-------- Forwarded Message -------- > From: Libby Reinish <li...@fsf.org> > Subject: Article: Price Fixing Won’t Open the E-Books Market, But > Dumping DRM Just Might > Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 16:51:51 -0400 > > http://www.project-disco.org/competition/071013-price-fixing-wont-open-the-e-books-market-but-dumping-drm-just-might/ > > The single biggest distortion in the e-book market goes unmentioned > over all 160 pages of the ruling U.S. District Judge Denise Cote > handed down this morning, holding Apple guilty of antitrust > violations. > > That flaw is not the way Apple conspired with publishers to raise > e-book prices and force Amazon to switch to an “agency model” that > stopped it from selling titles below cost. No, it’s the “digital > rights management” restrictions that have served to plant Amazon on > its current perch and built a wall of incompatibility around it. > > We’ve seen this movie before–and been unable to watch it on the device > of our choice. > > The crimes that Justice Department alleged aren’t fictional, and Cote > cites convincing evidence of them in her ruling. But Amazon’s > disproportionate influence over the e-book industry–the problem that > Apple and publishers Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, > Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Penguin Group set out to fix–is real > too. > > And attempts to undermine Amazon’s pricing, even if you think Apple > did nothing wrong, aren’t the best way to solve it. > > Consider the choice you face today. Just as the DoJ alleges Apple and > the publishers wanted, prices are effectively equal between > Apple’s iBookstore and Amazon’s Kindle Store: Among the top 10 New > York Times fiction bestsellers on Wednesday, eight cost the same in > each shop and two cost slightly less at Amazon. > > So you’re unlikely to decide that way. The presentation of these > titles varies little–neither store has gotten around to allowing > custom fonts in books, much to the dismay of typographical dorks like > myself. > > What does vary is how widely you can read these books. There, Amazon > peels, cores and dices Apple. > > Beyond its own Kindle tablets, the Seattle retail giant provides > free reader apps for iPhones and iPads, Android phones and tablets, > Mac OS X, conventional Windows and Windows 8′s Start-screen interface, > Windows Phone, BlackBerry and the newer BlackBerry 10 and even Palm’s > long-dead webOS–plus an HTML5 Cloud Reader that should work in any > modern browser. > > Apple, meanwhile, lets you read in iOS. Period. You’ll have to wait > until OS X Mavericks ships this fall–a good three and a half years > after iBooks debuted with the first iPad–to read your iBooks on > Apple’s own desktop or laptop computers. > > So, duh: The Kindle Store it is. And every single download of a Kindle > e-book reinforces that dynamic—why have to switch from one app to > another to read different titles? > > Apple could rethink its bizarrely limited distribution and acknowledge > that men and women of good will may use other companies’ operating > systems. (Competitors such as the shrinking Barnes & Noble aren’t as > restrictive in their support, but they still can’t match Amazon here.) > > But the smarter play would be to push publishers to go through DRM > detox (yes, you’ve read this from me before in 2011 and again last > year). If I could buy a title off iBooks and know I could open it or > convert it to open in any e-book app, even Amazon’s–and retain such > fair-use rights as the ability to loan or sell the book to other > people–the Kindle Store would have no chance. > > That should sound exactly like how Apple’s iTunes Store and Amazon’s > MP3 store work. But it wasn’t that many years ago that abolishing DRM > in music downloads looked like an impossible task. > > So far, the publishers have made major record labels look like an > innovative and daring lot. (Judge Cote’s ruling does reveal that they > abandoned the “foolish and even dangerous idea” of delaying the > release of e-books until after paper copies go on sale, so they’ve got > that over the movie studios.) Last year, however, the MacMillan > imprints Tor and Forge somehow misplaced the DRM-forever memo, > followed the example of such independent publishers as O’Reilly > Media by dropping DRM from their titles, and have done fine without > that crutch. > > The other publishers have already lost the fictional protection of DRM > in many cases but don’t seem to realize it. The encryption > on Kindle and iBooks downloads has long since been compromised; > cracking one of those titles may not be easy, but it doesn’t have to > be to enable commercial-scale unauthorized redistribution. > > It’s gotten less attention that Amazon’s own Cloud Reader for Kindle > e-books apparently doesn’t impose any DRM beyond only sending a > chapter of a book at a time. > > The publishers now have a choice. They can keep whining about Amazon’s > power while insisting on a pointless technological measure that > cements its continued domination of the industry–even as Amazon > continues to elbow publishers aside by inviting authors to publish > through its own imprints. > > Or they can give a competitor a chance to do to Amazon what Amazon did > to iTunes when it offered DRM-free music from all the big labels a > year before iTunes. > > > -- > Libby Reinish > Campaigns Manager > Free Software Foundation
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