TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Hilary Rosen, copyright and flat-earthers

By David Rothman

I’m inviting ex-RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen to join OpenReader’s recently announced email lists. Has Ms. Rosen, the format-and-DRM-hobbed iPod owner who earlier helped give us the DMCA, really changed? This could be a neat litmus test to see if she truly can go beyond the flat-earth approach to copyright and distribution matters. No PR stunt here. I’m less interested in moralizing than an end to the Tower of eBabel, and if Hilary will help–well, I’ll believe in redemption. (Flat-earth stuff via a great link found by Casey for MaisonBisson.)

Text of Rosen letter follows:

Dear Ms. Rosen:

I’m the Director of Strategy and External Relations for a small group called OpenReader.org, which has obtained endorsement from some of the Internet’s leading e-book sellers such as eBooks.com.

Like most of the cosmos, I was startled to read your statement on the iPod and music formats–but I’m willing to keep an open mind.

Your heart may have been in the right place. Deservedly or not, I assume that you’ll read this letter in good faith rather than thinking, “Ah! Maybe I can pick up some new clients and lobby AGAINST open e-book standards.”

My own hope is that your Inner Consumer may be stirring. So I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps we can chat, and you can learn more about the e-book scene. It’s a veritable Tower of eBabel–a disaster not just for readers but also publishers and, yes, writers.

The promise is there if industry can get its standards act together. I can show you my Sony Librie, the screen resolution of which is almost as good as paper’s (I’m still very grumpy about the contrast).

MIT is working on a $100 laptop for the Third World, and in the end, I suspect that people will be buying e-book-reading gizmos at Kmart for $50 once e-books take off. I’ve been tracking this topic since the early ’90s from a library-and-school perspective and can’t wait for my early predictions to come true.

But first e-books need to be like CDs, so even nongeeks can enjoy them without worrying about Microsoft Reader vs. Adobe vs. Mobipocket and so on.

Without standards, moreover, e-books will never be a serious medium.

Clashing ephemeral formats are to e-books what acidic paper was to the p-books. Publishing needs robust, gracefully evolving standards, so that many decades from now, today’s e-books will be readable.

Other issues arise. Do publishers really want to see software companies drain away margins? Everyone I’ve talked to says DRM/format costs can eat up as much as 10 percent of a book’s cover price in some cases. The maximum may even be more than 15 percent.

If you see some possibilities here, we can do a three-way teleconference with Jon Noring, a veteran e-book standards maven who is leading the OR effort and moderates the 2,700-member eBook Community list.

We can also invite you to join two OpenReader mailing lists, which are starting to draw participants from places such as Adobe (please remember that Adobe itself has not endorsed OpenReader).

Bottom line? If your Inner Consumer is actually stirring, this could be a good outlet for you, especially given all the good that e-books could eventually do for schools and libraries and the children who use them.

A few potential ways to help:

1. Your input as a reader and as someone with experience from a content industry. We take it for granted you may see the world differently on some issues such as DRM–but then again maybe not, since you’re no longer running RIAA.

2. PR advice. We’re actually NOT ready to crank up a truly major publicity campaign. But that time will come.

3. Ideas for the OpenReader Web site. It’s for and by techies, and we need to take it to the next stage so it is more attractive to content providers. Aesthetics count.

Feel free to reach me during or after business hours. I’m right here in Alexandria–telephone 703-370-6540.

Thanks,
David Rothman