Kindle fits the BitTorrent model.
My colleague Russ Somers pointed me to an item from Michael Arrington, who discusses the extreme ease with which Amazon’s new Kindle e-book reader can be used to read e-books in formats other than the proprietary one sold by Amazon.
So since the Kindle makes for such an easy open-format e-book receptacle, surely it’s helping move the book world toward a day when e-books will flow over the ‘Net as readily as song files do today. For context on what I’m talking about, see this post from 19 November:
As Arrington points out in his post, e-books are already on BitTorrent. The only missing link for wide-scale e-book piracy, working from the model I proposed a couple of weeks ago, is this:
A workable system for translating large numbers of printed books into digital files. This could include all sorts of approaches:
- optical scans, with or without character-recognition, image smoothing, and so on;
- system hacks of publisher/compositor computer networks that would enable direct piracy of typesetting files;
- Project Gutenberg-style keyboarding ventures. It seems clear that a technologically-driven solution based on scanning would be infinitely preferable to relying upon individuals (haphazard volunteers, paid employees, whoever) to keyboard very much material.
Mind you, it seems clear that the Kindle still needs some Apple-style design TLC. (Watch this Robert Scoble video on same if you’re in the mood to hear a rant.) But, at a minimum, it’s compatible with the scenario I laid out earlier.
If it needs saying, I don’t endorse violation of anyone’s copyright. I’m a writer myself, after all, and I’d rather make a living from what I write than not make a living from it. But if, say, you wanted to download a free novel from Project Gutenberg or Cory Doctorow or Charles Stross or Baen Books or . . . you get the idea.
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Basically, book piracy can’t be stopped, any more than MP3 piracy can.
Nobody with an ounce of sense would buy a device that can’t display open content. If Kindle didn’t allow this, they’d be throwing the market wide open to the competition who do. As eInk gets more mainstream, we’re bound to see lots of these.
It seems odd that you’re speculating about means of digitising books, when there are already thriving communities swapping books in digital form (I won’t link to them here). Fortunately for the industry – just like with MP3s and DVDs, the vast majority of consumers would rather spend money on legitimate content, than go through the effort of locating pirated versions.
This is particularly true for non-mainstream content. I can easily find a pirate copy of Harry Potter. Something more obscure is going to be more difficult.
Thanks for the comment, John.
I wouldn’t say it’s “odd” that I’m speclating about it — rather, that it’s simply a reflection of my ignorance on the subject. I swap very few digital files of anything, and I have more than enough access to printed books to keep me busy for a long while to come, so I’m really an outsider on this issue.
Maybe what I’m trying to get at with these speculations is that we haven’t yet *heard* about this kind of digital file-swapping 1% as much as we’ve heard about it for music files. Especially if the Kindle takes off in the marketplace, I’m sure we’ll hear more about this going forward.