Amazon's vertical integration/monopoly

[notimp]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Your whole post seems to boil down this this.

You seem to be castigating everyone for not doing anything about KFX. What do you think people could do? Please try to reply in three paragraphs or less.

Create a public stance on how you see .kfx as a format. (You have to get together and discuss this, even without me as an activist voice, because at this point you all know what I am saying... ) -- How "not being allowed to understand a format " is different from DRM.

My position would be, that books shouldn't be allowed to become "Coke", where the formula is secret, and you always are getting a certain value add from buying a specific brand - even though you might actually grow to like it.

I currently see even journalist struggling with the notion of what is allowed and what is not (if any one of you can read german this ( http://derstandard.at/2000036874605/...raktisch-teuer ) is an article from a top 2 newsoutlet (online and print by number of uniques) that states that you can ONLY read books with DRM on the Kindle Oasis).

In the comments this doesn't get contested very much, because the argument has become so granular at this point.

The future is "Spotify for books" anyways, right? And its only the dodgy folks that still care about "what the format is". -- I see this as the current concept a majority would have about this industry.

If mobileread could stand for a different view, and voice that opinion I think it would be valuable.

(Be aware, that every one of those sentences should be considered "loaded".. )

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by notimp

Create a public stance on how you see .kfx as a format. [...]

My position would be, that books shouldn't be allowed to become "Coke", where the formula is secret [...]

If mobileread could stand for a different view, and voice that opinion I think it would be valuable.

I've trimmed you to three paragraphs. More seemed unnecessary.

My position on KFX is that it's probably a way to move some of the computational load of book layout from the ereader to Amazon's servers, making layout on Kindles better without slowing down page turns or eating battery life. I also expect that Amazon is still tweaking it.

I don't expect it to ever become the only format available from Amazon. If it did, it would be reverse engineered fairly quickly.

I don't think there's much of an official MobileRead view on anything.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by notimp

[...] even If I try to get the conversation to the level of a debate - you guys wont bite [...] I criticized you guys for letting things slip on your guard [...] You even found an element of fun in not caring about social implications - entirely baffling to me [...] Which makes me a terrible preacher by the way, because religion is all about preserving structure. [...] Thats the entire "fire and brimstone" part of my speech. It always was. [...] At this point I guess we part ways. (edit: As a reaction to the Noah Feldman presentation - first *who's still watching TED..* (I don't like the format )

Hmm... I just got a PM warning me not to waste my time here. It backfired. Oh well...

So you admit to "trolling", and preaching. We already figured that out ourselves. Parting ways? Nah, you'll be back... I watch TED (and also the MIT lecture series, and similar media). I don't see your brand of "hellfire and brimstone political media" consumption in my future. Too far from the bare metal...

Do you rant like this about Microsoft or Facebook? I should think their brand of "social evils" would bend you out of shape way beyond the alleged shenanigans of Amazon, in their own little Kindle sandbox. To each his own.

EDIT: I was just notified by a moderator that there are some "rules" I violated in this post by highlighting portions of quoted text with my own selected colors, and by not including square brackets around ellipses that replace deleted text. I will now add those brackets around all the (non-quoted) "...", and mention HERE that the bolding and coloration are MINE (as a color-coded intuitive linkage between a portion of the quote and that relevant portion of my reply), not the original author's. I have done this often in the past, here and in other forums. Apparently no longer acceptable (i.e. first warning ever, today). Sorry...

[jhowell]

Proprietary file formats, walled gardens, and DRM are a fact of life for various media types, not just e-books. We are not in any danger of losing the ability to read books because of them. There is no need to start a social movement or panic.

[Cinisajoy]

Village idiot checking in.
Now I know the developers do all kinds of fun stuff with software and sometimes hardware.
So my question is: what do you want them to do with this format?
If you just want a general discussion, then why don't you post about the format in the main kindle forum?
I would bet you could have a very lively discussion out there.

Please note: I am the village idiot so keep your answer simple.

[notimp]

@geekmaster (now in colors -): "If I were a preacher, I'd be a very bad one" is only wearing the coat for exactly the amount of time you need to rip it apart.

Also - fire and brimstone aren't my best friends, especially when people in here seem to be counting on me to explain to them why "a book" is different than "facebook" - or "that thing Microsoft does".

(Yay, tech bubble!)

Should a company be allowed to own written culture? Or should it be allowed to degrade certain formats so it gets a leg up in selling you the proprietary book of the present (.kfx)?

Should they be allowed to introduce a shift that aims at that goal, by switching the auto delivery defaults on their eReader, without this becoming a public discussion, or even just something thats reported on?

For some reason the perception under which this works is, that - no one would be interested in owning or maintaining such a walled garden, apart from people in the advertising business, so let them - and let us, as users, reap the benefits - which is how the logic goes on facebook. Then all of a sudden facebook decides to rethink itself as a media company.

Those transitions happen.

So here is the thing. The "benefit" this (.kfx) creates so far are artificial. The effects are not. Why do you all of a sudden need server side permissions to use a certain Kindle font (ligatures) or get out of the box hyphenation?

Amazon hasn't invented those concepts, which is another important distinction.

Server side permissions - as in "as a user I am encouraged to ask A. to provide me with a format, that enables those features".

Thats not how books work. Also, thats specifically not "something like DRM" (in the sense of "copy protection").
Thats binding core properties like "better readability" to a membership in a specific ecosystem.

The whole thing has more in common with "trying to patent english grammar" than with "DRM", if you want to draw analogies.

Also - to fight another misconception - I simply don't believe in the "if It were the only format - it would be reversed within seconds" principle.

In fact I want to call this out as "magical thinking".

First, no one drew the line that not releasing creation tools would be a acceptable thing to do - it seems to be accepted, yet it is also the most important single step action to making reverse engineering less viable and more difficult to succeed shortly after a new format goes public.

Second, you are trading a hypothetical ("if we need it the most, it will happen") against further restrictions that have been put into place today ("we arent allowed to make those").

Third, if you decouple publishers interests (wants knowledge on how to make the thing he sells, but also wants more security) and the publics interests (wants to the knowledge on how to make a book be public) - this is nothing short of a powershift, and not even a small one.

Do musicians know how to "produce Spotify?", do labels? Or users? Because thats whats being sold. The "enabling" technology that could be produced for 20k and a server rack - becomes a service and suddenly is selling it under a brand, for percentages of revenue.

Thats not the entire issue, but it is part of it. It is also why you can't watch Amazon Prime movies on Apple TVs - as Jeff Bezos admitted quite recently. Because when Amazon, Google and Apple talk about getting percentages of in App sales, they see themselves only as three entities providing the same redundant service and in no way an additive value. And in that space they are still battling over market shares, which is why you as a customer have to play the content silo/segmentation game.

"But why can't Microsoft make money too?" you ask. By phasing out .exe because some program features should only be available in proprietary formats - that would mostly be available through an integrated windows store?

Because we are talking about books. And those have a societal importance as well as "being something you can sell".

Also - there is the legacy issue you are creating with every step along this way. Once 90% of books on peoples Kindles are in .kfx format, no one will care what Calibre can do with .azw. Because 20 years from now (if you want to, make it 50), the same 90% of books on Kindles will still be .kfx and the respective logic will still tell us, that only Amazon is allowed to understand those.

Understand whats happening here on the process level - don't just stop at "facebook has the same business model".

[geekmaster]

Well spoken (or written in this case). I agree on many of your points, even though this is a technical rather than a political forum. Most members who are active here are firm believers in open source, and .kfx is not that.

[Cinisajoy]

Also - there is the legacy issue you are creating with every step along this way. Once 90% of books on peoples Kindles are in .kfx format, no one will care what Calibre can do with .azw. Because 20 years from now (if you want to, make it 50), the same 90% of books on Kindles will still be .kfx and the respective logic will still tell us, that only Amazon is allowed to understand those.

Ok I finally understand you.
But your logic on this one doesn't make any sense to me.
You are talking like Kindle is the ONLY way for someone to read a book.
Unless you are an exclusive with Amazon Indie, then you can publish your book other places.
They do not have a monopoly on books.
And 90% of Amazon readers don't know/care what format the book is in as long as they can read it on their kindle device/app.

Amazon, Apple and Google are all retailers. They all have the choice of what products they want to sell.

I challenge you to find a Kroger's brand in any other grocery store other than Kroger's.
Store brands are for specific retailers.

You are so bothered over this perceived takeover, why are you not trying to reverse engineer it?

It really wouldn't matter if Amazon had just one format.
Apple uses one unbreakable format.
I think Google books also has some sort of protection.
On Kobo, unless you put in a credit card you can't read some of even their freebies.
So why all the fuss over Amazon's newest format?
I am sure within 20 years someone will have cracked it.

[geekmaster]

Someone with a kindle and a camera can snap photos and stick them in a PDF, perhaps even with OCR. There, cracked...

Or automate it in a hidden "kindle simulator", with a nice DIY candy GUI wrapper. If a device can open its own "proprietary" content, then it is not really "protected" (except by draconian DRM laws, anyway).

If you eyeballs can see something, so can a camera, and cameras are getting better all the time (even better than our eyes).

There is software now to cut keys using only a photo of somebody carrying keys hanging off their belt. Really. Cameras are that good. Certainly good enough for OCR...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by notimp

Also - to fight another misconception - I simply don't believe in the "if It were the only format - it would be reversed within seconds" principle.

In fact I want to call this out as "magical thinking".

No-one's said that reverse engineering it would be easy. It wouldn't be "within seconds". But believing that such reverse engineering will happen if it's required is not "magical thinking".

You do remember Topaz format, don't you? The format for which only Amazon has the creation tools? That only Amazon software could render? That was completely opaque?

Reverse engineered. Now freely convertible to SVG images and HTML.

"magical thinking" refuted.

[notimp]

>You are talking like Kindle is the ONLY way for someone to read a book.

I am not. I'm suggesting that it might be the most common way. In my thinking I am concerned with the top two players within an industry, because more often than not, they are the industry ("coke or pepsi" kind of argument). Or more importantly, they tend to define those industries.

Also "just don't buy Amazon" isn't the solution. The solution actually would be Amazon developing something like a public conscience. Social responsibility if you wan't to use an old, unattractive term for this..

Right now, when they are saying that they do this because they are working in the customers interest, that actually might not be true, for once (If it is new to you. Another such example would be putting blacklists into Android, uninstalling user installed apps without there being a security risk or need for immediate action and removing non profit competitors from the Amazon App Store, because all of a sudden - hey they want to play in the content game. There are other examples of this, like Amazon starting to produce popular products in house (Amazon Basics) and then rank them higher in search, than the initial product they used as a blueprint.).

If you are willing to say, that people that don't want this scenario to happen, should stop buying Amazon, you are basically acknowledging, that this scene doesn't have much of a purpose anymore (screensavers and product support...).

Also the "people could decide differently" argument is something Amazon is actively working to write out of the realm of public action. Amazon Prime. Bezos in a direct quote -- "If we win a golden globe, we sell more shoes". So you have to argue, that in fact - vertical integration is a mode of circumventing this kind of informed response and behaviour.

If you are concerned with those issues, you cant just say "eh, someone else will do it differently - and that will solve the problem" - because thats just another form of making it an externality. Something you don't have to think about.

Amazon can not become the world foremost creator of digital books, and at the same time only see them as a something they should "own" (means of production, "secret recipe to make them proprietary", better readability only within our ecosystem) -- but thats exactly what happened half a year ago.

If you decouple publishers interests from public interests, like Amazon did, who will fix this? Rakuten?

The bane of my work still is, that people have this notion in their mind, that somehow it will all turn out like "it did with mp3", when none of the current business models is aimed at letting an open file format (different from the DRM layer) even survive (if its not the thing thats sold or mainly distributed, ..).

The next "competitor" of Amazon will more likely just copy this model, because - hey from their perspective - there really is no need to have the means of book production to be publicly available, or distributed.

From societies perspective, there is. But don't expect to have other companies fighting on your behalf, anytime soon.

The "we work in the customers interest" phrase is actually a very cheap talking point, especially when you are actively changing the playing field (and expectations of what should be possible with a book).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by notimp

>You are talking like Kindle is the ONLY way for someone to read a book.

[long reply deleted]

If you're going to spend that much effort on a post, at least source the quotation correctly so that context can be easily checked.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

You are talking like Kindle is the ONLY way for someone to read a book.

[notimp]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

No-one's said that reverse engineering it would be easy. It wouldn't be "within seconds". But believing that such reverse engineering will happen if it's required is not "magical thinking".

You do remember Topaz format, don't you? The format for which only Amazon has the creation tools? That only Amazon software could render? That was completely opaque?

Reverse engineered. Now freely convertible to SVG images and HTML.

"magical thinking" refuted.

First, magical thinking is actually a descriptive term in this case, so we can use it without quotes.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking

Second - afaik we still don't have any software that would read .kfx books on platforms we can run reverse engineering toolkits on. How do you solve that?
Also - Topaz was not designed with obfuscation in mind from the get go (only the header currently is readable on .kfx..?)

Third - I have to admit, I actually hate the deus ex machina moment of "hacker will swing by and fix this". Why is it always the people that are under risk of being detained at your borders (this little story: http://www.cnet.com/news/russian-cry...ed-at-def-con/ ) that in the end should be responsible for making key parts of your society work.

Like the balance of power argument at the "no, you are not allowed to own all aspects of the book that reads better" stage.

Wouldn't it be better to have this discussion about "what Amazon cant make proprietary ("better readability features" for starters) out in the open and actually have a reasonable dialog with the company as such?

We are now already almost a year (didn't recheck) into the .kfx cycle. At some point Amazon can just iterate on demand ("new features/formats, whenever the new format gets cracked", or change its obfuscation, whenever they want to sell a new "feature" (costly, but possible)). Then there is the circumstance, that we just saw the first format transition that wasn't even communicated properly ("More bookerly, new font").

The people in here might be one of the last groups still caring about actual file formats - so in my opinion, prolonging the "format wars" might not be the best option - in the medium term. Thats the "who still uses an USB cable with their Kindles" issue - and that we would have to always encourage people to actively use the latest "reverse engineered format" regardless of what gets auto delivered by Amazon.

Another discussion that we actually didn't have in here. For most people this came just as a result of how Calibre positioned itself in the past.

edit: There is a fourth reason, and it concerns that publishers have given up "being able to create their books" so from a commercial standpoint, almost no one still has a vested interest in understanding .kfx (or future Kindle formats), as Amazon doesnt allow you to sell or distribute the format.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by notimp

Second - afaik we still don't have any software that would read .kfx books on platforms we can run reverse engineering toolkits on. How do you solve that?

So which is it? Are Amazon going to roll KFX out everywhere, or are Amazon never going to roll it out to the desktop?

You can't bang on about the dangers of the first if you're also saying that it's never going to happen.

And in fact you're wrong anyway. Kindle for iOS and Kindle for Amazon have been used in reverse engineering and DRM removal investigations in the past.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by notimp

First, magical thinking is actually a descriptive term in this case, so we can use it without quotes.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking

And which of us introduced the term and used quotes around it? Hint: It wasn't me.

No wonder your posts are so long-winded.