[notimp]

@Cinisajoy:

Moderation actions should not be discussed publicly - is another one of those strange forum idiosyncrasies that have no equivalent in any modern western legal system and are just there to safeguard the public image of the wise judge, regardless of action.

The only equivalent in western law systems, where parties are bared to talk about how they see a specific decision process from their point of view, is when both sides reach an agreement outside of a court decision and the part preventing both parties to speak about the decision actually is often the reason for the party that has something to loose in the public eye to reach that. Or if they think, you are misrepresenting their actions and this could be considered libel.

So that forum mods and admins get this "for free" in online communities, without any way to have your case brought in front of a different deciding entity - is just, part of private house law, that states "if you don't behave like we think you should, we are a private site, so we can ban you from publicly voicing your opinion - on probably the most important online community in this field, simply on grounds of not liking you". (Or thinking it will produce dissent, or lessen our authority.) Private law rulez.

I notice that this is a common rule in most forums, its just not in the spirit of the open internet, or western law systems, that tend to defend free speech and are based on a principle of power distribution. A forum is not.
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Before I answer Cinisajoy's questions, I have to address the hackling attempt of @darryl - if you wan't to tell participents in this forum that it has a negative cachée to even talk to me - say so directly, don't try to discredit the "patience" other people show in here to engage on the issue. And preferably try to act like you are making the point to my face - and not to the "community" behind my back - as If I'm not likely to read what you are trying to do here.

Thats another form of politics - btw, called "beating on people without much public support" - or populism, a term thats just become more important to talk about in the last year alone.

Now to the questions. And thank you for reading the long post.

1. Who's pricing policy? Amazon does not set the prices, the publisher does.

You are correct, its the publishers pricing policy. I addressed it, because people are kept under the impression that with eBooks they are still buying books. With music and "digital downloads" (mostly as mp3s and not in a proprietary Amazon format, funny how that works - ) most people at least gage, that there is a difference. And they should pay less - for less. This has another angle from the german perspective as well, as in our case ebooks still fall under whats called "Buchpreisbindung" which is a regulation that maintains, that all books have to be sold for the same price (- to give smaller independent book distributers an economic advantage - funny, I wonder why that had to be regulated in the past (*hint**hint*centralization of public knowledge in private entities)). So our ebook prices are actually the same as the print book equivalent, so the contrast of the public being shortsold, by getting an unreadable binary for execution on a registered Amazon ereader instead of a Book is especially harsh. Also - I know that Amazon was maybe THE driver in n attempt to get ebook prices down, simply because to them they cost nothing. Distribution is basically free. And users pay for their internet. (edit: Remember they also had a internal strategy paper leak on establishing a "used eBook" market at one point? It basically stated, that - yes, we'd like to do that for a fee as well, because to us it costs absolutely nothing.)

2. On public domain books, Amazon is not the only place to get them.

The example there was made to underline the difference between closing down the main eBook format and making it proprietary - and DRM. Because for some reason its easy to sell to people that DRM is bad (it isn't entirely) - but if you start talking about the importance of keeping the file format open so other people besides the Amazon company can understand and even sell it - people space out. As far as the argument goes, yes you are right - but if the "most easy" way for people to get a public domain book is to "order" it in a proprietary file format - chances are that they will do that. Fast forward 10 years and look what people have in their "possession" and we are falling straight into the problem again. Its not like open formats can "compete" on the Kindle platform in nearly the same fashion.

3. You say you want a discussion but you have not said what we are supposed to do about this format.

I can tell you the recommendation I have given in the german web forum I am "originating from" and where my word counts at least a little, and that is to stop buying Amazons eReaders and eBooks, and laugh into the faces of people that are boasting with having bought one, because "if we dont" (I'm citing myself) the ebook as a "public good" (as part of the properties of a book) will probably be gone in five to ten years.

"But look there are still alternatives -" (Making the counter argument here.. ) Yes, part of why I can make the statement above in Germany is, that it is a much easier sell, to tell people to buy eBooks in an open format, with hard DRM on it, or with watermarks and no DRM at all, if there is that perspective.

In english speaking countries, Amazon has aquired much more market share and therefore dominance (you can "afford it" to release only on Amazon), and there is no immediate upshot like "you don't have to deal with hard DRM if you don't want to" you can motivate them with. Because of that "ease of use ("softlock to the ecosystem") wins every time - we even see it in here.

4. As to my comment about what formats one likes to read in was very relevant to the number of formats there are.

Interestingly, I had a similar discussion recently. The amount of "formats there are" account for nothing. Even the amount of formats "eReaders support" doesnt account for much. The reason being, that with .txt you have no layout standards that hold them to not use hard linebreaks - so .txt on eReaders might be rendered broken, in fact it is common that they are. With .docs - there is no standard that would hold Parsers to even "display the entire text". In .docs you got a comment function, a track correction function, textfields, and plenty of other stuff that almost never will be rendered on a "compatible eReader" - so there is a reasonable expectation of not "seeing the entire text" on an eReader.

The extended version of this argument concerns "ebook features" and that the manufacturer is only ever interested in further developing one format - and that this should be a format thats also publicly understood and usable without writing up a contract with Amazon. If you don't want to "rebuy" your books, because in future releases the have "better readability" - you have to make sure that the "most current" eBook format in an ecosystem stays open. (Either by design or by reverse engineering.) Probably the largest part of getting this to happen is, that you make sure that you have distributed stakes in the file format. Ie - that multiple instances and people have the means to produce it (publishers, authors, hobbyists, ...) Amazon has "turned that off" with .kfx and centralized the process entirely - as by now, we hopefully all understand.

5. I should really report your previous post for violating the rule on publicly discussing moderators decisions.

See the first paragraphs of this post.

6. Will you please in one or two sentences tell us what we should do about that format?

Not use it, not buy it - and not hold up Amazons charity "legacy format download portal for informed users" up as a valid solution. I know that it is hard to talk formats in a "service economy" - but no, you are not buying the right to an azw3 or a mobi, anywhere in the contract - those are breadcrumbs Amazon is giving out easing the transition.

You can identify it as a transition more easily if you look at azw3 and mobi as what they are - legacy formats (azw3 basically replaced mobi, and this community didn't even flinch, when they lost ixtabs hyphenation and border hacks - because .mobi was soooo out at the time - but now, while the entire (give me that rhetorical vice) Amazon economy runs on .kfx - people suddenly think that azw3 is this "special standard" that has almost ever lasting appeal -

as soon as people arent willing to buy azw3s anymore - because they miss ease of use, or "features", you already have lost without noticing (and Amazon decides both, when they stop legacy format support on Kindles and in the "hidden" distribution portal, that makes it so easy to get a "book" out of their ecosystem still, you just, log in - twice, that download a file to a computer, or a legacy Kindle, then you take out your USB cable -- and have your usage of that model protocoled until Amazon decides they can cut it, because it doesn't make any economical sense for them to keep it up. Like - tomorrow).

Thinking that a web portal from the nineties, and a process that involves a computer and a USB cable is "the way into the future", is pretty much - I don't wan't to say delusional again, but - well, you know my stance...