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By David Rothman

Original art by Enrico Mazzanti In Kindle Myths, Misinformation, the iReader Review attacks critics of the K machine. Anti-Kindle posts can in fact be plain wrong.

So who’s to blame? In many cases, none other than Amazon, some of whose customer service people wrongly told GearDiary there was a download limit per device. Amazon’s PR operation isn’t much help. Normally it ignores queries from bloggers. Whatever the reason, criticism of the company and its products isn’t always on target; and we ourselves are hardly infallible.

But, as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, Amazon’s philosophy in many ways has been a threat to the very idea of book ownership. As advocates for Kindle owners, we at TeleRead will keep speaking out even though Amazon is our major advertiser. To give one example, the company lets publishers set device limits, and in at least a few cases you can’t read your Kindle books on more than one machine. You don’t know the device limit on an individual book before you buy. Fodder for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission here in the States? You bet, unless Amazon keeps its word and changes its ways.

Amazon as the friend of eBabel

image Other issues abound such as Amazon’s refusal to stand up against publishers fighting text to speech. Also, the company has steadfastly refused to let the Kindle read the ePub format natively. This is a hardship not only on choice-minded consumers but also on small publishers, as my own can attest. It’s a real hassle—producing e-books for all these proprietary formats.

If you don’t want all your books to come from global conglomerates, then you need to be cheering for ePub to triumph over eBabel. Even the conglomerates will benefit from its ePub’s economies, and Amazon should be doing much more to promote the format’s use at the consumer level.

image Then there’s the ticklish issue of Mobipocket, which Amazon owns. I’d love for Mobi-style eBabel to vanish, but to address here-and-now needs, we still lack a way to read DRMed Mobipocket books on an iPhone despite the hundreds of dollars that unlucky consumers have individually spent on them. Why should they have to buy them all over again in Kindle format? Consider, too, the little wipeout of Adobe DRMed books that Amazon once was selling on its main site. Customers lost access to Adobe books stored in electronic lockers.

Simply put, based on Amazon’s track record, there is plenty about to be vigilant—even while appreciating the company’s many positives. Among the good points? Amazon itself shows signs of possibly wising up about ePub and making the Kindle more open. Bloggers should be encouraging this rather than trying to justify Amazon’s current preference for its in-house eBabel and its disdain for the idea of genuinely owning books.

amazonMP3store2 ePub standardization will still leave open the DRM issue, since “protection” turns even ePub into a proprietary format, in effect. If publishers insist on anti-piracy precautions, it’s far better to use social DRM than proprietary “protection” that locks consumers into one company’s offerings.

Meanwhile, even in the DRM and related format areas, I see a little hope—given the existence of Amazon’s MP3 store. The store’s tagline is, “Music Downloads for Any Device.” Exactly. No DRM on e-books, please—plus an industry standard format. That’s exactly what iReader Review should be seeking for the Kindle rather than casting aspersions on those seeking to reform Amazon (to the advantage of K-machine owners!).

 
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