Thread: Amazon is destroying e-reader innovation
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Old 05-22-2014, 02:46 PM   #4
Manabi
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Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi View Post
It's DRM that's destroying ereader inovation. Without propriatory DRM on ebooks any company could build an ereader that could buy from any store. And no forcing everyone to use epub and Adobe's DRM isn't the solution. DRM not only supresses ereader inovation, it surpresses format inovation and greatly harms small independent ebook sellers. With the exception of DRM on library ebooks DRM is utterly evil. And useless for it's stated purpose.
There's a lot of truth to this, it happened in the mp3 music market. Eventually the labels realized that DRM was giving Apple a total stranglehold on the market and allowed Amazon to go DRM-free with their mp3 store. Not long after, iTunes did as well.

We'd probably see more competition in the e-book marketplace as well if DRM was dropped.

That said, I'm not sure it's all due to Amazon's monopoly. The market in the US overall seems to prefer tablets over dedicated e-readers now. So Amazon has a bit of the whole "last vendor willing to invest money in developing new e-readers" thing going on too.
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