuse of that right.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Interesting)
Kindle Coverage (Score:5, Interesting)
Google getting into book selling is a much bigger deal. Fictionwise's current meltdown where they apparently can't even report and pay royalties on time or properly is a big deal given their size in the eBook market and number of publishers involved. The fact that you don't even need a Kindle reader to buy and read Kindle books seems seldom mentioned. (A free Kindle reader app is available for iPhone/iPod Touch and there are millions more of those out there than Kindle hardware.)
Now another pundit tells us that Kindle must change, or die, in 3 years. Kindle is excellent for its intended uses. It's purpose built to provide eBook reading in a thin format with a very readable screen in bright light, weeks' long battery life, limited browsing, multiple formats, bookmarking, annotation, and sharing the book across multiple devices, and no-worries wireless connection. Also, lots of books available for it from the biggest bookseller on the planet. It's hard to see who is going to beat out that combination easily in the near future. I'd just as quickly predict the iPod demise as the end of Kindle.
Where do I see Kindle in 3 years? Cheaper, if production catches up to sales. Better browsing and better integration of its features into other formats (e.g. annotations on PDFs). Content (e.g. Newspapers) delivered to it by subscription replacing dead tree physical delivery. Or possibly limited to a hardware niche market while their reader software is running on every significant portable device with a screen large enough to read on.
One way or another "Kindle" survives as a brand as long as Amazon doesn't abandon it themselves and keeps developing the product.
My personal opinion? That the people predicting Kindle's demise are the ones who hate it in the first place and are trying to talk it away.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Interesting)
They also 'helpfully' keep 70+% of the price end-users pay.
Maybe if authors made a bigger stink about getting the shaft from Amazon, they just might get more sales.
Maybe if authors didn't bitch and moan about how they should get paid extra because a machine converted text to speech, they just might get more sales.
The world has changed, maybe consider doing something new instead of trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Interesting)
(Somewhat) Obligatory Don't Copy That Floppy [wikipedia.org], and the Video [youtube.com]
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Interesting)
All of that said, I have decided to stop buying books from one publisher and a specific author due to unreasonable (IMO) DRM restrictions placed on the book when I bought it. Specifically it was a Doubleday book called House of Cards that opened my eyes to how restrictive the Amazon DRM can be. As a result of that experience and the fact that there was no way to know what the restrictions were prior to purchasing, I have started looking for free books and converting various third party books.
I will still occasionally buy books from a known author that I "must" read but I do this with the full realization that Amazon could rip the content away from me at a moments notice. I don't buy unknown authors or books I may want to keep or reread any more on my Kindle. Instead I go to the library or borrow the books from a friend until I'm sure I want to follow that author. I used to just buy everything and anything I was interested in but now I'm much more careful and have started finding ways to read the books for free if I'm not interested in keeping them or they're not a favorite author. So if you're a favorite author of mine your viewpoint works but you certainly won't break into the market at least for me while your works are DRM crippled.
Perhaps piracy is a greater problem that growing your audience for you and if so then good luck with your battle against it but for most authors I suspect growing your audience is the greater problem and at least for me DRM is a non-starter when trying to get me to buy an unknown author or a book I want to keep for multiple reads which leaves me only purchasing stuff that I know I like but don't want to keep and reread over and over again. It has really limited what I buy on my Kindle to just escapist writing that I read for recreation.
Apple tablet (Score:3, Interesting)
I was at a neighborhood party this weekend, which provided something like a random sample of the population. You know, morons. Anyway, someone had a Kindle and they were passing it around a bit, showing it off. At the same time, there were many more people showing each other things on their iPhones. The Kindle didn't hang around for long. Maybe it's just not good at parties. Anyway, it made me think that if and when Apple makes a tablet that does everything an iPhone does AND everything the Kindle does, and costs just a tad more than an iPod Touch, that will hit the ebook reader sweet spot.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Interesting)
drmemnoch... a creator of something I actually want, and therefore someone whose opinion I care about? Or are you just some self-important writer of doggerel who wants to restrict my rights, without benefiting either you or me?
I'm a content creator too. I do it because I enjoy it and it makes me good money. My content is paid for by government and commercial contract (mostly commercial). I have absolutely no pretension to creating content for your entertainment.
The key difference between you and me is this: you want to restrict my rights, I don't want to restrict yours. I can enjoy my own life without asking you to do or refraining from doing anything. Unless I ask you to create something for me, in which case I will be expecting to pay you for it.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Interesting)
57. Here [lightandmatter.com] is the list.
Re:Some things... (Score:3, Interesting)
One of my parents neighbors walks to the library and reads the paper. I think he even enjoys the exercise.
Re:Some things... (Score:3, Interesting)
Quoth the OP: "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."
Or just walk there from work, which takes all of 3 minutes each way, and get a stack of books on subjects with many currently out-of-print and unavailable in the commercial market. Plus I get the book immediately and don't have to wait for Amazon to deliver it - or the postal service to decide to keep it at their depot while I have to go and collect it. I can even check online if it's available which is cool and saves wasted journeys.
If I really want a book to keep, I'll pay for it. No problems there. But quite often, I just want to use one for reference for a few things so the library is a God-send to me. I must have taken out over 20 books in the last month or so which would have cost hundreds of dollars as many of these were heavy-weight text books, and yes some were out of print and over-priced (ie, collectable) on the second-hand market. Total cost to me of all this lending: zero outside of a few pennies in taxes and the knowledge that culture is being preserved for anyone to access.
So what's stupid about me doing this? More books, better choice, lower cost? I fail to see what I'm doing that's so dumb. Please enlighten me.
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:4, Interesting)
. By publishing online, he says, "you give the reader the possibility of reading books and choosing whether to buy it or not."
That's good for Coehlo, but the issue here is that the work is his. Like it or not, the US and the rest of the world has adopted the French model of copyright and in that model the artist reigns absolutely supreme first. If Coehlo wants to give his work away to promote himself, that's fine. But, that is his choice to make and not something that should be imposed on him - unless you want to change the law.
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:3, Interesting)
The question is, is a Paul McCartney song worth a $1 to you. If so, then pony up. Otherwise, don't listen to it.
You seem to have completely failed to grasp the supply half of supply and demand economics. Where did this magical $1 figure come from which you must pay or else not listen to the music? If going to a movie isn't worth the $10 the big theatres charge to me, am I not allowed to go see it in the second run theatre for $2? If I go perform music in the street can I then insist that everyone who enjoys it has to pay me? Just because you produce something doesn't mean you have some intrinsic right to make money from it - unless there's some reasonable way to ensure the scarcity of what you're selling, you need to resign yourself to the reality that you can't really sell it.
Copyright exists to promote creation of art. Right now, most artists make very little money from records and depend on live performances to make their money. With the exception of a few mega stars who don't need extra money to make it worth their while, copyright is protecting businessmen and lawyers rather than artists here, and on the whole increasing the total cost to society, while doing very little to encourage art. Why, as a society, should we make it possible for Paul McCartney to make yet more money, rather than making art widely and freely available to people?
If recordings of Paul McCartney's music were in limited supply things would be different, but introducing artificial scarcity unbalances the economic system for no good reason that I can see.
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:5, Interesting)
All the DRM does on the kindle is make it harder to move the same book to another device, not impossible. Bus as to only a few years left? Well Talk to Apple about a propietary locked down format for content that can be easily pirated. They won eventually because the device was easy to use, and the content was available WORLD WIDE. Wize up Amazon and the whole publishing industry. E-books have no borders or regions, just like digital music. I live in NZ and would love to get my hands on ebooks from amazons catalog, and I would buy them too, but it is restricted to US only regions, and locked to the Kindle, so I'll keep on pirating the content to get it in a format I can use. Thanks Amazon. You just keep on protecting that content 8)
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:1, Interesting)
Not really. They are not entitled to be paid only because they create art, since, at any level, any one creates art in the modern sense, even unconsciouslly.
Artists who sell their works and find buyers for said work are the ones who are entitled to receive payment. But they they are not artists anymore, they are just doing commerce.
And this is why the work of agents and intermediaries has some worth on this economic system, because many artists suck at finding buyers.
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of the content I download, an extraordinarily small fraction of it is ever imported in to my media library. Most of it I download simple so that I am then in turn able to help other people obtain it for free. I download and distribute because I want to cause harm to companies and individuals that stole from the commons. I have zero interest in most of what they produce and will never personally watch/listen/read the vast majority that I download.
As I am coming from a highly cynical POV that has decided civil disobedience is the best path to defending the commons, I can easily understand your own cynicism and difficulty in believing that "piracy" is ever anything other then selfishly motivated. However I assure you that one can in fact be both a cynic and an idealist.
Re:There are alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, open source and open standards are two totally separate things.
Second, I'm fairly certain that the biggest cost in those things is the screen, followed by the hardware, followed by the name recognition mark up(Sony, Amazon), the percentage of the cost that the OS creates on a device whose entire purpose is to store, index, and display documents in a limited subset of formats is just not even worth mentioning. Half of slashdot could knock that kind of system up in a couple of months on their own.
E-book readers are expensive because the OLED screens which are so necessary for them to be even remotely comfortable to read are really new technology and still really expensive and because the hardware is specialized largely to the purpose. Eventually we'll get economies of scale and that will drop the price quite dramatically, but OS licensing fees aren't even in it, Linux doesn't have code to run an ebook reader, and everything that isn't about running an ebook reader isn't necessary, so there's not much gain.
Re:It's not so much the open standards (Score:4, Interesting)
- "open standards" pretty much guarantee that you can port software, and interface hardware, to newer stuff. And that somebody will do it. I have 15+ year old ISA cards that still work in recent PCs. I'm 100% sure that my .txt, .jpg, .rtf, .html, ... files will be readable by my grandchildren, if they care. They might be able to hack my old parallel printer to actually print stuff on paper, and laugh at the idea.
- "Popular" used to guarantee pretty much the same thing - I can still read my CP/M Wordstar Docs ! Except now with DRM and DMCA, it's harder, and it's a crime. I'm fairly sure you won't have a kindle reader + Windows 2035 / Ubuntu 40.10 synch software + amazon authentification server to access your Kindle books 25 years from now, and that Amazon won't be around, or willing, to help. And forget about the children ^^
Re:Artists deserve to get paid. (Score:3, Interesting)
"I download and distribute because I want to cause harm to companies and individuals that stole from the commons."
That's a BS argument. Even if copyright were a mere 7 or 14 or 20 years, I bet 90% of the content you steal and distribute is less than a year or so old, and as such would STILL BE PROTECTED UNDER LAW.
And you may think it's some sort of civil disobedience, but I'll also bet that the vast majority of the people you're supporting could care less. They simply prefer to steal music and movies and software because they can and then spend the money saved on beer.
And if you REALLY want to help the "commons", then spend a year or so writing a book or producing great music or a movie and then give it away under Creative Commons. Create something worthwhile, if you can. Hell, any pea-brain can run a torrent server and delude themselves that they're "making a difference."
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Interesting)
But the DRM does hurt legitimate customers. I buy books and I absolutely refuse to buy e-books until I get the same rights that a normal book gives me. Over and over I hear that company x has decided to close down its DRM servers and fuck over the customer. Then all the works either become totally unplayable or the company unlocks them all. The other issue with DRM formats is that except for DVDs there seem to be multiple formats. Look at e-books, there are a variety of formats. Sony has their own format, the kindle has its own format, Microsoft had its own format, etc.. Many authors only pick one format. So it is quite often that if there is a book I want, either the author has not decided to publish to e-books at all (so I can't get it), or the author has published to only one format, so if you don't have that device you can't get it.
Currently everyone publishes to paper so that's what I buy. And if your book is lousy which I'm sure from such a narrow minded prick who wants to fuck over the consumer such as yourself, I will sell it to a used bookstore and you will get nothing from that sale. Then someone a bit smarter than me will pay much less to realize your writing is a worthless piece of shit. But DRM meanwhile kills the used book market completely. In fact that's one thing publishes like about DRM. It kills a used music market. Even Video games are under consideration for DRM because game stop makes a nice profit on used video games that goes write to game stop and not the publishers. IT is fair because when buying a video game or a book I own the media and I can sell it.
But anyway now back to the book thing. I have a ton of books, some older than I am. They take up a ton of space. I would love an e-book reader so that instead of a giant book case I only need a tiny device. In fact I would love multiple readers. But if I can't get all the books that I want on that reader, I need a giant bookcase anyway so why bother. Also if I get the device and amazon invents a new device and abandons the kindle (or god forbid goes out of business) and shuts down the services that say convert PDFs to the kindle format, or even shuts down the store, then I"m fucked. I have to throw out my kindle. But even if I keep all the books on my kindle, I'm still fucked as I can no longer buy new books for my kindle, because if they close down and so does the kindle no one will make books in that format. Also what happens if my hard disk is wiped out? Amazon has a content manager so you can re-download the book but if amazon goes out of business and closes that then you can't, if you lose the kindle you have lost your entire library....that's not good. I probably spent well over 10,000 or 20,000 on books for my entire life. First of all to get an e-format I'd have to buy them all again. But then to tell me that if I lose my device or because a company goes out of business/stops supporting it I have to buy it all again. I say to you publishes and authors "fuck you" and a "go to hell".
I will buy an e-book when the following criteria is met:
1. The format is open. If I buy a kindle and then decide to get a sony reader, I want my library to work. I want my library to be mine.
2. The entire industry embraces this format. I have eclectic tastes in books. I want "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" available on my device, but at the same time I also want the Anita Blake series available too. I don't want some paper books and some electronic bo
Re:I wouldn't publish on Kindle if it was Open (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you RTFA? The point that O'Reilly (and others like Cory Doctorow) is making is essentially that according to his data (and he does have data), people who publish on closed platforms using DRM make less profit than people who publish on open platforms.
Yes, it's counter-intuitive. But so far, the people who use actual evidence in making their arguments seem to be showing that's how it is.
If you resent unpaid use of your work so much that you are willing to make less profit in exchange for preventing it, that's your call. But if you really do create for profit, you might want to read the article, and others like it, and think hard about it.