[Infowarrior] - Don ¹ t Blame The Kindle For Piracy

[Richard Forno]

Don¹t Blame The Kindle For Piracy
December 4th, 2007 · 5 Comments
by Kassia Krozser

http://www.booksquare.com/dont-blame-the-kindle-for-piracy/

I am cranky. You¹ve been warned. So I¹m minding my own business, or, rather,
minding other people¹s business as I cruise the Internet when what has to be
one of the dumber notions to cross my screen appears. Given the stuff I read
online every day, this is really saying something.

    Devices don¹t make pirates. Unreasonable barriers make pirates.

In what has to be a desperate attempt to find a new angle on the now-waning
Kindle story, a few writers have speculated that the Kindle can spark book
piracy. Yeah. That¹s what the world needs to worry about. The Kindle and
piracy. Uh huh.

Don¹t get me wrong. I have a lot of faith in the ingenuity of my species.
There has always been and will always be a percentage of humanity that
believes it¹s better to live outside the law. Even though Amazon made it
near-impossible for people to share books with members of their own family,
I believe that there are busy little beavers out there trying hack the
Kindle¹s DRM. And, frankly, the way the DRM on this device has been
implemented, there¹s a certain level of begging people to thwart the system.

The music industry ‹ and to a large degree, the motion picture business ‹
really screwed up when it became obvious that consumers wanted to access
music online. Rather that making it easy and affordable for customers to get
the music they wanted in the format they wanted, the music industry spent a
good decade, untold millions, and countless hours of meetings trying to
create a standard or process or method that worked for the industry.

Had the music biz thought, ³Wow, we should listen to the people who want our
music², I would wager that piracy would be a much smaller problem. By
continually and repeatedly erecting concrete blast walls and ‹ you gotta
love this approach ‹ treating all customers like criminals, the music
industry turned piracy into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If iTunes has taught
us anything, it is that flexible, easy-to-use, affordable music will get
people to open their wallets.

You know, this is so obvious that I feel kind of dumb saying it. Again.
Devices don¹t make pirates. Unreasonable barriers make pirates. Most people
are happy to pay for convenience ‹ and let¹s all be perfectly frank here:
pirating books is not necessarily the most fun thing you can do on the high
seas (it¹s also not that hard if you¹re seeking current releases). If it
were easy for me to get all the ebook formats I can purchase on the Kindle,
man, I¹d be ordering two (one for me, one for the husband, we don¹t share
well).

If book piracy increases, do not blame the Kindle. It¹s shooting the
messenger. Blame Amazon and the publishing industry. I can¹t download a book
from the eHarlequin store and store it on my laptop and a Kindle. I have to
buy the Kindle version. This means I have to commit to my reading device
when I make a purchase. That¹s just wrong.

I can¹t buy a PDF ebook from another retailer and easily read it on the
Kindle. Amazon, maybe not fully grasping the beauty of the iPod, has chosen
to try to lock device to retailer.

Bad move. Very bad move. I am a grown human with a decent job. I pay my
taxes on time (or rather, someone in my household ensures I am not
committing a crime). I read like I breathe. I take far too many books on
vacation. I am never more than five feet away from reading material. All I
ask is that the people whose job it is to get books to me (you know who you
are) make it as easy as possible for me to read those books.

I am tired ‹ tired!! ‹ of reliving the Beta versus VHS scenario. I don¹t
want to buy any media in any format while living in fear that my hardware
(or software) will be obsolete in a year. I am not a pirate. Never have
been, look lousy in an eyepatch (also horizontal stripes? Let¹s get real.).
Is it so hard to understand that treating the customer like someone who is
giving you money for goods and services is a good thing?

The Kindle will not spark book piracy. Pirates aren¹t nuts about putting
several hundred dollars into a device unless the return on investment is
worthwhile. As long as the publishing industry, and this includes Amazon
because I am convinced they worked more with the industry than the consumer
on the Kindle, treats its customers like pirates, these same customers will
decide that that publishers don¹t value them.

That¹s what sparks book piracy, gang.

Piracy lives in the DNA in some people. But most of us just want to get our
entertainment media in a convenient, affordable manner. Rather than building
better pirates, maybe more time should be spent on creating happy customers.