Amazon's vertical integration/monopoly

[notimp]

@geekmaster - thats not enough. And every time I see one of you resorting to the "this is the wrong place for this argument to be held" sentiment - for me it is an expression of we dont wan't to be involved even in thinking about the structural implications (political stuff).

While at the same time, you decide on when to release what you know about the compiler, or if you should propagate the use of formats, programs and interpreters none of you is formally allowed to understand even the tiniest aspect of.

This "do it anywhere, but dont do it in here" attitude is so problematic, because I cant do it on twitter, reddit, the Amazon forums or really anywhere aside the mobile read community - and the argument for why I shouldnt discuss this in front of the independent development and hacking community - suddently has become -

because we in here like to see ourselves as "doers" and not "philosophical thinkers". We dont want to think about the political stuff, we want the notion back, that everything we do in the end just works out somehow. You are self proclaimed "apolitical people".

Yet some of you are still asking questions, trying to wrap their heads around the issue. And every single action (maybe despite your recent premise of "bringing the best screensavers to Kindle users, open source can deliver"), trying to change the functionality of closed systems is inherently political to begin with.

If you want a simple action plan on what to do in a technical sense - reverse the .kfx interpreter on the Kindle down to the very last function Amazon built in. Then create open source tools that allow users to easily convert from and to html based file formats - to be able to obtain the ability to easily transition between ecosystems and be able to understand and produce the most current Kindle file format out there.

Oh, and do it two weeks after the release of every new file format - so using Calibre actually stays a relevant alternative.

The problem is, that you arent able to fulfill this function anymore - so instead you decided to go and work on screensavers and stop thinking about the changes that came with the recent transition.
-

To the "words are words" and you can still read them response. .kfx is a binary - right? The concept behind binaries is that you cant read their words anymore. The function of .kfx is that you can "look at words within it" on a "licensed, proprietary eReader, thats logged into an Amazon account". This isnt the function of the DRM layer anymore - it has become a function of the file format.

You just lost ".exe" for "something only Amazon can legally produce and sell, and only they are allowed to conceptually understand, write readers and interpreters for, decide the entirety of the featureset..." - congratulations, and I don't even need an infantile cow-pun to end this sentence with.

Hyphens are grammar - not a patentable feature exclusive - I don't care if the meaning "largely stays the same even without them" - I care about aspects like readability. If the "proprietary file format, you arent able to understand anymore - but that for some of you represents books" for the majority of users offers better readability than the usual "open file format" - you cant point you fingers and proclaim "the market will solve it for us". Pretty obvious, right?

Regarding distribution. Explain to me how .kfx didn't just restrict distribution to the on device store ecosystem owned and operated by Amazon - only - and how this isn't a significant change compared to their prior distribution model of "anyone can produce and sell mobi and or kf8 files - independent of the store ecosystem they plan to use - and if they want to license our DRM they can do that as well". Just shortening the issue to "not everyone should be allowed to distribute book" is manipulative - because there is small difference between "not everyone" (for a certain time frame - discuss this with @apprenticeharper) and "only a single commercial entity". A small difference consisting of at least several ten thousands of people.

Its the difference between keeping the means of production distributed, or making them and a certain grammar feature "proprietary company assents" - even you are happy not to understand anymore. How did you put it?

Your job is to put stuff into a compiler and look at what comes out on the other side of it, right? And you dont care if you understand what the compiler does, where it comes from, which license agreements you have to sign to use it, or if the end product still shows any aspects of a book for that matter.

As long as their Kindles work, people could stil photocopy their screens and OCR the results, right? As long as iPods still work, people could still listen to the music on them and replay it on their pianos?

edit: The actual shorcut that is used at this point is "Amazon still provides a loophole" - but you have no influence over how this works, how attractive it is to use, how long its viable and so on... So if you don't tell people now that Amazon has changed the premise, structural dependency increases - very quickly, because they pulled the switch on "autodelivery" without a way to opt out.

Also - the "they deliver to you the best format for every device" argument follows a technobabble logic - where in order for Kindle to process files faster (which for some reason doesnt translate to any user benefits (the only benefits are the artificially linked ones (hyphenation, ...) - you have to loose every aspect the file format would still have in common with a book. But thats stuff the compiler does - so you arent interested.

Queue the applause...

[shalym]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I understand the author/publisher/seller viewpoint of wanting to restrict access to prevent theft and maximize income. They have incentive to use DRM, proprietary data formats, and walled-garden distribution infrastructure to assure this. Not all sellers do, but Amazon does.

I just want to point out that Amazon is only one of *many* sellers that serves up proprietary data formats. Kobo, Apple, and Google Play all use proprietary formats as well if you download directly to the device/app from the store. Has anyone been able to reverse engineer Google's proprietary format yet? Has anyone tried? Or are they just leaving it alone because you are able to also download your book in epub format?

Shari

Originally Posted by jhowell

From a customer/reader viewpoint I would like unfettered access to the books I purchase so that I can assure their readability in the long term. The existing de-DRM and e-book conversion software provides this despite the seller's attempts to prevent it.

The existing situation appears to be working pretty well. Control is exerted over most customers as the sellers wish, but those customers with a strong desire can break that control. KFX won't change this. I don't see the balance of power shifting any time soon.

E-book creation has nothing to do with any of your other discussion. Authors and publishers use non-Amazon tools and formats when creating e-books. They are not being harmed by Amazon's follow-on conversion of their works to its own formats. (Other than possibly when this conversion adds undesired artifacts.)

This brings to mind an area where Amazon is actually trying to exert this control. There are two tools that Amazon provides, Kindle Textbook Creator and Kindle Comic Creator, that work entirely in Amazon's proprietary formats. They add interactive features to what would otherwise be static books. Anyone creating books using these tools should be aware that the results will be usable only within the Amazon ecosystem.

This is a better example of your original argument of Amazon trying to control the creation of e-books. To me it seems a minor issue.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by notimp

@geekmaster - thats not enough. And every time I see one of you resorting to the "this is the wrong place for this argument to be held" sentiment - for me it is an expression of we dont wan't to be involved even in thinking about the structural implications (political stuff).
- - - -

Which is another way in which you are dead wrong.

It means the discussion should not be expect in this forum. Period.
It says nothing about the willingness of anyone to enter into such a discussion in the proper place.

You are still trying to attract attention to yourself and your posts, by "writing to incite".
Just the same as when you first posted and chose the most active (at the time) thread rather than start your own.
You only where interested in seeing your post at the top of the forum index.

By now, you should have realized that the squeaky wheel does not get the grease, it gets left by the side of the road.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by notimp

Hyphens are grammar - not a patentable feature exclusive - I don't care if the meaning "largely stays the same even without them" - I care about aspects like readability.

The enhanced typesetting features tied to KFX (automatic hyphenation, kerning and ligatures) are typography, not grammar. With print books typography was handled by the publisher. With e-books it is handled by the reading device in conjunction with publisher provided instructions. Typography is not the book! Even with print books the typography varies significantly between editions of the same book and no one complains.

Amazon has changed things so that the books they sell can be rendered with a bit better typography than sideloaded books. This provides a slightly increased incentive for Kindle owners to purchase their books from Amazon, but it in no way makes sideloaded books any less readable than they have always been.

Originally Posted by notimp

Yet some of you are still asking questions, trying to wrap their heads around the issue. And every single action (maybe despite your recent premise of "bringing the best screensavers to Kindle users, open source can deliver"), trying to change the functionality of closed systems is inherently political to begin with.

What is your obsession with screen savers? Does it bother you are people are willing to spend their time working on functionality of interest to them when it isn't important to you?

It is very annoying when someone tries to step in and make themselves the leader of a group. Especially when it is a volunteer group with diverse interests that don't align with yours. Don't try to tell us what our priorities should be and how we should spend our time.

If you want to take action then YOU should take action. If you need to code and can't then learn to do so.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

By now, you should have realized that the squeaky wheel does not get the grease, it gets left by the side of the road.

But you just greased him by bumping his forked thread!

[pdurrant]

Moved to the general Kindle forum and title slightly changed to reflect the contents more closely.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Moved to the general Kindle forum and title slightly changed to reflect the contents more closely.

Thanks. This move will probably lead to a more interesting and less argumentative discussion, with feedback from many non-technical members. That is a good thing...

[Cinisajoy]

Thank you Paul. You are very appreciated.

[notimp]

Anyone? You successfully defamed the intent, the person, the reasoning, you threw out the case by popular opinion. You did't even have the guts to censor it with commitment, you did it by badmouthing and social pressure.

Then you claimed it a successful attempt in that no one in here, in the former subforum, or any other subforum for that matter, will ever DARE to touch it, or anything surrounding the issue ever again.

Get it our of your sight. Your legacy. That you are so proudly representing.

I didn't loose my temper until the very end of it, not even once - but here I say it, It was a racket from the start - a fight mostly fought about reputation between egos in a place online, where moderators get paid in reputation by explaining new Amazon features in detail.

At least for a time, you had a voice that proclaimed that Amazon switching its distribution model to filling its customers Kindles with a fileformat no one but them is conceptually allowed to understand anymore, that gets its "better readability" from barring typesetting and grammar from works not created by the company - is fundamentally noteworthy - and a sea change in the proclamation of "what books are".

High ranking mods in this thread expressively yawned, when it was explained to them that this model means, that book production itself gets centralized, that authors and publishers lose the right to create the final work. That the main format for distribution on Kindles today is a format only Amazon has any stakes, rights or interest in - and that it came to this in a process that was not openly stated, reported on or made publicly known.

People laughed about the notion of "hacker ethics" that should drive them not only towards pimping their eReaders with screensavers, or giving device support on a level Amazon product support wasnt able to provide - but to keep all books on all readers at least as open, that people would be allowed to understand and reuse them - sometime down the line. The "right to tinker" for the Kindle crowd is reserved and restricted to "everything that DOESNT have to do with books or the parsers that are used to display them".

This was done under the guise of showing a "political conscience" as being something devs and likeminded tech enthusiasts dont do. Its the californian startup mentality finally separated completely from any of its countercultural roots. Its a developers mentality of using and maintaining the net as something he does, but has no idea why.

In the end - you got people that grew up with the internet arguing against decentralization of basic means of production for information based goods. Just so they would be able to maintain their initial point of not having done anything wrong.

Why shouldnt there be the premium book that only Amazon can produce or is allowed to understand (by decree)? Wasn't that just DRM, as always?

And why should there be any action - when people would still be allowed to knock on the booksellers door and ask for a version of what they just bought, without those fancy features - but a version that actually has any properties that qualify it as being fit for archival purposes? Or being able to edit it, or lend it - or to cite large parts of it. Or to view it on any device that isn't a purpose built reader, produced by the same company that sells you the account, the format, and the access all at once?

You know a book? Do you even know what that word means?

In the later years of Aaron Schwartz there was this notion, that the most grave offense that he has made was to suggest, that information should be at least somewhat free, because of a moral imperative. That whoever made the laws against it was wrong and the decision should be overturned. That the idea of the public domain is not, that you create it in the image of a national park that you put a high fence around, with guns facing outwards. In this forum, the highest offense was seen to criticize the company that just changed the basic principle of what people understood as books for centuries. Instead it was deemed appropriate to remain silent through out the whole process.

What a tremendous story. What a tremendous victory for your cause.

Written with my heart laid into it - from apparently the person that likes to see his threads being on top of a forum. Then lets see it one more time - and guess how I currently feel.

Oh and by the way - now that this is all ending - eff Amazon, wholeheartedly, for transforming the book into something (.kfx) that much more proprietary, that much more restricted, and that much more useless as it lays on a device thats still called reader and has become a authentication and tracking platform in order to even be allowed to look at a book you bought.

This is your future, not mine. And the people above are you guides through all of it.

Its like that old saying: The best gift you can give your unborn child is a Kindle lifetime membership, so he/she gets this little edge in having more fun reading books with exclusive Kindle formatting features.

It took 30 pages and 444 posts, until the problem was successfully lobbied out of existence.

Hello non-technically inclined reader, you probably wont understand much of this - but this is what you can know about it. The importance of book making as a distributed means of expression, just got shut down - and the elite (dare I say it, it makes me laugh with anger and the bitterest undertone you've ever heard) has acknowledged that it should support it, not go against it.

Nothing more, nothing less. This is the future of Kindle books, and the promise of eBooks being taken from you. Access revoked in scale - but still possible for some odd (reffering to a small number) folks through a loophole provided by the vendor of the most popular reading device today.

[notimp]

Originally Posted by shalym

I just want to point out that Amazon is only one of *many* sellers that serves up proprietary data formats. Kobo, Apple, and Google Play all use proprietary formats as well if you download directly to the device/app from the store. Has anyone been able to reverse engineer Google's proprietary format yet? Has anyone tried? Or are they just leaving it alone because you are able to also download your book in epub format?

Thats exactly the point. You are witnessing the "appification" of books. The creation of something inherently proprietary, so you can sell access to it as a service. So you can upsell your customers on better readability as a "paid feature".

Who needs ePUB, when you can sell your customers the same book in 15 segmented blobs with no real file extension, said exclusive features and in a format that was designed from the beginning to be encrypted for the sake of being encrypted - and never become archivable, even when you reverse it.

Oh and by the way - Kindle developer "mavens", you had your time, you had your chance - to talk about this in a civil manner amongst people that would understand most of the implications this brings with it.

You decided you wanted nothing to do with it, and instead make it a public matter. Now its my turn to see if the wider public has an interest in understanding what happened during the recent months without there being much interest in reporting on it.

[Cinisajoy]

Now that you are in the correct forum,
My question shall change.
You keep saying ONLY AMAZON can produce a book using the kfx format.
That is probably true. But, does this mean that the author cannot sell it in another format on another site?

Let's try this and you might get a better response.
If I have read all your posts correctly, you are saying that kfx is evil because only Amazon uses it and it cannot be DRMed.

Now why can't someone just buy an older kindle that doesn't support that format or just buy from another vendor?

[John F]

Originally Posted by notimp

Anyone? You successfully defamed the intent, the person, the reasoning, you threw out the case by popular opinion. You did't even have the guts to censor it with commitment, you did it by badmouthing and social pressure.

Then you claimed it a successful attempt in that no one in here, in the former subforum, or any other subforum for that matter, will ever DARE to touch it, or anything surrounding the issue ever again.

Get it our of your sight. Your legacy. That you are so proudly representing.

I didn't loose my temper until the very end of it, not even once - but here I say it, It was a racket from the start - a fight mostly fought about reputation between egos in a place online, where moderators get paid in reputation by explaining new Amazon features in detail.

At least for a time, you had a voice that proclaimed that Amazon switching its distribution model to filling its customers Kindles with a fileformat no one but them is conceptually allowed to understand anymore, that gets its "better readability" from barring typesetting and grammar from works not created by the company - is fundamentally noteworthy - and a sea change in the proclamation of "what books are".

High ranking mods in this thread expressively yawned, when it was explained to them that this model means, that book production itself gets centralized, that authors and publishers lose the right to create the final work. That the main format for distribution on Kindles today is a format only Amazon has any stakes, rights or interest in - and that it came to this in a process that was not openly stated, reported on or made publicly known.

People laughed about the notion of "hacker ethics" that should drive them not only towards pimping their eReaders with screensavers, or giving device support on a level Amazon product support wasnt able to provide - but to keep all books on all readers at least as open, that people would be allowed to understand and reuse them - sometime down the line. The "right to tinker" for the Kindle crowd is reserved and restricted to "everything that DOESNT have to do with books or the parsers that are used to display them".

This was done under the guise of showing a "political conscience" as being something devs and likeminded tech enthusiasts dont do. Its the californian startup mentality finally separated completely from any of its countercultural roots. Its a developers mentality of using and maintaining the net as something he does, but has no idea why.

In the end - you got people that grew up with the internet arguing against decentralization of basic means of production for information based goods. Just so they would be able to maintain their initial point of not having done anything wrong.

Why shouldnt there be the premium book that only Amazon can produce or is allowed to understand (by decree)? Wasn't that just DRM, as always?

And why should there be any action - when people would still be allowed to knock on the booksellers door and ask for a version of what they just bought, without those fancy features - but a version that actually has any properties that qualify it as being fit for archival purposes? Or being able to edit it, or lend it - or to cite large parts of it. Or to view it on any device that isn't a purpose built reader, produced by the same company that sells you the account, the format, and the access all at once?

You know a book? Do you even know what that word means?

In the later years of Aaron Schwartz there was this notion, that the most grave offense that he has made was to suggest, that information should be at least somewhat free, because of a moral imperative. That whoever made the laws against it was wrong and the decision should be overturned. That the idea of the public domain is not, that you create it in the image of a national park that you put a high fence around, with guns facing outwards. In this forum, the highest offense was seen to criticize the company that just changed the basic principle of what people understood as books for centuries. Instead it was deemed appropriate to remain silent through out the whole process.

What a tremendous story. What a tremendous victory for your cause.

Written with my heart laid into it - from apparently the person that likes to see his threads being on top of a forum. Then lets see it one more time - and guess how I currently feel.

Oh and by the way - now that this is all ending - eff Amazon, wholeheartedly, for transforming the book into something (.kfx) that much more proprietary, that much more restricted, and that much more useless as it lays on a device thats still called reader and has become a authentication and tracking platform in order to even be allowed to look at a book you bought.

This is your future, not mine. And the people above are you guides through all of it.

Its like that old saying: The best gift you can give your unborn child is a Kindle lifetime membership, so he/she gets this little edge in having more fun reading books with exclusive Kindle formatting features.
,k
It took 30 pages and 444 posts, until the problem was successfully lobbied out of existence.

...

TLDR

I think the above is an example of why pot should not be legalized.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by John F

TLDR

I think the above is an example of why pot should not be legalized.

Since I don't smoke pot, let me translate the long post.
Mr. Notimp is apparently upset because Amazon has a proprietary format that no one has cracked. He also seems under the impression that because Amazon sends the book out in this format that the authors now have no control over their books.

Note: he started this in the developer forum for a discussion. Several of us finally realized he wanted a discussion on Amazon formats and asked that it be moved out here so everyone could if they chose to discuss this.

Ok translation of 30 pages over.

[induna]

Notimp, the reason did not elicit the response you wanted is because we found your arguments, if I can call them that, unconvincing. Full Stop. If you truly feel that your message was of such great import, you have no one to rail against but yourself for having done such a poor job at presenting it. Full Stop. You were given ample, some would say excessive, leeway to present your points, and were treated with courtesy and patience by most, until you began apparently endless jargonistic rants against those who did not agree with you. You did not try to convince anyone (at least not to my eyes), but rather inundated us with syllables and browbeat us with the same, uncompelling arguments over and over again with ever increasing hyperbole. Indicting the character of "the community" simply because it does not agree with you is simply childish IMHO.

[notimp]

Thats factually wrong and all I have to do to prove it is to point you towards the last few pages of this thread and to ask you to actually read them. Full stop might be a nice stinger to end your sentences with - but here its intended to have people not follow the argument, but instead a statement that makes this an issue with the person bringing it forward - because for the first time I am taking offense and showing a tiny bit of attitude.

When the head moderators chose to move this topic, it was not because I had sufficiently bored them with an argument that was hardly ever touched by others on the factual level, but because they literally had a revolt going on where a few important devs within this community argued it wasn't an issue they should be concerned about, because it was a tad political and not something they could fix with two lines of code.

And when the thread finally was moved, they made sure no one in the new place would touch it by fraternizing even at the very end, not addressing words that were defaming, even congratulating each other that "they had done it" - and that, finally it hadn't to be of any concern to them anymore.

They buried the intent of the move with it. Just a few postings back you can see the expressed hope, that this topic can be better discussed in a forum where people can't always shut it down by constantly complaining, that this had nothing to to with coding, hacking, or the responsibility of the Kindle dev community to keep open standards alive. (What we were responsible for that?!)

But instead you got prolonged silence, because picking it up again obviously was against forum politics (Neutral? No, not really.) and people who do - get grouped on and attacked on personal grounds. Want proof? Read this page.
-

Here are the cornerstones of the argument (refined with what additional information surfaced over the past 30 pages of this thread).

- When .kfx was released important properties of what Amazon ebooks have been (on the Kindle (plattform), never on the mobile app for instance) were irrevocably lost. Namely - an ebook being something that follows and has to contain open standards, that can be produced in a distributed fashion (the tools to produce it had to be released), that could be distributed and sold outside the ecosystem the eReader manufacturer put in place and that has a DRM layer on top of that to protect "industry interests". Not rights management (as in restricted who can even look at it) baked into the format itself. All four dropped on a dime within the last year.

- When.kfx was released, Amazon didn't talk about the transformative nature of the new fileformat, they talked about "features" that for the first time, were decoupled from firmware releases and attached to the format - although they didnt have to be. Amazon stopped selling you ongoing development on eReaders (oh sure, they will redesign the UI once in a while and provide "security fixes") and started selling you on proprietary file formats with "new and shiny features - such as, better typography (nothing they invented, mind you)".

- Amazon switched to auto delivering the new file format, not asking its customers even once if they would find the new properties agreeable, without any way for you to opt out of it and more importantly without educating the public on what changed. At all.

- While the very people reversing fileformats for "the greater good" in this very thread stated, that they don't want to release .kfx conversion code (from .kfx to other formats), because it stopped being fit for archival purposes. Again - glanced over by the people with technical backgrounds proclaiming to watch over the ecosystem with user interests in mind.

- The only reason, why any of this is still deemed "workable" by some - is because Amazon provides an intended loophole to all of this. Because they educated the small "elites" to go through a process as part of the webportal they offer, or install Kindle for PC to still get old fileformats on their Linux workstations. Its a great concept, really - because it allows them to proclaim, that nothing has happened and its still 1979 (google the smashing pumpkins song for yourself..)

-

Now - "appification" with its own twist. Googles "Android Apps" for example can still be compiled by everyone, can be independently distributed, the creation tools and specifications are open to the public, even partly open source - and what they are selling is easy access, a store infrastructure thats attractive and "present" enough - that people use it all the time.
(Google Books sells eBooks as epubs, just to remind you of that little fact as well.)

What Amazon is selling you as the product of the same process is a closed down blob, only they can create, only they can distribute, only they can sell, that authors and publishers alike buy into to to get the "most recent features" and that is utterly useless on anything other than a Kindle eReader for any other purpose than to look at it (or put one of those fancy new bookmarks on one of the pages, you know - the new patented Kindle feature that offers you "better usability without taking anything away").

All of this screams "book" to you - doesnt it?

So few people actually care what an app is. There is no versioning, no public record of prior versions, of changes made - or any way to obtain a "first draft" of a book (sorry, meant to say app). Or even a final draft for that matter, because thats what Amazon now creates when they run a book through a proprietary compiler. So few people care to look into an app, because its rather complicated - not like writing and creating an eBook which arguably almost anyone is able to, with a high schoolers knowledge of html and a universal open standard... Oh - not anymore, right?

And the most recent argument brought against it is - that we dont understand all (as in every single one of them) the other book formats by Steve and his cousins pop up store either? And the Apple store - mostly because of DRM, right. But, first the distinction between the format and the DRM layer is dropped on purpose although it is an important one - and second, we all look at the other players around us and then give the arguably most important one a pass for having started to centralize the entire eBook ecosystem around a format that only he has the rights to produce, distribute or understand. We don't look at "what we lost" - because, "others are doing it as well" serves as the only explanation the public needs.

Unethical? Who cares.

Reversing centuries of what properties books have to hold with a press statement that most people remember for having the words "more bookerly font" in them.

Then claiming, that the argument for all of this is mute - because, ... well, because what? Now that devs don't have to be scared to lose reputation for not being able to fix it, maybe we can discuss it on actual grounds of whats going on - on the golden brick path of books becoming a commodity.

But a commodity with a baked in structure that favors the majority distributer. Of all people in the chain. The distributer. Authors and publishers gave away their rights to final drafts and typography for the promise of a steady revenue flow from one distributer.

How important is Calibre, or can it remain to be, in a world where Kindles are filled with autodelivered "throw away" files that you can only look at on the device the distributer sold you (If you are logged into the right account. Sharing bookmarks and 150 letter excerpts with you goodread friends maybe, with a "insert your credit card number here" field not far removed from it) - but not a single thing else?