[darryl]

Of course Amazon wants to dominate and wants as many transactions as possible to go through them. This is the nature of a commercial enterprise. Amazon's sin seems to be that they are actually on track to achieve this, whilst their opposition wallows in their wake. The walled-garden model seems to give the overwhelming majority what they want. Convenience, but convenience that comes at a price. Were notimp calling for a boycott of all drm infected material it would at least be logically consistent, though neither practical or effective even if implemented by those few who care. EFF, amongst others, has been loudly and publicly protesting DRM for years. Their "Defective by Design" campaign is fabulous. The problem is that all but a very few of us don't care. Even if DRM becomes fully effective and cannot be broken, still people will not care. Personally I'm not into harming myself for the sake of making futile gestures.

So why has notimp directed his misguided fury only at Amazon. His earlier posts seem to indicate, at least to me, an Authors United type view of Amazon as a threat to culture, narrowing diversity. This argument has been done to death so I will answer it here with the simple statement that it has no merit whatsoever. If you want more information on this I can recommend no better place than Joe Konrath's blog where he fisks the Authors United letters and discusses so-called Zombie Memes.

And then, of course, we have the .kfx format. Another reason for notimp's call to boycott Amazon. Personally I see little difference between a kfx file and an epub encrypted with Adobe's new drm for these purposes. But, like Adobe's new drm, kfx was and still is a great cause for concern. It was considered in detail by many of us, not just notimp. Including people with much greater knowledge of this area and the format than myself. The sensible view which emerged was that reverse engineering or cracking the format if it was to happen would happen when Amazon stopped allowing the download of other formats. A boycott was simply not a serious option for the reasons I have stated above. It is still not a serious option, unless you are in to self-deprivation and futile gestures.

Today jhowell tells us that the latest verision of K4PC downloads kfx. As I understand things this could be a blessing or a curse. On the one hand one more source of kf8 and older files is gone or almost gone. We are one stiep closer to Amazon, if they choose to do so, restricting downloads to only kfx files, which as of the time of posting cannot be read on non-Amazon products, cannot be converted and cannot have drm removed. On the other hand, those who are able to legally reverse engineer the system have gained another invaluable resource to assist them in doing so.