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Is the Kindle potentially a censor’s friend?
December 6, 2007 | 11:46 am
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By David Rothman
No, so far, the feds aren’t censoring political books—just snooping on the reading habits of some airline passengers and others. But what about the future? This is an issue like nuclear war. Washington almost surely won’t vanish tomorrow in a mushroom cloud, but it’s healthy to be vigilant.
And so I don’t mind POing Amazon and others by noting that with a centralized DRM system and an eagerness to dominate the book business, the company could unwittingly become a censor’s friends despite Jeff Bezos’ laudable determination for this not to happen. Remember, Jeff won’t always be Amazon’s CEO. Beyond that, he isn’t the guy in the Oval Office—the one whom the father of Reaganomics fears might declare martial law if the circumstances are right. As a censor’s friend, the Kindle is far, far worse than the Sony Reader, which at least lets you read DRMed files on your PC. With the Kindle you can use only your tablet to read a “protected” book. It’s the perfect technology for mainland Chinese, who, by the way, are already gung ho on e-books as cheaper alternative to paper.
Wisdom from ZDnet blogger
Now, from David Berlind at ZDNet, complete with a Fahrenheit 451 reference, comes thoughtful reflections on the Kindle’s potential for censorship: “What if some of those books or all of them were only available in digital form and tied to some sort of digital rights management system (a form of which is undoubtedly running as a part of Amazon’s Kindle infrastructure). Instead of hunting down all the books, the censor would need little more than a mouse click. And for good measure, maybe the censor might destroy the public networking infrastructure. Fahrenheit 1981.4 is the temperature at which copper melts.
“Not that I think the world would ever get there, but suddenly, the same technology that holds promise to ease many burdens including those on Mother Earth is also the technology that lowers the barrier to censorship. Conversely, once books are digitized into bits, it’s easier for those bits to sneak into highly censored societies.”
Related: Ray Bradbury on Fahrenheit 451: ‘I wasn’t worried about censorship—I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV’, an earlier TeleBlog post. Also see Some publishers want stricter DRM: Kindle effect?
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Comments:
If we as a society put ourselves in the described position (only server based drm’ed books) we deserve whatever we get.
Personally I profoundly doubt that Kindle in the current incarnation (expensive and drm ridden) will be more successful than Sony – let us not forget that Sony500 was sold out for a while and then got to the 50$ bargain bin.
When you can read books with your eyes only and online used book stores and online discounts made book purchasing much cheaper than ever, there is no reason to believe that a 400$ device and 5-10$ ebooks will be a mainstream hit.
I’m not sure I follow this. Can’t Kindle users download eBooks from their PCs, using the USB cable just like on the Sony? Isn’t the direct-buy model just one alternative (not too different from the Sony Connect model?). Maybe the Kindle is, or can be, equipped with spyware that would report back to Big Brother on what non-approved content was being read.
I’m all in favor of a bit of paranoia and would love to see Congress or the Supreme Court make it clear that the privacy of our reading choices are very much protected under the first amendment. Still, I’m not sure that singling out the Kindle as especially dangerous is the most helpful means of achieving these goals.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Hi, Rob. It’s Amazon’s well publicized willingness to use spyware that concerns me. Amazon and people who hacked it could potentially find out not just about your Amazon books but other content, including perhaps annotations and bookmarks—not just titles. Remember, too, that DRMed Amazon content is readable only on one device. In one swoop Amazon can disable access. At least with the Sony you could keep other “authorized” gizmos offline and go on reading your content. But, yes, the other companies’ devices have their own risks—yet another reason why, although I support interopable DRM if the publishers keep insisting on it, I’m not the technology’s biggest fan.
On another topic, keep us posted on your Kindle-related sales. I’m eager to tell people about the pros, not just the cons! You could even write something on that for the main part of the blog. For the sake of balance, I actually want to see MORE pro-Kindle stuff here.
HH!
David
>>>let us not forget that Sony500 was sold out for a while and then got to the 50$ bargain bin.
AFAIK, those were refurbed units. If you go to ebay, prices for even *used* 500s are shockingly high (perhaps they are being bought by people with Euros for whom even those prices are a steal, given that the US Dollar is now the toilet paper of world currencies).
Thanks for the new link to that XO, David. I’d heard of that weeks ago. Others have stated we’re headed down that road even a few *years* ago.
And don’t poo-poo David’s concerns. I’ve commented here elsewhere that the future will probably mean *all* ebooks will reside in The Cloud, with read-only temporary versions on your local device of choice. Some of you will begin to question your sanity when you re-read a book and notice things have changed (oh, yes, books will have version numbers, baby!) — did you imagine it, will anyone believe *you*? Ha.
>>>I’ve commented here elsewhere that the future will probably mean *all* ebooks will reside in The Cloud, with read-only temporary versions on your local device of choice.>>
And the Singularity will come and we will live happily forever in tech paradise!!
Also we were supposed to have personal flying cars by now (forgetting for example that air traffic is so hard to manage among other issues)…
Not to come as a Luddite, I love e-books and read quite a few of them on my 770 (any text based), my iTouch (pdf’s are excellent here) and once in a while on my Sony (too slow, no backlight) but we are far, far away from the above mentioned Cloud, and in 5-10 years from now who knows what will be in fashion…
When commercial e-books will be more than a footnote in publishers revenue, it will be time to worry about Kindle’s effect on society, right now I profoundly doubt it will have any.
The recipe is bad, but it is not a problem. People will bite, chew and swallow it as best they can, but the Kindle approach is basically indigestible – it will all come out in the end.
The recipe writer, the cook and the cake-shop owner’s are all managers, doing what managers do best – cocking things up, turning perfectly good ingredients into putrid melanges.
I thought the design was ugly, but ugliness is a passing thing, then reviews pointed out it was also awkward – this does not fade, but aggravates increasingly with prolonged use.
It seems that from conception to final product Kindle is in every sense a business project, and looks like it. Control of content and control of customers goes hand in hand, but when it comes to such controls which reader wants such restrictions? Which reader could live for long under such a regime? Not many and not for long.
But let it sell, be advertised and touted, it will encourage demand some thing much better, and in the end that will be all to the good.
>>>but we are far, far away from the above mentioned Cloud, and in 5-10 years from now who knows what will be in fashion…
And still, when it happens, you will have forgotten this exchange and that it was I who warned you. I am cursed with memory.