It is a both and.
Amazon opened the ,market and did not DRM the files but still has
control of the files, but they dictated the price of the
book. Publishers did not like this as they felt Amazon was
underpricing new releases and did not want this. Similar to the
distributors of movies (MGM etc.,) who has locked out Redbox, and is
now reaching agreements with Netflix to delay the release of rentals
for new releases. They felt that by flooding the market with rentals
they diluted sales of new releases which typically sell more in the
first month.
Here comes Apple which enforces DRM pretty strongly and then allows
publishers to set their own price mark for the books.
That is where the two sides are having the disagreement. Cost of books.
Stewart
At 12:04 PM 2/5/2010, you wrote:
I think that publisher had its fight with Amazon over the issue of
who controls the pricing. Apple isn't locking out any other e-book
vendors. Their books will use the open ePub format, so just like
you can do now with non-DRMed MPG and AAC files, you
probably will be able to buy books from many vendors and import
them into iTunes to put them on your iPad. For proprietary formats
like Amazon's, there is already a Kindle Book App for iPhone and
supposedly a forthcoming Nook app. If their makers are smart
they will scale the apps up to the iPad, since they wouldn't want
to lose content sales.
I am more worried about DRM. I think it would be ideal if Apple
were able to handle books the same way they do their music,
which is to not have DRM but to tag the content with account
information to discourage abuse. But the publishers may insist
on something stronger than that, like they mostly do for video
content.
Rev. Stewart A. Marshall
mailto:popoz...@earthlink.net
Prince of Peace www.princeofpeaceozark.org
Ozark, AL SL 82
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