Format fun: Why is Steve Potash mentioning the A Word, not the I Word, in this quote?
“It appears publishers have no favorites among the current spread of eBook formats. ‘It’s true—publishers do not have a favorite or a preference at this point,’ Steve Potash, CEO of Overdrive and president of the International Digital Publishing Forum, told TechNewsWorld. ‘The field is wide open, and Adobe is well-positioned to seize the market.’” - The Next Chapter for eBooks, in E-Commerce Times.
The TeleRead take: I’d hope that the Potash quote is a bit out of context, or that Steve meant to make clearer the distinction between formats and reading software. He’s president of the IDPF, right? And hasn’t Adobe been talking up its use of the new IDPF format—not just PDF—in books readable in Digital Editions? Instead of Adobe seizing the market in the format sense, shouldn’t the IDPF format be about to do so? Ideally the IDPF format will be more than a Trojan horse for more of the same old e-book toxin, PDF—a horror for PDAs users. Not to raise questions about Steve alone. Shouldn’t the publishers in his organization make it clear that the IDPF OPS/epub format will be their favorite? Enough “platform agnostic” talk. Give me that old-time standards religion.
The DRM mess: Still propping up the Tower of eBabel
Of course, with DRM questions unsettled, we’re still talking about the P Word—”proprietary”—regardless of the existence of the IDPF format. I hope that IDPF can move quickly to address the DRM interoperability issue, given the unfortunate preference of many large publishers for that technology.
IDPF executive director Nick Bogaty has said this is on the agenda, and I hope that Steve and the publishers will make it a priority item. E-book users shouldn’t need one program to read books encrypted with Adobe Digital Editions Protection Technology (ADEPT) and another to read books protected with Mobipocket’s DRM. Here’s to competition! But let software companies compete on the issues most meaningful to customers, such as ease of use—in installation, in interface, in other respects. See the just-posted item on the horrors of existing e-book complexities for librarians and consumers.
On the positive side
The good news is that the E-Commerce Times article quotes Thierry Brethes, CEO and cofounder of Mobipocket.com, as saying of the IDPF standard: “We plan to fully support this new standard in our product line.” It’s always good to hear further reassurances that Brethes will get behind the core standard; now to see if he’ll also press for DRM operability! As for Adobe, Bill McCoy, overseeing his company’s e-book-related activities, he has written repeatedly about the glories of the IDPF standard’s reflowable format, the lack of which bedevils PDA users. Ideally he’ll now push just as hard for DRM interoperability—and meanwhile encourage Steve to decouple standards talk from software talk. Bill’s interest in social DRM is a good sign, but since big publishers want the usual DRM, then he needs to address the issue
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