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Medialoper Bebop Episode 2: Buried in a Sea of Coverage

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Michael ScottWelcome, once again, to the Medialoper Bebop podcast. This, right here, is Episode 2: Buried in a Sea of Coverage.

As always, your hosts are Jim Connelly, Tim Gaskill & Kirk Biglione, holding forth on a wide variety of topics.

There are 8 million podcasts on the naked internet, and we can guarantee you that no other podcast this week will focus on both Osama Bin Laden and Coco Crisp. Which is weird, because when we originally conceived the podcast over the weekend, we weren’t going to focus on either one.

But then, head-related things happened to each man, and we were compelled to discuss them.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:46 — 28.3MB)

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For those of you keeping score at home, here is today’s starting lineup:

[Read more…] about Medialoper Bebop Episode 2: Buried in a Sea of Coverage

Book Piracy Is on the Decline

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Finally, some good news for publishers.

All year we’ve been hearing predictions that the book business is on its death bed — about to be completely transformed by ebooks, then eaten alive by pirates. Yet, despite recent reports to the contrary it turns out that book piracy is on the decline.

Based on piracy loss estimates published by the International Intellectual Property Alliance and generated by the Association of American Publishers, book piracy dropped over 13% between 2005 and 2007 (the most recent year that data is available).

The numbers look like this:
[Read more…] about Book Piracy Is on the Decline

How to Not Protect Your Online Identity

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For years I’ve been using the same username for many websites but with different passwords. I did it for convenience but I also had this vague idea that I was crafting some kind of an overall online identity which would be uniquely identifiable as me, would be consistent over time and would serve as an informal history to build my technical reputation and credibility. But now that I see the results I don’t like it even though there are not any individual postings or fragments of data that I’m ashamed of or embarrassed about. It’s just that when I see them all together the effect is unsettling and feels like I’ve been under surveillance all these years.

In some cases I made either bad choices or misinformed decisions. For example, by way of Googling my name recently, I found my work phone number in the web archives of a members only listserv for people in my industry. I recall making the decision to put my phone number in my email signature because I was posting specific information that I thought would help guys doing my same job in other organizations. There are few enough of us that I figured I’d be happy to help if one of them were to call me to ask for more details or advice. The problem is that, while I knew that registered members (i.e., people in my industry) would be able to search the archives, I had no idea that the thread was going to end up on Google. That was just simple misinformed decision. But my initial settings on my Twitter.com account turned out to be a case of making a genuinely bad decision, then forgetting all about it.

[Read more…] about How to Not Protect Your Online Identity

How To Fight eBook Piracy

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In a remarkable piece of investigative journalism the New York Times has discovered evidence of widespread ebook piracy. Again.

The surprise here is not that the paper has rediscovered piracy for the umpteenth time, but rather that, despite the paper’s many discoveries, it has failed to gain a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding piracy. Instead, the paper chooses to play to the worst fears of the publishing industry, while demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of what motivates consumers of digital media.

NYT columnist Randall Stross theorizes that the widespread availability of pirated ebooks combined with growing consumer adoption of digital reading devices like the Kindle, may ultimately lead to massive piracy of the sort that the music business experienced during the Napster era. Apparently it’s just a matter of time before Kindle owning consumers pirates wake up the fact that they can save 10 bucks by downloading bootlegged ebooks from RapidShare instead of buying direct from Amazon.

The scenario might actually seem plausible if you had no knowledge of either RapidShare or the Kindle. Let’s pause for a moment to compare the ebook acquisition process from both sources:

Kindle:

  1. Find the book you want by searching the store that’s conveniently integrated into your Kindle device.
  2. Press the buy button. Yes, you just spent $9.99. Painless, wasn’t it?
  3. Start reading.

RapidShare:

  1. Find the book you want by searching the… Wait a minute. It turns out that RapidShare has no on-site search engine.
  2. Turn to Google or some other search engine to find the exact URL for the book you want to download. This might take a while, but fortunately pirates have loads of free time.
  3. Once you’ve found the exact URL you’ll discover that you can’t download the file immediately. Instead, you’ll be told that all of the free download slots are in use. You’ll have to try again in two minutes. Repeat this step until a slot opens up (it might be hours, it could be days).
  4. Alternately, consider paying for immediate access. For a mere 6.99€ you can download from RapidShare without waiting. That’s only 20 cents more than the price of the book you’re about to steal. A small price to pay for sticking it to The Man.
  5. Once you’ve downloaded your book you’ll need to find a way to move the file to your Kindle (Whispersync might be convenient, but it’s not the pirate way).
  6. Prepare for the likelihood of some slight formatting problems with your new book. In most cases you’ll be able to figure out the intended meaning of the poorly OCR’d text. And you’ll just have to get used to the page numbers that are embedded in the middle of each page.

If publishers can learn one thing from other forms of digital media, it is the importance of a quality consumer experience. Consumers place a premium on convenience and ease of use. As a result, free is not always the clear choice.

The best way to prevent piracy is by making it easier to buy a product than it is to steal the same product. Despite my many reservations about Kindle’s proprietary DRM, Amazon has made the Kindle book buying experience frictionless. Publishers who fear piracy should work to emulate the Kindle discovery and purchasing process.

Right now the number one tool against ebook piracy isn’t DRM, it’s Whispersync.

Digging Deeper Into Amazon’s Orwellian Moment

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When media historians write the history of DRM they may well devote a whole chapter to the day that Amazon customers awoke to find that their Kindle editions of “1984” had vanished into a memory hole and that Big Brother Bezos had apparently turned George Orwell into an unperson.

You would be hard pressed to invent a more apt or ironic example of the dangers of DRM. Surely this will be the incident that finally raises consumer awareness of the risks involved in buying DRM protected media.

And yet, after digging deeper into this story, I’m not convinced that this was a DRM issue at all. At least, not in the truest sense.

Further, this incident raises a host of interesting rights related issues that have largely gone unexplored in the days since.

Consider the following: [Read more…] about Digging Deeper Into Amazon’s Orwellian Moment

Why Kindle’s DRM Free-for-All Is Bad for Consumers and for Amazon

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The Kindle is popular for a reason.

Amazon has created the most painless ebook experience any consumer could possibly ask for. No other system makes the discovery, purchase, and transfer of ebooks so frictionless. As a result, Kindle has become the standard everyone else in the ebook business will have to match just to compete. So far no one comes close.

But Kindle has a dark side that is starting to emerge with startling regularity.

This past weekend Dan Cohen was surprised to find that he could not re-download some of his Kindle books. After several lengthy exchanges with Amazon customer support Cohen was informed that some (but not all) Kindle books have download limits. Or maybe it’s a limit on the number of devices they can be transferred to. Or it might be both…

To be honest, Amazon’s customer service department isn’t entirely sure of what limits are imposed on DRM protected Kindle books. [Read more…] about Why Kindle’s DRM Free-for-All Is Bad for Consumers and for Amazon

Podcast: Assessing the Impact of Piracy and Free Content on Book Sales

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It’s nearly impossible to have a meaningful discussion on the issue of media piracy. Strong opinions and anecdotal evidence dominate every conversation. There is seldom any hard data to back up the various claims of damage or lack thereof.

The recent New York Times piece on book piracy is typical of the kind of coverage we’ve come to expect from major news source. The story is long on speculation and short on deep thinking or meaningful data.

Meanwhile, O’Reilly Media has just published a new research report on the Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales. Written and researched by Brian O’Leary, the report is an all too rare attempt to quantify the impact that various types of freely available content have on sales.

Free content has long been used to promote all forms of media. Is it possible that pirated content might serve a similar role in promoting the purchase of content? O’Leary’s early results seem to indicate that might be the case.

In this podcast I talk with O’Leary about his research. A full transcript of our talk will be available in the next couple of days. [Read more…] about Podcast: Assessing the Impact of Piracy and Free Content on Book Sales

Amazon’s Kindle Disclosure Policies Could Attract FTC Attention

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Any way you look at it, the Kindle is a remarkable reading system. Amazon has managed to capture massive mainstream attention for an electronic reading device that combines seamless wireless content distribution with a purchasing process that is so transparent you’d be forgiven for not realizing you’ve actually paid money for a book.

Equally remarkable is the fact that Amazon sells DRM-restricted ebooks side-by-side with DRM-free ebooks while making no distinction between the two formats. From the consumer’s perspective there’s no way to tell which Kindle books are locked down by DRM before purchase.

Over the past week, Teleread has been orchestrating a consumer driven tagging effort to tag DRM-free books in the Kindle store. While I think the project is a brilliant use of crowdsourcing, it also reveals just how bad the problem really is. In order to accurately tag a Kindle ebook as DRM-free, Amazon customers must first buy the book, then go through a somewhat involved process to test whether or not the book is locked down. [Read more…] about Amazon’s Kindle Disclosure Policies Could Attract FTC Attention

The FTC on DRM: Fighting for Consumers or Making Toothless Threats?

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The moment digital media consumers have long waited for finally came this week as the FTC held a Town Hall meeting to discuss issues surrounding the use of DRM technologies.

From the beginning it was clear the FTC has heard consumer complaints about DRM related issues and takes the matter seriously. What wasn’t clear is what, exactly, the FTC is prepared to do to ensure that consumers get what they pay for when they purchase digital media products.

Mary K. Engle, Acting Deputy Directory for the Bureau of Consumer Protections, opened the workshop with some tough words for companies selling DRM protected media products, warning, “If your advertising giveth and your EULA taketh away, don’t be surprised if the FTC comes calling.” Further, Engle noted that consumer distrust over DRM makes for an unhealthy marketplace. [Read more…] about The FTC on DRM: Fighting for Consumers or Making Toothless Threats?