Study: No technical and functional reasons for proprietary e-book formats

[pidgeon92]

They needed a study for this?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by medard

Studies like this one are important to convince politicians.

Convince politicians to do what? Outlaw proprietary formats?

Originally Posted by afv011

Brought to you by Captain Obvious.

I think the term you're looking for is "confirmation bias".

[DiapDealer]

I can see this study being quite invaluable to those who have no real interest in ebook technology in the first place.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Convince politicians to do what? Outlaw proprietary formats?

In a sense. The legitimate interest would be if there is ever a push to allow more interoperability, and more consumer rights over digital content, and we do seek political support for those of changes, say, to change copyright law, or to control what can be put into a licensing agreement, then this kind of study helps defuse any claim a vendor might make that they NEED a closed, locked proprietary system for any of the reasons mentioned in the study.

Originally Posted by ApK

In a sense. The legitimate interest would be if there is ever a push to allow more interoperability, and more consumer rights over digital content, and we do seek political support for those of changes, say, to change copyright law, or to control what can be put into a licensing agreement, then this kind of study helps defuse any claim a vendor might make that they NEED a closed, locked proprietary system for any of the reasons mentioned in the study.

Or take a different approach: permit the proprietary formats but ensure that it is legal to reverse engineer those formats (including the DRM).

There are many reasons why companies prefer proprietary formats. If they are first to market, it may be that no standard exists. Companies may wish to expand upon existing standards. Standards may be encumbered by licensing restrictions and fees. Some standards are complex to implement, or are implemented inconsistently, which makes it difficult to produce bug-free software.

If we were to deny the right to create proprietary formats, we would be denying businesses the right to operate independent of their competition. Imagine the consequences of that. At best, progress would become insanely slow as people try to agree on the standard. At worse, the standards process would be hijacked to reflect the interests of the most powerful interests. (Yes, it is possible to abuse standards just as it is possible to abuse proprietary formats.)

[ApK]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Or take a different approach: permit the proprietary formats but ensure that it is legal to reverse engineer those formats (including the DRM).

There are many reasons why companies prefer proprietary formats. If they are first to market, it may be that no standard exists. Companies may wish to expand upon existing standards. Standards may be encumbered by licensing restrictions and fees. Some standards are complex to implement, or are implemented inconsistently, which makes it difficult to produce bug-free software.

If we were to deny the right to create proprietary formats, we would be denying businesses the right to operate independent of their competition. Imagine the consequences of that. At best, progress would become insanely slow as people try to agree on the standard. At worse, the standards process would be hijacked to reflect the interests of the most powerful interests. (Yes, it is possible to abuse standards just as it is possible to abuse proprietary formats.)

Indeed. There are often legitimate competitive reasons for proprietary formats (There was in Amazon's case, which is one of several reasons I find the subject of this study to be a non-issue).
It's also worth noting, as long as it came up, that 'proprietary' does not automatically mean locked, exclusionary or horribly restrictive.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ApK

Indeed. There are often legitimate competitive reasons for proprietary formats (There was in Amazon's case, which is one of several reasons I find the subject of this study to be a non-issue).
It's also worth noting, as long as it came up, that 'proprietary' does not automatically mean locked, exclusionary or horribly restrictive.

Nor does open, documented, non-proprietary mean frozen in place.

Also, proprietary only provides the ability to rapidly prototype extensions to the owner. Everyone else is locked out unless specifically allowed by the owner.

Although the result is not standard, nothing prevents an open standard from being extended or changed. And, if it is useful successful, nothing prevents it from being added to the standard.

[medard]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Convince politicians to do what? Outlaw proprietary formats?

There are other options, too. More taxes for proprietary format ebooks, for example.

First of all it's important to have a scientific basis for a discussion among people that don't use ebook files.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by frahse

This reminds me!

HELP! HELP!

Is there a good simple "lit" reader?
I have a tremendous number of "lit" books and since I lost my system disk a year or so ago, I haven't been able to read them. Microsoft doesn't support it any more.

I don't want to have to convert them, and I loved the "lit" format itself. It was my format of choice!

Can't help you there unless your books are DRM free. Unfortunately, Microsoft Reader requires activation for lit books. If you have a saved key, it would be possible to dedrm them. If you don't, unfortunately, I don't think there's anything that can be done. If you bought lit ebooks from Fictionwise, I think you might be able to transfer them over to B&N.