[notimp]

Read through the remainder of reactions today - coming back to the community because of the obvious JB release buzz.

I dont want to prolong the discussion much longer - maybe a little bit - and maybe just give a few more people who are drawn in by the upcoming jailbreak release the chance to get their feet wet and discover that there are some highly problematic issues regarding Amazons .kfx file format, that arent going away anytime soon.

As for the current state of the discussion in here, I see that "compartmentalization" is used to pin down the argument to the current status quo - which is to say, disregard the overall structural issue in favor of the little patched open loopholes, that allow the "old guard" in here to proclaim, that the ecosystem still works perfectly well - without any need to do something about the overarching issue.

The line of arguing goes as follows -

"Why would amazon ever want to be in the public library space - they are a company" >

"Of course they use the -pay per pages read model- in their Amazon unlimited subscription line of business, but what does this have to do with selling books?" >

"Of course they auto deliver all "sold" books in a format no one but the company itself is allowed to produce anymore, but what if no one is actively using those autodelivered -kfx books?"

(This is the "we dont have to position ourselves against the format" - because we'd like to ignore its existence and demand, that the rest of the consumer market does as well (as in - not use it at all, although its the standard for auto delivery. And there is no opt out. Or opt in for that matter.))

"Of course Amazon is producing a "book", that no one but they themselves and the devices their factory lines produce can a understand anymore - and of course its the only format with certain layout benefits, which increase readability" >

"But Amazon isnt owning the rights to those books, especially in the self publishing space, the author is - so the company cant be seen as heavily tightening its grip and trying to become more and more of a content player in the industry - shedding its former role as a distributing entity and a manufacturer of reading devices."

"Of course Amazon is showing highly uncompetitive behavior in other digital goods markets they entered recently (kicking Google and Nvidia devices out of distribution, removing the most popular open source media player from their app store for dubious reasons), but they have never shown signs of not supporting the one legacy file format we need to still be able to read anything from outside the Amazon ecosystem on our Kindles."

"Of course they arent supporting those legacy file formats in terms of ongoing development, current features, or even delivery to the Kindle, without having to introduce a PC and some cables into the equation - but thats all we need to proclaim a valid perspective for the future of Kindle eReading and - "

"Of course we already have compartmentalized that there ought to be "Books" and "Books behind glass" ("its just a container for delivery, we dont have to understand it") - its the future, get with it."

And of course, whenever we speak about legacy formats in the industry - we talk about them as "being bagage", except when it comes to Kindle file formats we still understand, but that Amazon isnt directly distributing anymore - at which point they become "a valid path into the future".

I proclaim, that this community has at least a little bit of an "identity crisis" alongside the "Apple cant do anything wrong" paradigm we know in the industry all to well.

Attempts to argue, that the ecosystem is becoming increasingly problematic are being countered with "it still works for us here" (who are happy to prolong a part of the ecosystem fewer and fewer people will come in contact with) - and thats everything we should be concerned with. Mostly as tech experts.

The overall message that is needed to make this work is not congruent and entirely relies on loopholes in the new paradigm Amazon is creating to foster their concept of the future of eReading.

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Also - when I proclaim that Amazon is in no way positioned to be an entity that has cultural development or plurality of public opinion in their DNA - thats fine, because Hollywood hasnt either? Also - of course, Amazon isnt a content creator in the eBook space - they just own the current eBook (no one else can create it, no one else should be able to understand it) format in the space - and their ambitions on other sectors (digital content) should be seen entirely separate from...

Oh come on...