Cory Doctorow recently wrote an article for The Guardian entitled "Downloads Give Amazon Jungle Fever", in which he details how an otherwise smart company can be so stupid when it comes to digital downloads.
Doctorow's sentiments echo my own opinions in many ways -- especially about the Kindle and e-books. As of late, I have been reading Steven Levy's "The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness", a book about how the iPod came to be, which has a chapter in it about the early days of the web, the MP3 format, and Apple's iTunes software, and how record companies sued each and every music distribution company before Apple came along. Apple's dealings were clever: iTunes was Mac-only, and worst case it was just a tiny percentage of the computer audience; a mere 5 percent, but even so, the record companies wanted pretty strict limitations on the rights of the users, including the number of times it could be copied to CD, and how many computers the song could be played on. What I find most interesting about the negotiations is that the record companies thought that Apple was just another middleman, another retailer like Best Buy or Tower Records, who were all too happy to give the music industry money in exchange for product. Except in Apple's case, there was no real product to supply -- no shipping costs, no manufacturing costs, it was, in the publisher's eyes, free money. The iTunes situation hasn't changed much, although I believe that more single songs are purchased from iTunes instead of whole entire albums, but it seems that with the success of iTunes, everyone is trying to emulate that model without realizing that selling music tracks is very different from selling tv shows and books.
When you buy a tv show, you're buying the whole episode, when you buy a book, you're buying all the chapters. Unlike a music album, you can't break it up into discrete units, and people aren't going to want to purchase discrete units. On a CD, it might have a good track seven, and you might want to purchase that, but I doubt you're ever see someone say "I just want the portion of the movie where Natalie Portman's family is killed by Gary Oldman in Leon: the Professional", or "I just want chapter 5 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because it doesn't work like that -- books, movies and tv shows have a narrative structure that makes such cutouts odd when viewed out of context.
The second hurdle to overcome is the device. The iTunes store has the iPod, while Amazon is attempting to market their Kindle e-reader to become the iPod of e-book readers. When I first saw the iPod in October of 2001, I remember my reaction: too expensive, too heavy and too fragile. The Kindle strikes a different set of chords within me: too expensive, too ugly, and too few colors. These are, of course, all problems that can be fixed over time, but I feel as if many of the features of this device already exist in gizmos we already own, which relegates the device to a novelty.
If one looks at the various electronics that have succeeded over the years, one of the more common components is the ability to use the device on a daily basis. Sure, everyone loves getting a tire pressure gauge-compass-flashlight with window hammer, but it's not a daily use object like an iPod or a personal computer, and an object has to be able to make the transition from home life to work life -- e-mail and cellphones are good examples of such objects, while video games and tv sets are objects that cannot make the transition because they are much too associated with leisure activity. Personal Electronic devices such as the iPod and the Kindle fill a different segment of time, that which lies between work and home -- they exist as devices that are usually prohibited at work, but can be used during the time "off the clock", or in the space where one is neither working, but not at home -- such as breaks and the time involved in commuting.
The Kindle is an storefront for Amazon that the consumer has purchased in the guise of a personal electronic device -- nothing more, nothing less, and though they aim to make Amazon the iTunes of the reading world, digital books have not yet reached the point that I would want to replace my physical library, regardless of the amount of space they take up.
Going digital only serves to do one thing: make companies ridiculously greedy, particularly if what they are selling does not truly belong to them, as in the case of music, movies, books and tv shows. You see, the true IP owners are the creators or writers of the material, but negotiations, contracts and other deals have relegated the original creator to merely being a shareholder in their own work, with most of the power of ownership and distribution belonging to the publisher. This reversal means the purchaser of the product is dealing with the publisher, whose goal is to entice the buyer to buy more product. This relationship is apparent is the dealings of every company in the digital downloads industry -- and which I believe runs counter to the common sense definition of ownership.
I own a huge library of media -- CDs, DVDs, books. I paid for them, and thus I feel free to do whatever I please with them -- if I want to give them away or sell them, I am free to do so. If I want to loan them out or shred them for an art project, I can do that as well. Amazon's digital downloads restrict me in a number of ways:
- No resale. This isn't a big deal, since most media I end up buying is stuff I want to keep, but it does hurt in bargain shopping, as you will never find a digital download in the "pre-owned" section.
- No gifting. The digital download model makes it inconvenient, if not impossible to give someone a book, a movie or an album -- you'd be better off just giving them a gift card.
- No borrowing. Because the media isn't physical, companies don't want you passing a file to your friends (or to the internet).
- No recyling. A bad book can be tossed into the garbage or donated to a library, or turned into an art object, but there's nothing you can do with a digital download other than clear it off your hard drive.
One of the interesting things about music collections and the iPod is that the iPod didn't invalidate my music collection; the Kindle wants me to replace my physical books with virtual ones -- but Amazon's rights to change the content of the e-books, or remove/delete them goes against any real-world term of ownership that I know of -- if anything, it's much more like a service fee that says "someday this content might not be here, but today, you can use it."
Lastly, Amazon is a store. They are good at selling things and keeping inventory, but they should not be in the business of making devices, supporting devices and managing digital content (just as they never should have been in the search engine business). Does the Kindle generate buzz? Yes, but it's negative buzz about the device and their policies, and I don't see that helping them.
My own strategy for the Kindle would have been a plan for physical books to become digital ones, by scanning in the barcode and inputting a random word on a random page, I'd be willing to do this, even with a small surcharge for the conversion process, as it means that I'd still have a physical book, but I'd also have a digital one for when I'm traveling about. Sadly, what Amazon has chosen to do is little more than a method for people to pay money to rent a book.
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