From the telegraph:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technol...+on+the+Web%29
Out of curiosity, I tried the google search he suggested and found some surprisingly slick-looking sites. Nothing I'd want to sign up to (TINSTAAFL!) but I could see a lot of mainstream folks upset at georestrictions, price fixing and other annoyances taking a flyer on these kinds of sites that monetize piracy.
The article is hardly saying anything new in pointing out that ebook readers are becoming both cheap and plentiful and ebook reading apps competent and ubiquitous. And that if reasonable legal content isn't available, consumers *will* turn to "other" sources. But since the publishers seem blind to the self-destructive nature of their recent policies, somebody needs to hammer it in, I guess. They *are* running out of time to avert a wave of ebook Napsterization.
Not sure that the impact will ever be as big as he makes it out to be but I do think that if the old turn-of-the-century Napster mindset gets fully entrenched in the mainstream, as it did in the music business, publishing is going to see some *really* dangerous times. In that respect, I think the BPHs, in particular, need to rethink their approach to ebooks and start thinking of ways to make it *easy* and desirable to buy ebooks rather than making them as pricey and inconvenient as the market will bear, as their current strategy seems to be.
I'm not holding my breath, but who knows? Maybe it *will* take a wave of Napsterization to get their attention...