Who could beat iBooks and iPad?

01.30.2010, Creative Commons, Economy, Free (Libre) Culture, Liberties, Publishing, by George.

While there has been a lot of media chatter over the iPad (see references) and the iBooks application, no one is asking the serious questions, and believe me, there are a lot of them to consider. Here’s a couple of them that need to be discussed a lot more:

What will compete with iBooks and iBookstore?
Is iBooks the best thing for the publishing industry?
What damage is being done to consumers?

Those questions are discussed in the remainder of this article.

What will compete with iBooks and the iBookstore?

The automatic assumption (because Steve Jobs framed it this way) is that the competition is going to be between Apple and Amazon. And that may be true for a while, but probably not for very long…

Remember, there is another horse in the phone and now operating system market: Google. The Chrome OS is being designed to fit exactly the model that the iPad is offering: smaller screen, scaled down, connected functionality. But, that alone isn’t why I have a gut feeling that Google may find itself in this market.

Remember Google went through a lawsuit regarding it’s Google Books, and they received very favorable terms (maybe not for the publishing industry, but for Google they were favorable). They’ve been busy digitizing as many books as they can, and have been building a “library” infrastructure the likes of which I think Apple may have problems approaching, even with all the major publishers on board.

When you also consider there is some history of Google partnering with other companies, like Amazon, to provide services. For example, the Amazon MP3 application that ships on the Droid.

Admittedly, there is current disagreement between Amazon and Google regarding Google Books (see references), however the entry of Apple into the eBook space might change things and force an alliance between Amazon and Google.

Is iBooks the best thing for the publishing industry?

As a pretty devout Free (Libre) Culture supporter, I don’t think it is. And, when I consider the possible implications to our legal system regarding Trademark, Copyright, Patent, and Service Mark laws, I almost get noxious.

The fact is, the propagation of the store model based on Apple’s iTunes is a bad choking point on the propagation of culture. We would have a distribution system that would only allow for materials that are acceptable to other publishers and to Apple to be allowed in the store. At least with Barnes & Noble and Amazon, there are self-publishing partners for those that want to publish a book without an agent / contract / publisher, etc. And, while Google offers it’s Market for applications on Android, you can actually install other applications without using the Market (you just have to enable this feature). You can make a bet this kind of functionality will be available in Chrome OS.

Even now, there are numerous eBook applications for Android available through the Market. I bet those applications will quickly find their way to Chrome OS as soon as it is sufficiently developed. This will alos open the door for public domain texts from the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg to find their way to this platform. This isn’t as likely to happen if Apple and the publishing industry have their say.

What damage is being done to consumers?

The more I look at the current situation, the more I see a major problem: iTunes, Amazon MP3, the Kindle, etc. are allowing the music and publishing industries to cling to a business model that is outdated and outmoded by the current technology. At some point we need to make these businesses realize that they need to be accountable to society in general, and not just the narrow markets that they have set in their minds. Unfortunately, until they do see that they need to change their models, they will continue to cling to whatever is closest to their current business models for as long as they can to the detriment of society at large.

Another factor of this is that they are still looking towards a false economy of scarcity to allow them to price items in the digital economy. One of the things I noticed in several TV stories that I saw was taht some publishers were hoping this was going to provide them with a way to control the pricing of their content. The New York Times is a big advocate of pushing pricing models that match their old pricing schemes (with the changes in the media and their losing market share and capitalization, they are searching for any model that allows them to put off the inevitable need to find a new model that works for them).

Don’t get me wrong, there have been, and continue to be good things happening: dropping DRM in iTunes, the Creative Commons, netlabels, more music distribution channels (like Jamendo and Magnatune), etc. However, most of these are incremental steps. The don’t represent the major strides that need to be made in order to remove the locked-down approach that the music and publishing industry take over and over and over again: such as with DRM on the Kindle.

I hope with Google having a tendency towards having a more open platform than Apple, that we might be able to see some real change in the direction of this new media technology.

References

One Response to Who could beat iBooks and iPad?

2010-02-12 at 13:40 Shannon Ryan :

I love this new generation of small, long battery life devices.

Honestly, despite being an Apple fan, I think they missed the boat by following the iPhone software plan.

Still, I think I’m going to wait on one of these new tablets to see just how much ChromeOS is a game changer.

The CerebralRift