Defective By Design updates it’s 1-star reviews and tags action. They’ve generated hundreds:
If you haven’t written a review yet, here are direct links to the review forms. Take a few minutes to explain to potential Kindle buyers why they shouldn’t get one: 6″ Kindle, Kindle DX.
If your review wasn’t published by Amazon, definitely let us know. We’ll be busy picking our next product to target (if you have any suggestions, email us at [email protected]). In the meantime… Awesome job, everyone.
They also point to Farhad Manjoo’s Slate column from Monday:
The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct; it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1’s and 0’s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.
Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren’t really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else. Steve Jobs has confirmed that every iPhone routinely checks back with Apple to make sure the apps you’ve purchased are still kosher; Apple reserves the right to kill any app at any time for any reason. But why stop there? If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you’ve bought, then surely a court—or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime—could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I’ve predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too. […]
The power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely is a power no one should have. Here’s one way around this: Don’t buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it.
Paul Constant sees something better on the horizon:
In addition to Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore, the company announced a partnership with the Plastic Logic, the makers of a much-discussed upcoming e-reader. There will be 500,000 free e-books available for the Plastic Logic and other e-readers (not including the Kindle) thanks to a partnership between B&N and Google. Perhaps because of those free e-books, the Barnes & Noble e-reader has topped the list of e-reading apps in Apple’s store.
And Plastic Logic just announced that they’ll be partnering with AT&T to provide internet access on the devices, too. The Plastic Logic reader will launch in 2010. I’m not saying it’ll be able to do everything the Kindle can do (and I hope it’ll not be tied exclusively to the Barnes & Noble store), but I’m saying that there will soon be other credible options on the e-reader front.
The NYTimes Bits Blog says it will be slightly larger than the Kindle DX and have a touchscreen, but I’m not finding a lot of other details. GigaOm’s Paul Sweeting wonders, Will Publishers Ever Make Money Off eBooks? His answer: not any time soon. Still, he’s more optimistic than AP. They’re reporting analysts consider the e-book market too small to fight over.
Finally, Marion Maneker digs far deeper into the business impact of all of this. That impact is far too much to summarize. Here’s a snippet:
Publishers are literally fighting for their lives—or, at least, their livelihoods—and they’re refusing to offer editions that would generate the same revenue and royalties as hardcovers—not to mention more profit—because they’re worried about the price Amazon sells the Kindle edition for. Never mind that Amazon is simply using its deep pockets to subsidize loss-leading titles for its Kindle customers who paid full-boat price for the device.
Let’s go back to Gottlieb’s DVD comparison. Most movies do a significant amount of business on the opening weekend. Movie studios produce those opening weekend box-office numbers through expensive marketing campaigns. In return, theater chains give almost all of the ticket receipts back to the studios in compensation. The theaters keep the concession take for themselves. Why do the theaters agree to this? Because they want the hit movies that will put bodies—with hungry mouths—in seats. The studios set the prices for the movies, the theaters worry about the prices for the Snow Caps.
The book business is a hit business just like Hollywood. Hits have pricing power, though the book business is one of the few places where the hits are discounted by retailers and the slow-sellers offer no incentive to buyers—the opposite of common sense.