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Kindle Chronicles interviews me
May 30, 2009 | 8:58 am
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By Paul Biba
You can find a 15 minute interview with me over at the Kindle Chronicles. It was fun to do it and Len Edgerly is a really nice guy. Here’s Len’s blurb:
Paul Biba, co-editor of TeleRead and a way-early adopter of eBooks, back when he was a globe-trotting corporate lawyer. He explains why he considers these early days of the eBook revolution so exciting, and why he and TeleRead owner David Rothman disagree on whether we should be afraid that Amazon will gain monopolistic power over the eBook industry.
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Comments:
In the podcast you made a statement in regards to the DRM issue that if Amazon “turns off their servers” that folks would lose their books.
I don’t believe that is really the case.
If Amazon goes out of business the only harm that would come to Kindle owners is if they lose their Kindle or their Kindle dies and did not have their Kindle books backed up on their pc (or elsewhere) then they would not be able to re-download them from Amazon.
The Kindle does not (to my knowledge) require polling of the Amazon servers in order to open a book on the device once it has been purchased.
I agree with your statement that with DRM folks are just renting books but that rental period is not necessarily tied to Amazon’s continued existence.
Good point, HeavyG, except that people want to move on to other readers and take their libraries with them. So while you’re correct technically, I’d agree with Paul that this is really just “rental.” Thanks. David
Regarding Paul’s comments Re: Sony’s intended wireless service for the Sony Reader: Sony is not experienced in such a service, so it’s not surprising that it’s taken them so long to implement something. But I think they’re overstating the problem if they are adamant about “not duplicating the Amazon model”: Simply adding a wireless browser capable of downloading purchased books would serve the purpose they desire, giving Sony owners the ability to download books from Sony or anyone else.
I often suspect Sony is simply being purposely obtuse and overworking ideas to death when it comes to anything web-related (Rootkit, anyone?). Considering the corporation’s resources, all it should take is a single manager that can focus a team into action… but they don’t seem to want to make that effort, probably because of the small size of the market thus far, so I don’t have much expectation of timely progress from them.
Well, maybe I should have been a bit more precise, but you could indeed loose your books. I don’t keep my books on my Kindle 2 after I read them. If Amazon turns off its servers I won’t be able to re-download the books and they are gone.
Here’s another scenario. You break your Kindle, Amazon closes its servers down. You might get a used Kindle from the aftermarket, but you would have no way of getting authorized books onto it. You just can’t copy them from one Kindle to another. The book’s PID must match that of the Kindle it’s being read on.