Time for another ideological push.
Guys, Gals. if you make a point, make the point. Dont let yourselves being sidetracked by "on the other hand - it would be reasonable to.." Let the open discussion produce those compromises, dont rush to them to avoid potential arguments in the first place. At this point in the timeline its a little late for political correctness.. Considering, that Amazon already has put every part of this thing into play and started the "let us redefine books" process about two months ago. By producing the new facts.
A good percentage of the unjust nature of what Amazon is trying to pull right now lies in the interaction of interests that a few months ago were separate entities, and now are all under the same ownership and vail of interests. Pushing societys interests out of the way. If you are a consumer only - at heart, Amazons model is ideal. If you are more than a mindless short term rational driven zombie, it is probably the worst abomination since "what publishing meant" in the dark ages. Before Gutenberg democratized the
production of books.
(Fitting headline suggestion no blog will run with, because *meh* and *sweet ad money*: Amazon, the Anti-Gutenberg, 2015 - *)
So when you argue - HEY, they are effing (please allow me the pointed phrase) every last bit of culture development and private (with the exception of themselves) or public archiving on the sector, dont let that be countered by - "but copyright law must be enforceable, so I guess..."
Yes it must be, at least to the point where it is a sufficient deterrent - and I really mean that, but before you get hot and bothered over industry laws being broken (and authors suffering because of it (Paulo Coelho at least differentiated between a for free seeding into an unknown enthusiast market and when the product is mainstream ready and your bottom line (profit) gets slashed)) - maybe take a step back and look at the aspect, that all works of culture - under the new Amazon regime - get corporatized. Moved into the de facto ownership (production, distribution, feature choice ("no - you cant copy more than, ..")) of said company.
Yes you can READ them on an Amazon produced (and in fringe cases, just registered) device, but that really is everything you get to do with it. As a person, and as a society. And Amazon aside, will - we allow this to be lost culture, twenty years from now, when Amazon does a Micosoft and tanks. Which by the way is the primary reason we drive people to remove DRM as soon as they can - because even the notion of a "reading license" isnt publicly negotiated. Not in the least.
The only reason it exists is, because those Big Shots made it up, and in the age of internet business models - users have no rights. At all. Prima facie. Not even to negotiate. (Because it is very expensive when 100000 users start sueing against your business practices, while at the same time, your business (if you dont get your monopoly gifted to you) just gets profitable at user 99000, because the lifetime value you draw from a user is sub 10 USD - (think online journalism, or app developer more than publishing house)) we - and here the retelling of the story starts to differ -
a. accepted it at face value
b. only accepted it because everyone knew that it couldnt be enforced, and a culture of teaching people how to circumvent it became broadly circulated, even in this forum.
If you want to read something, you just ask Amazon, now. Right? You buy their devices - even if people due to the lack of better knowledge or opportunities, publish f.e. scientific texts in full, only on Amazon.
In europe this discussion is provoked more easily, because right now - right now, Amazon is breaking almost all cultural regulations and user rights, previous generations have fought for - and they only get away with it, because we defined eBooks to be "something new", "something internety" that doesnt get the user side protections a paper book gets.
But the authors swallowed it. And the publishers sold off their rights to make an eBook for a cut of the profits.
So ask yourself - which of the "storylines" - Pirates eat your lunch, mostly/eBooks must at least be open enough, that not only one entity (Amazon) is allowed to produce them - has won already.
Your role now is to reflect on it, not to copy the few overly simplistic catchphrases one side or the other might produce. And if you catch yourself repeating the last sentence of a commercial you just saw at the movies - maybe, just maybe - you really are drinking the kool aid.
Its not the Pirates that are suffering, in fact Amazon is still catering to that audience, because if they would close this vector, audiences would move against it. Amazon is just permanently ruining the existing cultural landscape, by moving written content under the mantle of a ruleset they exclusively control.
They argue it brings better protection - but right now, thats mostly a bluff..
Think about those issues, dont just repeat one liners. Thats what reddit is for.
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Also azw could be opened shortly after it went into distribution as the mainstream format, partly because the authoring tools had to be seeded into the broader market, before they hit the switch.
On kfx it was an immediate, silent affair, not even broadly reported on by the product blogs that do the second hand marketing nowadays. For jump change.
Please ask yourself if - "the best case scenario for consumers is, that calibre somehow will be able to integrate reverse engineered format support a year after the broad distribution of the format was started" sounds very enticing to you.
Again - this is not a tech issue, where knowing the workaround (which doesnt exist at the time speaking) matters, this is a social issue - where adoption rate is king.
Also - no, the main purpose of the new fileformat (kfx) definitely is not to give iPad owners better pictures. Not even close. But we can also talk about the segmentation of the file format, where - Amazon, because it also owns the distribution infrastructure, can easily distribute a "book" that is cut into multiple files (and can only be read (= reproduced) that way). Greetings from the Android side of their ecosystem. So now we zip them up, then rename them and then need a recompiler just before the upload process, lets say Calibre again - so the distributed format never can be the actual format again, which means...
Maybe I should start giving away prices for answers not entirely ignoring "impact on the ecosystem"..
Or maybe to those coming up with good answers to those problems, because - all I ever end up at is -- we have lost the war.
Spectacularly so.
To add insult to injury: While the establishment was sleeping.