Amazon's vertical integration/monopoly

[elborak]

Originally Posted by Rizla

on the thread about the jailbreak that has not been released because Amazon told the author not to

That's an inaccurate characterization of the situation. The finder of the exploit gave Amazon an opportunity to issue a fix before releasing the exploit to the public. Amazon took him up on the offer within (albeit barely) the time window he had set.

There is nothing preventing the finder of the exploit from releasing it other than his ethics. Well, that and a belief (that you may not share) that maintaining a cooperative relationship and internal communication channels with Amazon has the potential for longer-term benefit than quick release of a single exploit for a single code version. And I respect that.

[elborak]

Originally Posted by knc1

I may have just imagined all of the saving and working overtime to purchase the license.
Easily imagined it - those memories might be of something else at about the same time (postscript maybe?).

Very possibly. Postscript (and Ghostscript) have a much more complex licensing history than TeX. Don Knuth's only restrictions on TeX from the very beginning have been that it has to pass his test suite before you can call it TeX.

[Mike_73]

Originally Posted by elborak

There is nothing preventing the finder of the exploit from releasing it other than his ethics. Well, that and a belief (that you may not share) that maintaining a cooperative relationship and internal communication channels with Amazon has the potential for longer-term benefit than quick release of a single exploit for a single code version. And I respect that.

I somewhat respect that, too, but I was waiting for the jailbreak since ever I read about it here on the forums. Sorry I'm not into the format discussion, but concerning the jailbreak, having a tool I could use for jailbreaking my reader would be cool, and people not wanting to jailbreak could just not do it. Amazon would have had sufficient time to fix the issue if it's really that bad and they would certainly have enough manpower and money to throw at it, so that people not wanting to jailbreak would be safe from a vulnerable device. Compared to a hacked reader though, just imagine your IOT appliances (stove, fridge, lights at home) to act up, and I'm sure this would be more severe than a hacked reader. And I'm sure that other companies don't even care whether or not their stuff can be hacked. Amazon just doesn't want anyone to tinker with their device. So, I can understand the persons reasons not to release the hack, but I certainly wouldn't even have considered asking for permission.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Mike_73

Amazon would have had sufficient time to fix the issue if it's really that bad and they would certainly have enough manpower and money to throw at it, so that people not wanting to jailbreak would be safe from a vulnerable device. Compared to a hacked reader though, just imagine your IOT appliances (stove, fridge, lights at home) to act up, and I'm sure this would be more severe than a hacked reader.

A vulnerable device that is signed in to your Amazon account and capable of making purchases could result in a lot of mischief if hacked. I think that this is being handled responsibly by the discoverer of the vulnerability. For those that need to jailbreak NOW there is an alternative already available.

[Mike_73]

Originally Posted by jhowell

A vulnerable device that is signed in to your Amazon account and capable of making purchases could result in a lot of mischief if hacked. I think that this is being handled responsibly by the discoverer of the vulnerability. For those that need to jailbreak NOW there is an alternative already available.

I know. But opening up my reader, messing around with soldering and probably getting an IC that fries my reader because I accidentally used the wrong voltage doesn't sound great. I mean if it can be done through software alone....
Like I said, I can understand the persons reasons not to release the hack, but I'd have preferred he wouldn't have said he has one if he was toying with the thought of not releasing right from the start. I'm also a lot on XDA-developers.com, and if there's root to gain, it'll be released. I have my nexus hacked with a modified kernel, and there's way more to gain on Android phones than on a reader. Just saying that readers may not even be that much of interest to hackers. And like I said, if you have cameras in your fridge, or a gas range connected to your internet connection because it's so cool having a fully connected home, I think there's more at risk. Just imagine you open your fridge when you just jumped out of the tub, or someone hacks your gas range and burns down your house. Just my 2 cents.

No offense. I just wanted to state my point that I'm more than dissappointed to have read there's a hack and then it doesn't get released. I don't need my reader to be hacked, but like amazon, I love having full control over the devices I bought.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by notimp

What counterpoints am I missing?

I'm reversing your argument - when I am saying that people in here just want to look at a problem from a "the mountain tops we have conquered" perspective, announcing that everything old (format wise) is still fine, because this allows them to still proclaim some sort of structural integrity, that simply ignores all recent and future developments on the sector, as long as those are still honored. Because they are set in their ways, they dont want to learn anything new, and they dont care about what I describe as "impact on ebook culture".

If you stop caring about recent developments, you probably wont stay relevant for long. The ecosystem is changing. Your positions are not.

Convincing enough?

As for the cultural impact - I wont draw detailed scenarios if I dont have to here. The answer here really is as simple as "do you see value in people still being allowed to create "current feature" books aside from the industry monopoly that now is the only entity that can". I have hinted at impacts from a societal and a historical perspective - but thats it. If you dont see the need to follow this argument - dont. Predictions are hard.

Also - you arent impartial in this line of discussion, never have been, so dont try to get ownership over what is a convincing argument and what is not. People who read our exchanges will decide that.

As for the statements vs reasons play you chose to open up - there are very few "i believe that" statements I make in my posts, the majority of time Im going through facts, examples, and my reasoning behind them. So much so - that you now see it fit to attack me an grounds of repeating myself. (Shortly after I have cultivated the notion of repetition as a rhetorical tool because some indisputable facts seemingly havent sunk in yet, because people chose not to talk about them, when they still were news.)

Thats a breath of fresh air from previous "tl;dr" standpoints promoted by some in here. At least people are reading.

Now I'm going to go through every previous posting since the last time I visited, with a comb, to see what counterpoints I could have missed. "The old model still works - so "who cares" (in the words of the eloquent speaker before me)" still somewhat upholds.

I wont argue against it holding some truth. Never have.

I haven't responded to your posts for some time. This is because I and others have responded to those of your points that we have been able to extract from your "stream of consciousness" postings and you have ignored these responses, choosing instead to repeat your opinions again and again. You even ignored my direct questions to you in an earlier post. Personally, to paraphrase another poster, I disagree with just about every aspect of your posts, the only exception I can think of being that neither of us thinks the .kfx format is a desirable thing and we both see the potential for future problems, though you seem to believe the problems are both immediate and certain.

As I see things, the points that you have raised have been dealt with by counter-arguments to which you have failed to respond, unless you regard repeating those points ad infinitum without engaging as a response. The whole point of these types of discussions is to engage and have a hopefully civilized discussion of the issues concerned. If I want to hear preaching, I can go to a Church! If you want to keep posting please engage and defend or concede your position rather than just repeating it.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Mike_73

I know. But opening up my reader, messing around with soldering and probably getting an IC that fries my reader because I accidentally used the wrong voltage doesn't sound great. I mean if it can be done through software alone....
Like I said, I can understand the persons reasons not to release the hack, but I'd have preferred he wouldn't have said he has one if he was toying with the thought of not releasing right from the start. I'm also a lot on XDA-developers.com, and if there's root to gain, it'll be released. I have my nexus hacked with a modified kernel, and there's way more to gain on Android phones than on a reader. Just saying that readers may not even be that much of interest to hackers. And like I said, if you have cameras in your fridge, or a gas range connected to your internet connection because it's so cool having a fully connected home, I think there's more at risk. Just imagine you open your fridge when you just jumped out of the tub, or someone hacks your gas range and burns down your house. Just my 2 cents.

No offense. I just wanted to state my point that I'm more than dissappointed to have read there's a hack and then it doesn't get released. I don't need my reader to be hacked, but like amazon, I love having full control over the devices I bought.

I understand your frustration. However, I support the responsible position that has been taken by those concerned. Given the seriousness of the potential consequences I think that release should be a last resort reserved for circumstances where Amazon failed to engage or where discussions have broken down or are being deliberately prolonged. This of course needs to be decided by those directly involved. Whilst it is nice that Amazon is at least having a conversation I seriously doubt that this will lead to a more co-operative relationship in the future. But it is not inconceivable, though in Amazon's position I may, depending on my agenda, be seriously considering offering a few well paid jobs!

[jhowell]

This is purely a guess on my part, but since it has been about three months since 5.6.5 was released, Amazon may have planned a quarterly firmware update for the near future and would rather include the fix for the vulnerability in that release than make two firmware releases back-to-back.

Who knows, this may even be the KFX armageddon release that some fear is imminent!

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by notimp

What counterpoints am I missing?

I'm reversing your argument - when I am saying that people in here just want to look at a problem from a "the mountain tops we have conquered" perspective, announcing that everything old (format wise) is still fine, because this allows them to still proclaim some sort of structural integrity, that simply ignores all recent and future developments on the sector, as long as those are still honored. Because they are set in their ways, they dont want to learn anything new, and they dont care about what I describe as "impact on ebook culture".

If you stop caring about recent developments, you probably wont stay relevant for long. The ecosystem is changing. Your positions are not.

Convincing enough?

Not even slightly.

Your argument is predicated on KFX being vital to the reading experience.

Perhaps you are one of those reddit users, who just needs to have the latest everything and doesn't think much about the actual differences.


As for me, I cannot think of any feature that I am missing in AZW3 that I would get from KFX. So far, the meaningful changes appear to be embedded hyphenation done via blind algorithm, plus variable image quality depending on device.

Recent developments for the sake of recent developments are not MY holy grail.


AZW3 is fully feature-complete with EPUB3, and no one has yet suggested that EPUB3 is too old-fashioned to compete with KFX... because the scaremongerers can only successfully scaremonger when they look at KFX in a bubble.


I will continue to buy my highly modern and feature-complete AZW3s, until such time as Amazon stops making it easy for me to do so.
As soon as that happens, if ever, I will drop Amazon like a hot potato and purchase elsewhere.

As for the cultural impact - I wont draw detailed scenarios if I dont have to here. The answer here really is as simple as "do you see value in people still being allowed to create "current feature" books aside from the industry monopoly that now is the only entity that can". I have hinted at impacts from a societal and a historical perspective - but thats it. If you dont see the need to follow this argument - dont. Predictions are hard.

I see lots of value in it. Fortunately, they still can.

In fact, the raw info for KFX is derived wholly from their EPUB intake. People publish books as EPUBs and in order to sell them on Amazon they submit EPUB (or DOCX etc.) for auto-conversion.
Amazon introduces nothing new other than a wrapper format. And currently, another wrapper format.

Also - you arent impartial in this line of discussion, never have been, so dont try to get ownership over what is a convincing argument and what is not. People who read our exchanges will decide that.

Surely you realize that argument cuts both ways.

As for the statements vs reasons play you chose to open up - there are very few "i believe that" statements I make in my posts, the majority of time Im going through facts, examples, and my reasoning behind them. So much so - that you now see it fit to attack me an grounds of repeating myself. (Shortly after I have cultivated the notion of repetition as a rhetorical tool because some indisputable facts seemingly havent sunk in yet, because people chose not to talk about them, when they still were news.)

One man's facts are another man's falsehoods and fallacies.

But in your case I see neither.
All I see are assertions.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by notimp

Hey - to your credit, you did introduce a new aspect. To your credit, I havent acknowledged it so far. And it was my fault.

Lets change that, what do you say.

Lets have a field day with it.

Because what you introduced a page back - was the notion of .kfx primarily being a "distribution format". Some sort of dumb container where it doesnt matter if people are still allowed to create or understand it - because format development, or culture creation takes part entirely separate from it. You even went so far as to say "why does it matter, that publishers arent able to understand a distribution format?".

(That by the way is a much more likely explanation for why they didnt react, when Amazon took over the production aspect of eBooks entirely - they got sold on it being "just new a new DRM container". *Bravo.*)

And thats a false premise.

Its exactly the distinction between DRM (the container (a format mainly for the distribution side of things)) and format (the "book") that gets purposefully blurred here.

So -

- .kfx (kf10) isnt a container, it is a format.
- .kfx isnt a distribution format, it is Amazons next iteration of the main Kindle file format (kf8>kf10)
- distribution usually doesnt change layout, .kfx creation does
- distribution usually isnt sold to consumers using a feature addon approach (new with distribution - ligatures! Its an exclusive!)
- .kfx does impact content (pictures), readability, and final layout - it is not a distribution container.

It is not the DRM layer - it is the format we arent allowed to create anymore.

False premise, you are trying to massage the facts. Your turn.

Why does it matter? Because we are loosing feature parity. Books we (or publishers) can create will be below the new Amazon standard. And there are structural reasons why it will be much harder to regain it, this time around. I've listed them before.

Is WebKit also a format? Because newer versions of WebKit can implement ligatures, modify rendering of layout, readability, and pictures, and of course, iterate.

...

But really, it's all the same, because a container is a synonym for a format.
So I am not at all sure of what you are trying to say.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Pretty much sums up the prevailing attitude of denial on these boards and elsewhere. Amazon is not your friend. And yet still, hordes flock to Amazon's defense at the slightest criticism. Strange attitude.

As you say, they believe as long as there is a workaround then all is well, but what will happen when that workaround vanishes? Oh, they'll go somewhere else, they say. Even though Amazon controls 80-90% of the market, and there is nowhere else to go...

Meanwhile, all is well, really it is.

So, Amazon controls 80% of the market, and there is no 20% of the market to go to?
I am sure I must be missing some highly subtle point here.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by knc1

Which in turn inspired a person by the name of Richard Stallman to find (well, develop) a functional work-around -
Which in turn inspired deeper thought into the whole situation of closed (and/or tightly controlled) software -
Which in turn inspired his promotion of what is now known as the movement to produce "Free Source" software -
Which in turn ....

Want references?
Start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX
Good background, but it doesn't mention the connection with Richard Stallman, that will take you a bit of effort to find (unless you happen to know of it first-hand).

= = = =

During your research, you'll probably stumble upon this:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

= = = =

Name dropping? Who? Me?
Probably.

Stallman has done a great deal of good, but if you ask me, he's a bit of a crank in several areas.
His monklike fervor -- and belief that everyone should share that fervor -- has not escaped notice.


And I think he has an unhealthy obsession with Amazon, in addition to buying into the BPH propaganda a little too much for someone with his reputation for militant free-thinking.

[shamanNS]

Originally Posted by elborak

There is nothing preventing the finder of the exploit from releasing it other than his ethics.

Except fear and intimidation, which I think is the reason here. We shall see when those 90 days of "industry standard practice" come to pass and jailbreak is still not released if it was "ethics".

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

Except fear and intimidation, which I think is the reason here. We shall see when those 90 days of "industry standard practice" come to pass and jailbreak is still not released if it was "ethics".

It's a matter of acting in a professional and responsible manner. If you find a security flaw, it would be extremely irresponsible to make it public before giving the software supplier a reasonable opportunity to patch it, and that's precisely what's happened here.

[Mike_73]

Originally Posted by darryl

I understand your frustration. However, I support the responsible position that has been taken by those concerned. Given the seriousness of the potential consequences I think that release should be a last resort reserved for circumstances where Amazon failed to engage or where discussions have broken down or are being deliberately prolonged. This of course needs to be decided by those directly involved. Whilst it is nice that Amazon is at least having a conversation I seriously doubt that this will lead to a more co-operative relationship in the future. But it is not inconceivable, though in Amazon's position I may, depending on my agenda, be seriously considering offering a few well paid jobs!

I support the decision not to release the jailbreak immediately, too. But I doubt that it get's released later. Amazon getting back is somewhat nice, but I doubt that this can already been considered as conversation (it may be, but just saying to hold on a while, hmmm).
Never mind though. From Android I'm used to hear that a hack found usually results in a lot more media response and stuff get's usually fixed quick. My hopes are not that big that this'll happen here.
But sorry for hijacking the thread. I'll just lean back and wait. I got pretty good at that. After all, I decided to get a kindle primarily for reading. Hacking it (at least for me) is more or less just for the sake of being able to do it.

So, I'm ok with how it is right now. Sorry again. I'll not go off topic again ;-)