Comments on: Bring back Teddy and do anti-trust for real, especially in the ebook business https://teleread.org/2022/05/09/bring-back-teddy-and-do-anti-trust-for-real-especially-in-the-ebook-business/ Blog on ebooks, publishing, libraries, tech, and related topics Sun, 05 Jun 2022 20:28:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: David Rothman https://teleread.org/2022/05/09/bring-back-teddy-and-do-anti-trust-for-real-especially-in-the-ebook-business/#comment-160161 Tue, 10 May 2022 00:20:24 +0000 http://teleread.org/?p=170451#comment-160161 In reply to Jan.

Hi, Jan. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It’s a form of anti-piracy technology. It does have some uses, but quite often, it inconveniences legitimate users more than it actually protects against piracy. You can find out more via Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

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]]> By: Jan https://teleread.org/2022/05/09/bring-back-teddy-and-do-anti-trust-for-real-especially-in-the-ebook-business/#comment-160157 Mon, 09 May 2022 23:55:47 +0000 http://teleread.org/?p=170451#comment-160157 What is DRM?

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]]> By: David Rothman https://teleread.org/2022/05/09/bring-back-teddy-and-do-anti-trust-for-real-especially-in-the-ebook-business/#comment-160092 Mon, 09 May 2022 12:58:28 +0000 http://teleread.org/?p=170451#comment-160092 In reply to Felix Pleşoianu.

Big thanks for the thoughtful comments, Felix. My replies to some of the points you made:

1. I agree that ebooks are minor in the grand scheme of things. But they’re very representative of the current anti-trust (non)enforcement mess.

2. Love your thoughts on the Android SDK and related matters.

4. Perhaps over in Romania and the rest of Europe, people have a different perspective, especially with ePub being far more of a standard there than the Kindle formats are. But with self-published writers in the states, Amazon remains the main show.

3. US consumers may or may not care about ePub in particular, but many do care about whether they can own books for real. The less proprietary the format, the more secure the ownership. Here’s to long-term interoperability! Needless to say, we need to educate the people who still don’t care.

4. Yes, price matching and the rest really do stink.

Nice hearing from you, Felix. I hope you’re doing well. Meanwhile, we’ll root for your Ukrainian neighbors.

David

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]]> By: Felix Pleşoianu https://teleread.org/2022/05/09/bring-back-teddy-and-do-anti-trust-for-real-especially-in-the-ebook-business/#comment-160091 Mon, 09 May 2022 12:31:47 +0000 http://teleread.org/?p=170451#comment-160091 Meh, that’s like asking which way to point your umbrella in a hurricane.

Seriously, look at the situation: right now Google owns the most popular operating system (Android devices far outnumber PCs of any type) and the most popular browser. Sounds familiar? And then they also own the most popular search engine… plus the most popular ad network. Oh, and the most popular e-mail service, too. If you wanted to split up Google, you’d end up with at least half a dozen companies… and every single one of them would still utterly dominate a sector of computing. That’s how big they are. Compared to this, the problem of e-books is almost microscopic (but see below).

That said, I’d start by forcing them to change the license on the Android SDK, so people can develop alternatives and start making apps without Google tracking them. Oh, and make sure they’re not allowed to disable sideloading on devices. Otherwise, I just heard from a creator on itch.io whose latest game is most often downloaded by Android users. People do know about other sources of apps, and don’t mind getting off the beaten path. If they can.

As for issues related to e-books proper… first you’d have to educate consumers, because in my experience most people have no clue what an ePub file is, and why they should care. How are they going to demand regulation?

Otherwise, the big e-book stores dominate the market much less than they want you to believe. I just heard from another writer who got a vast majority of preorders for their latest book from places other than Amazon. But maybe we could force the latter not to require price-matching for books also sold elsewhere, and generally to stop telling authors for how much to sell their books. Stuff like that.

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