Comments on: Lesson for e-bookers: ‘Sony Kills Music Store, Tells Customers to Rip Their ATRACs’ http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/08/31/lesson-for-e-bookers-sony-kills-music-store-tells-customers-to-rip-their-atracs/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:04:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: David Rothman http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/08/31/lesson-for-e-bookers-sony-kills-music-store-tells-customers-to-rip-their-atracs/#comment-512934 David Rothman Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:29:07 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7037#comment-512934 Jon re Sony and epub: I want <em>everyone</em> to do epub, the browser people included. As for Sony, Nick Bogaty at IDPF says it will be supporting epub. In fact, here's a <a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/billmccoy/2007/06/adobe_delivers.html" rel="nofollow">quote </a>from the blog of Adobe's Bill McCoy about Digital Editions: "The 1.0 release is available for Mac (PPC & Intel native) and Windows (XP, Vista, and Windows 2000). And today at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference we are also demonstrating a desktop Linux version that will be in public beta soon. Mobile/device support is also coming, as evidenced by our announcement today that Sony wil be incorporating Digital Editions capabilities, including EPUB and Adobe DRM support, into the Sony Reader product line." That's why I said "as expected"---not because I'm rooting for one vendor or another as a supplier, or because I equate epub with just Adobe. What's more, Bill sounds darn confident that the port will succeed. Of course, if Sony wants to use something other than DE, including dotReader, that's fine with me. Far from saying epub is only for DE to read, I recently corrected a Wikipedia article that mistakenly gave that impression. Thanks, David Jon re Sony and epub: I want everyone to do epub, the browser people included. As for Sony, Nick Bogaty at IDPF says it will be supporting epub. In fact, here’s a quote from the blog of Adobe’s Bill McCoy about Digital Editions:

“The 1.0 release is available for Mac (PPC & Intel native) and Windows (XP, Vista, and Windows 2000). And today at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference we are also demonstrating a desktop Linux version that will be in public beta soon. Mobile/device support is also coming, as evidenced by our announcement today that Sony wil be incorporating Digital Editions capabilities, including EPUB and Adobe DRM support, into the Sony Reader product line.”

That’s why I said “as expected”—not because I’m rooting for one vendor or another as a supplier, or because I equate epub with just Adobe. What’s more, Bill sounds darn confident that the port will succeed. Of course, if Sony wants to use something other than DE, including dotReader, that’s fine with me. Far from saying epub is only for DE to read, I recently corrected a Wikipedia article that mistakenly gave that impression.

Thanks,
David

]]> By: Jon Noring http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/08/31/lesson-for-e-bookers-sony-kills-music-store-tells-customers-to-rip-their-atracs/#comment-512651 Jon Noring Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:07:27 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7037#comment-512651 David wrote: <blockquote><p>For the company’s sake, not just consumers’, Sony should do as expected and change to Adobe Digital Editions, which can read the standard IDPF epub format, an Adobe-DRMed version, and encrypted and nonencrypted PDF.</p></blockquote> The more correct recommendation is that Sony deploy an EPUB reading system on their Reader. Unless we know further details about the hardware and software architecture of the Sony Reader, porting Adobe Digital Editions might not be easy for Sony to do, even with Adobe’s help. If this is indeed the case, Sony can consider alternatives, such as OSoft's dotReader, or develop their own. The important thing is that we not link EPUB to Adobe Digital Editions. Even Bill McCoy is careful to note this, and if I recall correctly what he recently said, he encourages the development of other EPUB reading systems. EPUB is designed such that even web browser developers, such as Opera and Firefox, can support the format if they so choose. After all, EPUB is simply XML+CSS with a little bit of document bookkeeping added in, and standards-compliant browsers (like Firefox and Opera) can certainly render in a quite acceptable way just about any EPUB thrown at it. This is something I've stressed with Håkon Lie at Opera. In fact, if there’s anything TeleRead can do to promote EPUB, it is to continue encouraging the Firefox and Opera folk to support EPUB. David wrote:

For the company’s sake, not just consumers’, Sony should do as expected and change to Adobe Digital Editions, which can read the standard IDPF epub format, an Adobe-DRMed version, and encrypted and nonencrypted PDF.

The more correct recommendation is that Sony deploy an EPUB reading system on their Reader.

Unless we know further details about the hardware and software architecture of the Sony Reader, porting Adobe Digital Editions might not be easy for Sony to do, even with Adobe’s help. If this is indeed the case, Sony can consider alternatives, such as OSoft’s dotReader, or develop their own.

The important thing is that we not link EPUB to Adobe Digital Editions. Even Bill McCoy is careful to note this, and if I recall correctly what he recently said, he encourages the development of other EPUB reading systems.

EPUB is designed such that even web browser developers, such as Opera and Firefox, can support the format if they so choose. After all, EPUB is simply XML+CSS with a little bit of document bookkeeping added in, and standards-compliant browsers (like Firefox and Opera) can certainly render in a quite acceptable way just about any EPUB thrown at it. This is something I’ve stressed with Håkon Lie at Opera.

In fact, if there’s anything TeleRead can do to promote EPUB, it is to continue encouraging the Firefox and Opera folk to support EPUB.

]]>