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By David Rothman

Wade RoushBoosters of proprietary formats love to say that the e-book business will do just fine if the hardware is right. Yes, better screens will help. But it also won’t hurt to tear down the Tower of eBabel and banish Draconian DRM.

If you want an eyewitness account from someone who witnessed the Gemstar e-book debacle, very much eBabel- and DRM-related, then I would heartily recommend an MIT Technology Review post from Wade Roush (photo). Yes, he’s the same guy who, along with Glenn Sanders, ran the late and lamented eBookWeb.

Read Wade and see why consumers, schools and libraries should steer clear of Sony’s forthcoming e-book machine unless those people can show they’ll use an open approach. Wade doesn’t really address the format issue head on. But he might as well have–with his mention of the need for economical and convenient reading. What’s more, do you really want to trust your DRM to Sony?

How sad, I remember the Sony of yore, the innovator that gave us the Walkman and many other marvels–I still own a beautifully crafted Sony AM-FM portable that my late father bought many years ago. And off eBay, I purchased a wonderful used Clie NX60/U for $135 with 320×480 screen resolution. You can still find Sony PDA bargains, just so you know that this troubled company has withdrawn from the U.S PDA market.

Related: Note at the bottom of the just-made Audible post–complaining about Sony’s anti-social ways, which, if libraries are not careful, could jack up their e-book costs.

Disclosure for latecomers: I’m among the ringleaders of OpenReader, which Jon Noring and I started in part to help the world avoid Gemstar-style messes.

 
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