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‘Kindle in danger of becoming e-books’ Betamax,’ says WSJ.com commentator: ePub, anyone?
August 10, 2009 | 8:24 am
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By David Rothman
Remember Prodigy? How invulnerable the online service appeared?
But America Online and the Internet walloped Prodigy, although AOL needed to Net-tize itself to survive.
Industry-wide standards are good. How about the war between Betamax and VHS, where the latter won—to the benefit of consumers and Hollywood alike?
That’s why I’m rooting for Amazon to do ePub, as CEO Jeff Bezos kinda hinted it might. Now, in WSJ.com commentary republished in MarketWatch, Brett Arends is more or less saying the same thing. “What happens if you buy a lot of books on your Kindle and then decide to switch to a different e-book reader from another company using the rival ePub format?” Sony, Bookeen, BeBook, Astak—a slew companies are embracing ePub via Adobe Digital Editions.
“I think Amazon has overestimated their power in the value chain," Arends quotes the Gartner Group’s Allen Weiner, an e-book specialist. "I don’t think their proprietary format is going to have the ability to compete with ePub if that’s offered by everybody else."
Mind you, this isn’t nirvana yet. ePub needs to avoid DRM—which turns it into a proprietary format in effect (the situation with Adobe Digital Editions in regard to DRMed books).
Social DRM, the embedding of customer names and addresses in e-book files, could be a substitute if need be. Then ePub would truly be a standard, as opposed to the danger of yet another conflict between Adobe-DRMed ePub and, say, Amazon-DRMed ePub. Already B&N is on the way to DRM-wrap ePub for eReader.
But at least a DRMed standard format is better than a DRMed proprietary format, since the social DRM for best-sellers—or, better, no DRM—can always come later. If Jeff Bezos is really smart, he’ll confound the devil out of his rivals at Adobe and open up store selling DRMless ePub, just as he commendably offers DRMless MP3s.
Speaking of ePub: I’d love to see the IDPF tell more how how it will handle the issue of cloud computing and deal with issues such as embedded fonts in that environment. First hand, via OpenReader, which I co-founded, I learned that the usual suspects, yes, the corporate “suits,” needed to be involved in standards development; and I remain supportive of the IDPF for that reason. But I remain grumpy about the IDPF’s pokiness in advancing the ePub standard, and I’m still grumpier about the miserliness of the book industry toward standards development via the group.
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Comments:
“How about the war between Betamax and VHS, where the latter won—to the benefit of consumers and Hollywood alike?”
And how many people still use VHS machines to watch movies? Can’t even buy or rent VHS movies anymore.
How long will DVD’s last? It seems the future is movie distro via the net.
How long will the Kindle last? Don’t know and as the owner of multiple Kindles not really too concerned.
Heck, HeavyG, I’m happy that you’re budgeted well enough not to worry about the lifespans of your multiple Kindles. Not everyone is as lucky.
As for VHS VCRs, I still use mine for time shiping. And, yes, legal VHS tapes are still on sale at Amazon and elsewhere. Example: http://www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Columbus-VHS-tape/dp/B002JAXG50/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1249926889&sr=8-2 .
Thanks,
David
Pretty much any hardware device is going to be superseded by another device sooner or later… or, as I’ve come to say a lot lately, “This year’s iPhone is next year’s Razr.”
That’s why making every effort to standardize formats is so important: If your hardware goes the way of the dodo (or the Commodore 64), your files will still be readable on your new device.
Oh, and by the by… David, though I applaud your efforts to rid the planet of onerous DRM, I don’t think social DRM has any point to it, because it simply doesn’t stop dishonest people. Might as well have no DRM at all, than go through the trouble of tacking “Property of Skippy with bogus credit card numberz” into the file…
Yes David, some people still use VHS and you can still find some items released in the VHS format.
The point is that VHS has had its day in the sun – it is a dying (but not quite dead yet) format.
People can still buy buggy whips. However, I doubt the number of buggy whip SKU’s sold is quite as high as it once was.:)
All of these devices and formats are transitory. The life cycle of most of these things seems to be growing shorter and shorter.
I also have doubts about the longevity of any so-called standardized format. Seems to me once you get much beyond a plain ASCII file you’re asking for trouble!
Steve J. and HG:
S: Totally agree re ePub and the parade of gadgets. It’ll make it easier for consumers to keep up with new hardware without being format jockeys. As for social DRM, I’d respectfully disagree. It’s less intrusive than traditional DRM and should remind people that intellectual property is–property (unless released into the public domain). I believe that can make a difference.
HG: Heck, ePub is at least a start and can evolve over the years. Certainly it would simplify life for consumers and make them more likely to trust e-books.
Thanks, both of you.
Tired of the Tower of eBabel,
David
“Industry-wide standards are good. How about the war between Betamax and VHS, where the latter won—to the benefit of consumers and Hollywood alike?”
yeah, and how about the war between Kindle and Sony Reader, where the former won–to the benefit of consumers and publishers alike?
The point is, VHS was not an open standard. Sony Corp had one set of patents, and JVC/Matshushita had another, and one of them won, and we all had to put up with paying for the VHS licensing fees thereafter.
So, if Amazon wins, they can license out their proprietary format (as they have begun to do already with the iPhone Kindle app) and we all have to put up with paying them licensing fees thereafter.
DRM is the real evil here, and the publishers all want DRM, and they want it in the worst, most evil forms we can imagine. Publishers, I bet you, have no problem whatsoever with devices erasing books in your collections, as it will make possible online lending libraries for rental of books, as well as textbooks that disappear themselves at term’s end.