Mobipocket dominance?

[mrdini]

I was reading the thread/petition for Mobipocket on the Sony PRS-5xx readers & it got me to thinking...

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The prevalence of the Mobipocket format is bad for the ebook reader market.
Discuss.
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A few bullet points... (Too lazy to write out several paragraphs of text at the moment!)

• Amazon owns Mobipocket AND the Kindle. So it's in their interest to see the Kindle succeed. So why invest in long-term Mobipocket support for other devices, unless it is to ensure upselling to the Kindle from another ebook reader.
• Mobipocket DRM is fiercely protected. It is somewhat of an open secret that Mobipocket DRM can be the only DRM mechanism used on a specific ebook reader.
• Mobipocket has shown little/no interest in supporting OS X. Boo!
• There seems to be near-fanatical insistence by people for ebook readers that support Mobipocket. (I'm personally not sure why this is the case - I own no Mobipocket books, have no issue finding stuff to read in alternative formats and have no desire to buy mobipocket books).

Granted, the last point may be inflammatory but in any case, I look forward to hearing what people have to say regarding mobipocket :P

[Barcey]

Mobipocket is a proprietary format but I wouldn't say they are any worse then any of the other proprietary formats. As a consumer you should want a single open standard format that can be read anywhere. Second choice is to have your reader support as many formats as possible. It's natural that people want Mobipocket support so they can still read their e-books they've purchased for other devices.

I would argue that Mobipocket has one of the widest cross platform support in the industry and that's why they've become as large as they have. I would also say that most of the platforms they support they are not the only DRM mechanism on the device. I imagine that it costs them a lot to port their software to a new device and support it ongoing so I'm not surprised they would give preference to devices where they are the only DRM mechanism. They'll also give preference to the larger market devices like the iPhone where they have a better chance of being a primary player.

I'm being diplomatic I do believe the reports that they are hard balling the dedicated reader vendors but I haven't seen Sony offering to port the BBEB format to other devices either. It's the games proprietary format vendors play so onward open standards.

[mgrunk]

I had mobipocket and microsoft reader on my htc wizard last year - both w/ DRM content and they seemed to play together fine. At this point, I choose to buy the drm titles I want in mobipocket format since that's the only format that I've not lost my drm books when I've moved from device to device.

Michelle

[Over]

• Amazon owns Mobipocket AND the Kindle. So it's in their interest to see the Kindle succeed. So why invest in long-term Mobipocket support for other devices, unless it is to ensure upselling to the Kindle from another ebook reader.
  
  Why is this bad?
  
  
• Mobipocket DRM is fiercely protected. It is somewhat of an open secret that Mobipocket DRM can be the only DRM mechanism used on a specific ebook reader.
  
  That sucks but... If it's the only secured format you'll really need, what's the problem?
  
  
• Mobipocket has shown little/no interest in supporting OS X. Boo!
  
  That sucks too. But... You can still drag and drop ebooks/music/pictures on the ereader.
  
  
• There seems to be near-fanatical insistence by people for ebook readers that support Mobipocket. (I'm personally not sure why this is the case - I own no Mobipocket books, have no issue finding stuff to read in alternative formats and have no desire to buy mobipocket books).
  
  Well, it's much more convenient to have few formats available. The more formats, the harder it will be to manage everything. And it hurts the ebook's availability: some titles will come out in Mobipocket only, others in eReader format, others in... Also, the Mobi ebooks, so far, offered me the best formatation.

[kovidgoyal]

I say more power to mobipocket since it is trivial to strip DRM from mobipocket files (literally 100 lines of code). EPUB and BBeB on the other hand have still to be broken.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

You don't have any other reason to like Mobi besides "it's hackable"?

Personally, I like the fact that it is readable on more platforms than most e-book formats, making it more ubiquitous than most (if not all) formats. The preponderance of ubiquitous formats helps provide less incentive to create new ones, keeping the tower of eBabel from getting bigger.

[HarryT]

I don't know what I'll be reading my books on in 5 years' time, but I can be pretty certain that there'll be devices available then which will read MobiPocket. I don't feel at all confident saying the same for Sony Reader BBeB books.

[mrdini]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know what I'll be reading my books on in 5 years' time, but I can be pretty certain that there'll be devices available then which will read MobiPocket. I don't feel at all confident saying the same for Sony Reader BBeB books.

I _may_ be wrong, but in order to transfer your DRMed books to a new device, you need to ask the original store to regenerate a new mobipocket book for you.

Therefore you can only transfer books for as long as the store is in business?

[HarryT]

That is correct for DRM-protected books, but the vast majority of my books don't have DRM. It's not from the DRM perspective that I like MobiPocket, but from the viewpoint of not having to change the format of all my books if I buy a new device.

[kovidgoyal]

The problem I have with Mobipocket becoming a ubiquitous format is that I highly doubt that it will, in the long run. It has several technical shortcomings that I have detailed in other threads. Amazon itself has created a new ebook format (Topaz) to address some of these shortcomings (notably embedded fonts, and probably also the really weak DRM).

In fact, if I were advising someone on an ebook format to use for archival purposes I would strongly urge against Mobipocket. In the world of digital information, ubiquity at a certain time is no guarantee of future longevity, format shifting is simply too easy.

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That is correct for DRM-protected books, but the vast majority of my books don't have DRM. It's not from the DRM perspective that I like MobiPocket, but from the viewpoint of not having to change the format of all my books if I buy a new device.

Then lrf or mobi won't really matter - I'm sure Kovid will finish lrf2html sooner or later. As long as you can go from proprietary file to some intermediate well-known open format you're safe.

And at some point you are either going to encounter/want a device that doesn't have mobi, or (in the longer run), the format is going to be superceded by something that is better and offers something you really want. And like Kovid says, it is not like both formats are perfect - lots of room for improvement.

But in a larger sense, this is why open well-documented formats are important - because it will enable someone in the future to build something to parse it and access the contents.

[HarryT]

I have no technical issues with converting my books to other formats, AZ; I just don't want to have to do it. That's why I've standardised, personally, on Mobi as my reading format, and made the decision to only buy devices which support it.

[acidzebra]

I got that Harry - and I predict that within 5 years you will have shifted everything to a better format.

[HarryT]

For reading fiction, I find the Mobi format to be entirely satisfactory. I am of course aware that there are things it won't do, such as font-embedding, but my need for that is, at present, non-existant. Should my needs change in the future, then of course I'll review the situation.

I've been reading books in Mobi format for a lot longer than 5 years already, so I don't see any particular reason it shouldn't last me another 5 years.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The problem I have with Mobipocket becoming a ubiquitous format is that I highly doubt that it will, in the long run. It has several technical shortcomings that I have detailed in other threads. Amazon itself has created a new ebook format (Topaz) to address some of these shortcomings (notably embedded fonts, and probably also the really weak DRM).

In fact, if I were advising someone on an ebook format to use for archival purposes I would strongly urge against Mobipocket. In the world of digital information, ubiquity at a certain time is no guarantee of future longevity, format shifting is simply too easy.

That's more like it! ...I guess.