What If Amazon Owned the Alphabet?

One of the biggest issues in e-book publishing today is the incompatibility of formats across vendors.  Right now, without invoking digital arcana and probably violating a EULA or two, I can only read my Kindle books on a Kindle or the Kindle app for my iPhone.  I can’t read them on my computer or a Sony Reader or any other device I might purchase (from anyone but Amazon).  The same is true for e-books purchased from Barnes and Noble or Sony’s online store.  The difference (see below) isn’t just in technical standards (written in malleable code) but in DRM implementation and policy (partially written in obdurate contracts and agreements).

The diversity and incompatibility of e-book formats is a pain for consumers and also threatens the renaissance of engaged reading as a basis for social and intellectual discourse (part of what sbooks.net is all about).  However, the dominance of a single format and vendor (with Amazon the front-runner) would be even worse.

The market power of a dominant non-portable e-reader is especially insidious because books are a long-term investment and the more books one buys, the more one is locked into a particular vendor and their e-reader.  This makes it hard for consumers to change and essentially crystallizes early market dynamics (where we are right now).

Having a dominant vendor and platform is bad for both readers and publishers.  For readers, we’ll find a technology which should have expanded innovation and increased choice does the exact opposite.  Instead of the innovation and growth which accompanied the open-by-design Internet, we will have progress which is slow and limited by a single organization’s strategy.  Some publishers might actually be attracted to this scenario, but they pursue it at their peril.

Publishers lose in this scenario because the market power of a single vendor/format is tremendous.   Big book chains (like Borders) and e-tailers (like Amazon) already use their scale and scope (in terms of outlets or registered accounts/credit cards) to wield pressure over publishers and limit competition (though sometimes in the publishers’ interest).  Having a dominant vendor with a non-portable format will result in shrinking margins for publishers and will hit smaller publishers (with less negotiating power) earliest, leading to reduction in choice.

As the title suggested, in the e-book world, a proprietary non-portable format is like owning an alphabet, enabling the vendor to be a gatekeeper for publishers’ access to the market.  While there will certainly be alternate channels (like ink-on-paper), the absence of an easy way to “rip” purchased books (as you can CDs) makes the advantage even stronger than for music publishing.  And because there is no portable open format (like MP3, which iTunes supported), Jeff Bezos will end up having much more power to dictate to publishers than Steve Jobs ever did, to nearly everyone’s detriment.

– Ken Haase

Geektails: One basic incompatibility is in container formats, with Amazon supporting only Mobipocket-derived formats (they now own Mobipocket, but run it as a separate business) and everyone else apparently converging on the (technically better) EPUB format.  But the deeper incompatibility is the DRM (digital rights management) which is essentially a plug-in for EPUB, so different readers may all support EPUB but still be incompatible for DRM’d books.  And with most of the publishing industry convinced that they can’t live without DRM, this means we have many flavors of incompatibility.

Google Books: “Think of the Orphans”

The much-debated Google Book Settlement (GBS) is almost a great idea. Without a doubt, it opens up a vast pool of previously inaccessible information.

To understand how great an idea the GBS almost is, I put together the following back-of-the-spreadsheet graphs:

The green represents orphans or neglected books, the blue represents public domain texts, and the orange represents in-print copyrighted texts.  The left-hand graph represents the accumulation of titles over time, separating out books in-print, books out-of-copyright, and “neglected” or orphan (a term coined by Brewster Kahle for works whose rights’ owners cannot be found). The right-hand pie chart shows the distribution across these categories in 1998, where my low-hanging data end.

The graph is based on US census data about new book titles (from 1881 to 1998, convenient abstracted by Swivel) and two assumptions: that effective US copyright is 95 years (in fact, it varies in peculiar ways) and that (on average) books stay in-print for five years (probably an overestimate). I’d be delighted to get better data or assumptions, but these seem to be in the right ballpark.

The Google Books project is such a great idea because it takes the
mostly inaccessible 82% of content represented by the green and blue
regions and makes it accessible on the web. Almost everyone agrees that the Google Book project is a great idea.  The Google Book Settlement …errr… not so much.

The GBS gives Google the right to effectively publish most out-of-print content (the green region) at limited cost and no risk of liability. Everyone else, on the other hand, runs the risk of a $150,000/infringement liability for putting exactly the same stuff out there. Critics reasonably argue that this gives Google a de-facto monopoly over much of that huge swath of content. Google argues that it’s not a monopoly because anyone else could risk the multi-millions in liability, get sued, and make their own deal for further hundreds of millions of dollars (okay, they don’t put it that way). This limits Google’s competition to bold and deep-pocketed players, which is a pretty small circle. For small tech companies (like my own, to be honest), Google’s de-facto monopoly is especially harmful because it cannot be “innovated around” like other kinds of monopolies (for instance, patent-based or infrastructure-based monopolies).

To be fair, Google’s monopoly does not extend to the public domain (the blue sliver) and the GBS will increase the public domain (turning green into blue) by identifying works which didn’t have their copyrights renewed back when copyrights had to be renewed.  It will also identify the actual rights owners in those cases where they can be found (though it’s unlikely that a competitor could get terms equivalent to Google).  However, these will likely be small advantages and the GBS still puts Google into a unique safe harbor while also making it the “publisher of default” for out-of-print books not contested by verifiable owners.

There is an alternative, which is orphan copyright legislation (HR5889 and S2913) which was making solid progress in the previous (110th) Congress and would reduce the potential liability for everyone and not just Google.  It was based in part on a report from the Register of Copyrights.  The passage of this legislation would lessen the negative impact of the GBS and unblock numerous efforts, public and private, to open up the “green field” represented in the graphs above.  Unfortunately, the GBS has taken the wind out of the sails of that legislation, which has not been re-introduced in this Congress.  Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive (whose massive book-scanning efforts preceded Google’s), a vocal critic of the GBS, recently urged Google to withdraw from the GBS and support this legislation.

There are also a variety of “author’s rights” concerns about the GBS, legal concerns about the class action suit which led to the settlement, and international copyright concern.  There are also concerns about the representativeness of the class and that the settlement is more a commercial transaction than a legal action.

The plaintiffs (represented by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers) together with Google are currently trying to modify the agreement to address those various concerns while (presumably) maintaining the central role of the plaintiffs (as class
representatives and in administering the settlement) and preserving most of Google’s (closely held) sheaf of business models. We can only hope (and lobby) that the changes are radical enough to dismantle the potential monopolies it creates and satisfy the constitutional purpose of copyright, which is to serve the public interest.

5 Things I Hate About My Kindle

Don’t get my wrong, I love my Kindle.  Its convenience — a bookcase

in my backpack — has changed the way I read, led me to to expand my

tastes, increased my book-buying, and reinvigorated my interest in

great books.  But the Kindle (and competing e-readers) still have some

big issues:

1. Navigation.  Reading linearly on a Kindle is delightful, but

scanning back or forward is painful, much more so than with a physical

book.  It’s ironic, since non-linearity is one of the hallmarks of new

media and the Kindle is awful at it.

2. Search.  Who needs navigation when you have full-text search?  Even

if this were true in principle, search on the Kindle reminds me of how

bad simple keyword search can actually be.  We’re spoiled by modern

web search engines which leverage context and linking patterns to

improve results.  Normal e-books don’t have that advantage, so search

all too often veers towards either keyword roulette or result

overload.

3. Sharing.  I like talking about books and their ideas and

consequently like to lend out or share my physical books, a kind of

interaction which is generally impossible for purchased e-books.

Being online and often networked, you would expect e-books to be more

social, but the opposite is true.

4. Ownership.  When I buy an e-book, I don’t actually own the book, I

license it.  This rules out many things that I take for granted with

physical books, like resale, long-term persistence, or other kinds of

personal control.  I’m not sure why this is so, since the copyright

applies to the content and not the medium.

5. Lock-in.  When I’ve bought a Kindle book, I can’t read it on a

non-Kindle reader (the same is true for the Sony reader), due to both

different file formats and (more significantly) different DRM (digital

rights management) schemes.  The problem with lock-in (beyond the

inconvenience) is that it substantially distorts the market, giving

vendors huge leverage over both readers and publishers.

Even with these problems, I’m still buying Kindle books and enjoying

the device’s convenience.  I’m hoping and working to ensure that new

approaches to the reading experience (sbooks.net), alternative

business models, and more open architectures will win the day.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle.  Its convenience — a bookcase in my backpack — has changed the way I read, led me to to expand my variety of reading, increased my book-buying, and reinvigorated my interest in great classics.  But the Kindle (and competing e-readers) still have some big issues:

1. Navigation.  Reading linearly on a Kindle is delightful, but scanning back or forward is painful, much more so than with a physical book.  It’s ironic, since non-linearity is one of the hallmarks of new media and the Kindle is awful at it.
2. Search.  Who needs navigation when you have full-text search?  Even if this were true in principle, search on the Kindle reminds me of how bad simple keyword search can actually be.  We’re spoiled by modern web search engines which leverage context and linking patterns to improve results.  Normal e-books don’t have that advantage, so search all too often veers towards either keyword roulette or result overload.
3. Sharing.  I like talking about books and their ideas and consequently like to lend out or share my physical books, a kind of interaction which is generally impossible for purchased e-books.  Being online and often networked, you would expect e-books to be more social, but the opposite is true.
4. Ownership.  When I buy an e-book, I don’t actually own the book, I license it.  This rules out many things that I take for granted with physical books, like resale, long-term persistence, or other kinds of personal control.  I’m not sure why this is so, since the copyright applies to the content and not the medium.
5. Lock-in.  When I’ve bought a Kindle book, I can’t read it on a non-Kindle reader (the same is true for the Sony reader), due to both different file formats and (more significantly) different DRM (digital rights management) schemes.  The problem with lock-in (beyond the inconvenience) is that it substantially distorts the market, giving vendors huge leverage over both readers and publishers.

Even with these problems, I’m still buying Kindle books and enjoying the device’s convenience.  I’m hoping and working to ensure that new approaches to the reading experience (sbooks.net), alternative business models, and more open architectures will win the day.