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By David Rothman

Sony is a target of an industrywide U.S. Justice Department probe into alleged fixing of prices for RAM chips.

No, this doesn’t relate directly to the Sony Reader, but it’s another reminder of the need for readers and publishers to be wary of giant high-tech conglomerates—especially in “just trust us” areas such as e-book standards, including DRM-compatibility issues.

Corporate culture: Possible ‘root’ cause?

Remember, the latest investigation follows Sony’s rootkit disaster and its exploding batteries. What happened to the old Sony? I love my Clies and my late father’s decades-old Walkman radio. Sad. Is the current Sony corporate culture a contributor to the string of problems? And, yes, this is germane to e-book standards. DRM and other aspects of e-book standards are not physical objects. But like the batteries, they need careful attention and open-mindedness from the techies involved. This is why the OpenReader Consortium is in favor of moving standards to an OASIS-blessed technical committee where core standards and DRM—and yes, we need an inclusive solution for publishers insistent on DRM–would get much more careful vetting than from within the IDPF. As Jon Noring noted yesterday, IDPF‘s much-touted container format is progress, but it’s a cakewalk compared to the DRM question.

The TeleBlog will continue to be supportive of individual Sony Reader owners. Just whatever you do, however, don’t buy or keep the box while thinking that your DRMed books in Sony’s proprietary BBeB format will be as safe as, say, public domain books from Gutenberg or manybooks.net. Sony merrily gave up on the U.S. PDA market, and it could easily do the same with e-books (read up on the tribulations of a Rocket eBook owner). This is strictly a profit-minded corporation interested in the here and now.

Standards: The best insurance for Sony owners–and the e-book world in general

Genuine long-term e-book standards, with DRM included, are the best insurance that your Sony in the future will be far more than a paperweight (same for other company’s hardware). It’s essential for Sony to serve shareholders, but that doesn’t mean it will serve the e-book world in line with the interests of publishers and readers. Remember, publishers, the anti-trust investigation into RAM-price-fixing is in a B2B area.

Standard disclosure: I’m among the ringleaders of OpenReader.

And a reminder of the obvious: Sony’s being investigated does not necessarily mean it’s guilty.

(Creative Commons-licensed photo via Flickr Taken by PT.)

 
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