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Death of Mobipocket format? Alas, Amazon may follow our predictions
September 9, 2009 | 7:55 am
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By David Rothman
For many months, Chris Meadows and other TeleBlog regulars have worried that Amazon wants to ditch the Mobipocket format.
Now Amazon itself is feeding our fears—at least unwittingly—with the following notice on a signup page for eBookBase:
Effective September 2009, we will no longer open new accounts for publishers to sell titles through the Kindle Store or MobiPocket.com. If you have an existing account, there will be no change and you can continue to upload and sell titles using Ebookbase. New publishers with a US address and bank account can sign up to sell ebooks in the Kindle store via our self-service publishing channel at http://dtp.amazon.com
Months ago Chris was zeroing in on the refusal of Amazon to release a Mobipocket reader for the iPhone—the only legal way for U.S. owners to read DRMed Mobi titles in their existing collections. Here in the States, you can’t legally strip away DRM unless you qualify for a special exemption.
So what’s the big question if Mobipocket is dying? Well, what if you sank hundreds or even thousands of dollars into a collection of DRMed Mobi books, and now you can’t even read them on your new iPhone, iPod Touch or other machine? This is just one more reason to be wary of DRM—even if, in the future, someone comes out with a universal standard. DRM subordinates literature to commerce.
I can remember when people just couldn’t conceive of Mobi fading away. What does this say for the Kindle and its flagship DRM-tainted format?
One possible bright spot: Could Amazon aggressively promote nonDRMed Mobi as a Kindle format? Remember, the Kindle can already read Mobi without DRM. So you never never know. But right now, I wouldn’t bet on this despite Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 store.
Related: eReaders and MobileRead.
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Comments:
Just one more reason to buy a Kindle and buy from Amazon. Amazon continues to demonstrate that it is the consumer’s best friend and should be rewarded for so being.
Yep, Rich–best friend, as the Orwell incident proved. If your old books are taking up too much of your time, Amazon may solve the problem for you. Thanks. David
I don’t think Amazon will actually turn off the mobipocket.com servers, because that would be a public relations nightmare for them. It might be a good thing, though, for an established DRM provider to disappear now that there are circumvention tools available.
In the US, almost everyone has given up on the Library of Congress for consumer oriented exemptions. When they were asked for a rule allowing circumvention when a provider closes down, their response was that the consumer should buy a second DRM-ridden copy from another provider. This simply won’t fly with the public if a major provider goes under. However, it is probably already legal today in the US to circumvent DRM for personal non-commercial use. The problem is there is no controlling legal opinion to that effect.
Thanks, Alan. When I said death of the format, I meant from a development viewpoint. It’s is, yes, unlikely that Amazon will turn off the servers. But it won’t offer the client app for new machines–which for the end user is very bad news.
As for DMCA exemptions, I’m would advise checking with a lawyer. My recollection is that there are very very few situations where individuals can circumvent DRM. One way or another, we need corrective legislation.
Thanks,
David
It’s more likely just a revenue matter. Publishers whose uploads to Mobi are converted by Amazon for Kindle receive 50% of sales. Via the direct Kindle account, it’s 35%. Business-wise, ending Mobi sign-ups is a way to maximize the revenue stream.
Thanks, Liz. Either way, this isn’t good news for the Mobi format or its users. David
What would be the upside for Amazon to keep Mobi as an ongoing concern in a post Kindle world?
Letting people access old Mobi-DRMed books on new hardware. Thanks. David
The upside for Amazon? To -not- keep Mobi as an ongoing concern, they’d have to remove MOBI/PRC from compatible formats of the -very few- current formats on the Kindle.
The Kindle would be worthless without it. Few of us use only Amazon store books though we enjoy the ease of use there.
Since they own Mobipocket now, it seems smart to have one place for uploads in the future, in their now more tightly-reviewed DTP area.
News today is that they are dealing with the many horrifically-done public domain duplicates that have been proliferating and which have caused many complaints by customers at their forums as to quality and the confusion all those dupes cause. They’re not accepting more of the same, currently.
I’ve written my own thoughts about that development at my blog, linked at my sig.
– Andrys