Jeeze, the more you think about this the (sorry!) stupider it sounds. Don't those folks *ever* get out of their conference rooms?
It kinda strikes me that *this* is the way they start to promote the vitues of epub3? I can just see the headlines: "
ePub3 turns your ebooks into spyware! Video a 11!" Or maybe; "
Is your Nook spying on you?"
And, of course, where is this going to raise the most hackles? Right: europe, just about the only place left where epub's interoperable "standard" status has any commercial traction. Easy to see News Corp's HarperCollins getting into a fight with Amazon for not letting their Kindle editions phone home, right?
The timing is just...awful. For epub loyalists, anyway.
(Or an awful one for everybody.)
What was it that Bezos said about Kindle staying proprietary? Something about it letting them innovate on *their* terms? These guys are making him look real good, right now. As if Amazon needed any more consumer clout...
ePub3 actually brings a *lot* of good things, most of which are also coming to KF8. (But not Javascript.) But instead of touting smart layouts, better magazine and textbook rendering, and all the other consumer value adds, they chortle publicly about its spyware value?
It's going to be a good year for Jeff Bezos.