Amazon's vertical integration/monopoly

[notimp]

Those formats arent feature equivalents - to the first new format we arent allowed to understand anymore, probably ever.

Those formats soon enough wont be the the primary file format everyone is using on their Kindles.

Thats enough.

(Also Amazon controls for how long they want the distribution of old formats for owners of current and last generation Kindles to uphold. Direct delivery already isnt an option anymore - so right now we go by "do they still deliver them, when you log in via PC". Something important changed.

Also no one apart from Amazon will be allowed to produce or distribute any of the new formats. Probably ever.)

Dont ask yourself how to belittle this situation, ask yourself how to get out of it.

If you dont - you arent acting responsibly. Your attitude ("Who cares?") really is just an attempt not to look at the status quo too closely. Or think about the medium term future. Or about what this means to the medium of ebooks as a whole.

The Amazon is an Anti-Gutenberg line (destroying social contracts (the ability to create books should be widely distributed), that were upheld since the dark ages) wasnt a throw away.

Any "not caring" about format we arent allowed to understand anymore - because, hey the old ones still work, in some limited fashion, doesnt cut it either.

[dickloraine]

You didn't really address any of the contra points to your position, you just repeat your message. And just saying things like "amazon destroys the culture" without saying how and in what sense, is not very convincing. Give reasons, not statements.

[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.

[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.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

You didn't really address any of the contra points to your position, you just repeat your message. And just saying things like "amazon destroys the culture" without saying how and in what sense, is not very convincing. Give reasons, not statements.

notimp asks for facts, yet offers only unsubstantated opinion as fact.

Yet us start hearing not only reasons, but references for those things which appear to be personal opinion being presented as fact.

Anything less is just trolling.

= = = =

Closed formats in the field of computer science is not exactly news.
Nor is the concept of technically based vendor lock-in.

Experience has shown that both only inspire the search for alternatives.
Although notimp's point that they bring about the "end of the world (as notimp knows it)" is true enough.

As an example, one can follow the "For want of a nail..." chain of causality in electronic typesetting -

TeX (by Donald Knuth) was originally available under a very restrictive (and expensive) license -
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.

[elborak]

Originally Posted by knc1

TeX (by Donald Knuth) was originally available under a very restrictive (and expensive) license

Not my recollection of history. I don't claim to have an infallible memory, but I could swear that TeX has always been free.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by elborak

Not my recollection of history. I don't claim to have an infallible memory, but I could swear that TeX has always been free.

At this time in life, memory is one of my most fallible talents.
So it is easy for me to be wrong.

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?).

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by notimp

Your attitude ("Who cares?") really is just an attempt not to look at the status quo too closely. Or think about the medium term future. Or about what this means to the medium of ebooks as a whole.

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.

[knc1]

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.

Please quote where I wrote that I was in support of Amazon.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by knc1

Please quote where I wrote that I was in support of Amazon.

Please quote where I wrote that you were in support of Amazon

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by knc1

Please quote where I wrote that I was in support of Amazon.

One thing I will say--on the thread about the jailbreak that has not been released because Amazon told the author not to...Someone on there, and I don't know if it was you, stated that rather than have an "us vs them" attitude as apparently the apple hackers have towards Apple, the developers here on mobileread believe they have more of a cooperative partnership with Amazon. I don't have time to find the post, so excuse me if I paraphrases unfairly. In any case, I found this attitude bizarre. Amazon view the developers on this forum as the **** under their shoe. To Amazon, the developers only value is to beta test the lock down on their product. Again, people projecting some kind of reasonableness on Amazon that the company simply does not have. It is a predatory company, even compared to other companies. P.S. the JB should have been released. Amazon was given plenty of time to patch a security risk that barely existed and that a simple disclaimer would have resolved.

I can only fathom this great and misplaced faith in Amazon as some kind of love of authority and the strong leader.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Rizla

One thing I will say--on the thread about the jailbreak that has not been released because Amazon told the author not to...Someone on there, and I don't know if it was you, stated that rather than have an "us vs them" attitude as apparently the apple hackers have towards Apple, the developers here on mobileread believe they have more of a cooperative partnership with Amazon. I don't have time to find the post, so excuse me if I paraphrases unfairly.
- - - -

Not I.
My position was that our development relationship with Amazon was "adversarial at best".

I recall the "us vs them" mention with Apple as an example -
(it was one of Branch Delay's posts)
The:
"the developers here on mobileread believe they have more of a cooperative partnership with Amazon"
is the part incorrectly paraphrased.

The contrast that was made, was that we wanted to be seen as behaving in a more responsible and professional manner than any "us vs them" group.

"responsible and professional manner" != supporting Amazon or their policies, they are personal goals.

= = = =

Try this link:
https://stallman.org/amazon.html
a decent summary of what notimp has been trying to describe.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by notimp

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?".

I didn't say that it doesn't matter. I said something in that line about the consumer side, but with the addendum, that consumers are prohibited to legally access the format anyway, because of drm.

Having a closed format is complicated even for amazon. They can do it, as long as it is easy to produce good looking eBooks for it. It will backlash, if it doesn't and making complicated books for amazons ecosystem gets impossible or they get critic from consumers, that books aren't looking good.

But the old format is closed in a way too. You can't really make a azw3 book by hand, before it was reverse engineered. You still normally use kindlegen to convert another format to amazons format.

All I wanted to say was, that it does not prohibit the making of eBooks. Maybe it even makes it more easy for some, if the conversion from "bad" sources produces good looking books. It would make a bigger impact, if they had a open but very incompatible format to write eBooks. Because then, many eBooks would be written in that format and only really usefull for amazon books.

Your point about feature parity I don't understand. Do you mean the "few" books amazon publishes themselves? I would think using their own format has more to do with gaining the edge above books produced with other formats. As in: Better buy your book on amazon, because here it has whispersync, this feature and that feature, above books you could by at Kobo or B&N. Not to say: Buy a book published by amazon, because only then you will have feature x,y,z.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by knc1

I recall the "us vs them" mention with Apple as an example -
(it was one of Branch Delay's posts)
The:
"the developers here on mobileread believe they have more of a cooperative partnership with Amazon"
is the part incorrectly paraphrased.

This misconception of "a cooperative partnership with Amazon" is similar to the general misconception on these boards and elsewhere that "Amazon is a friend." A ruthless, amoral "friend" that controls 80-90% of the electronic book market in the English-speaking world.

And thanks for link. Bernie for Pres, fat chance.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

Having a closed format is complicated even for amazon. They can do it, as long as it is easy to produce good looking eBooks for it. It will backlash, if it doesn't and making complicated books for amazons ecosystem gets impossible or they get critic from consumers, that books aren't looking good.

If you read the KFX file format thread, you will read the posts of a book producer highly frustrated by Amazon's apparent disregard for how his books come out once put through the alleged kfxgen process, and the fact that they don't come out well.

And KFX is a closed format in this sense. No one else can produce them (and therefore test it, at least not directly and quickly) and AFAIK book producers do not have the option to say NO KFX. And according to the poster I'm referencing, Amazon don't seem overly concerned about it.