Two contrasting articles on eBooks
2004-07-29 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearFirst, there's a clueless article by Sanford May on gizmodo, followed for your amusement by a clueful deconstruction by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing.
May is basically saying that what eBooks need to succeed is DRM that's less draconian than Sony's, but DRM nevertheless. He goes so far as to say that "If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period." Publishers may want it, but the public doesn't, and the eBook industry (which doesn't exist yet), doesn't need it.
All people really want -- or need -- is a lightweight, inexpensive, comfortable reader that they can load up with HTML. Plain, vanilla HTML web pages, like the ones they read in their browser all the time. The first manufacturer that figures that out will sell readers by the truckload. Publishers who can't figure out how to sell into that environment will go bust, while the ones who can, like Baen, will thrive. Authors will eventually insist on sample-based compulsory licensing schemes like the one, nearly a century old at this point, that makes radio broadcasting of music profitable for songwriters.
[edit] In the absence of a licensing scheme that makes free downloads directly profitable for authors, what's likely to happen meanwhile is that more books will be sold with pointers (barcoded URLs, perhaps, or RFID chips) in them to the downloadable version (just as now you can rip a CD after you buy it). Eventually you'll see books sold as CD-ROMs or memory cards (you can already buy reference books for PalmOS this way).
May is basically saying that what eBooks need to succeed is DRM that's less draconian than Sony's, but DRM nevertheless. He goes so far as to say that "If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period." Publishers may want it, but the public doesn't, and the eBook industry (which doesn't exist yet), doesn't need it.
All people really want -- or need -- is a lightweight, inexpensive, comfortable reader that they can load up with HTML. Plain, vanilla HTML web pages, like the ones they read in their browser all the time. The first manufacturer that figures that out will sell readers by the truckload. Publishers who can't figure out how to sell into that environment will go bust, while the ones who can, like Baen, will thrive. Authors will eventually insist on sample-based compulsory licensing schemes like the one, nearly a century old at this point, that makes radio broadcasting of music profitable for songwriters.
[edit] In the absence of a licensing scheme that makes free downloads directly profitable for authors, what's likely to happen meanwhile is that more books will be sold with pointers (barcoded URLs, perhaps, or RFID chips) in them to the downloadable version (just as now you can rip a CD after you buy it). Eventually you'll see books sold as CD-ROMs or memory cards (you can already buy reference books for PalmOS this way).
