Quote:
Originally Posted by hansl
I know that ADEPT is the only DRM supported on my Sony but many bookstores and ebook reader devices support it. It is not locked away for Adobe use only.
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Every last one of the bookstores (and device manufacturers) pays Adobe, which either comes out of their profits or jacks up the price. That Adobe tax is paid on every ebook sold forever and ever and amounts to a significant slice of the *profit* in an ebook sale. (It is a fixed amount, not a percent, so for cheap ebooks it can run 10% or more of the retailer's gross margin.)
That Adobe tax makes sense for ebook sellers who don't have the technology and resources to support their own DRM encryption, authentication, and management systems so for *them* Adobe earns its piece of the action.
But Amazon owns its technology and its own servers and its own DRM; everything Adobe does, they already do. And in some respects, they do it better. (Direct wireless shopping and delivery, device registration and management, standalone PC-less operation.) So Amazon paying for Adobe DRM is paying Adobe to do things they can do themselves in-house and cheaper. That is the very definition of free ride: getting paid to provide unnecessary services.
And the proof lies in the results: Amazon does just fine without Adobe.
The only reason why Amazon would want to waste hundreds of millions of dollars a year paying Adobe would be to try to absolutely positively kill all competing ebookstores. That would be true monopolistic behavior and would draw the attention of the antitrust regulators faster than a speeding bullet. No way does Amazon want that. And neither do we.
As is, Amazon now runs a legally clean competitive operation. It is cheaper to run than their generic competitors and they choose to pass on the savings to consumers as lower prices.
Consumers get a clear choice: buy into the Amazon ecosystem or buy interoperability. Either choice has its pros and cons but that is life. *Everything* in life is a trade-off. TINSTAAFL!!