On: Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books

[Rychard]

> What infrastructure? A third party is managing the sales and downloads.

Somebody is paying to run that.

It's reasonable to assume that they'll stop paying the second it stops making money for them.

[emodendroket → Rychard]

Do any of us anticipate that Amazon is going to leave the digital book business anytime soon? It's about as theoretical as saying you shouldn't use EC2 because Amazon might get out of the cloud services business.

[cameronbrown → emodendroket]

It shouldn't be all on Amazon/one-company. The whole industry needs to be responsible.

[emodendroket → cameronbrown]

There's Apple, B&N, Kobo, and other also-rans but let's not kid ourselves.

[mailslot → emodendroket]

A slightly different, yet more relevant example: digital music.

Microsoft had their “plays for sure” DRM. No one thought Microsoft would get out of the music game. They did. “Plays for sure” no longer works. Does not play.

[emodendroket → mailslot]

Did Microsoft at some point absolutely dominate the music market? No.

[naniwaduni → mailslot]

The key word here is "DRM".