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I've been watching the evolution of ebooks for about ten years, and I'm beginning to think I won't live long enough to see a coherent system for ebook distribution. We seem to be taking the path of greatest resistance, climbing up the rugged, rocky face while beating each other with sticks instead of walking up the gently sloping, flower-lined path.
We may have Amazon to thank for popularizing ebooks with the Kindle, but we also have them to blame for making it an all-or-nothing game. They're trying their best to lock everyone in to their proprietary format and to buying from their store alone.
B&N's response is to create their own proprietary DRM to lock people into their store and their device. Now these two unevolved entities are battling each other like dinosaurs while consumers debate which side they need to ally themselves with.
And for what? So that we can read text on a portable device!
The free market system is fine for many things, but really, is all-out warfare really the best way to get this job done?
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