Open eBook Forum Courts Controversy Over Formats

Posted by simoniker on Monday December 22, 2003 @07:15AM from the bookworm-has-a-headache dept.

Brad Rigby writes "TeleRead's David Rothman is calling for [1, 2] the replacement of the Open eBook Forum by "an honest trade association" and a related standards body to create an open standards ebook format at the consumer-level. This will benefit publishers, distributors and retailers, librarians, the open-source community, and most importantly book readers. Largely because of the proprietary format wars, ebooks have flopped commercially, with only an estimated ten million dollars in sales in 2003. In addition, OeBF is being held hostage by its Gold Sponsors, including Microsoft, Adobe, and Palm Digital, companies with proprietary, incompatible ebook format solutions. And to make matters worse, OeBF's president, Steve Potash, runs OverDrive, a company profiting from this "Tower of eBabel", which, according to David, is an obvious conflict of interest and the reason why OeBF is no longer living up to the promise of a standard consumer ebook format. Interesting detail: The OeBF is so focused on promoting its Gold Sponsors that it has yet to speak out against European VATs that will tax e-books but not p-books."

6 of 184 comments (clear)

ebooks sound cool by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-22 07:21 · Score: 2, Funny

How do I print them and bind them?
Re:ridiculous format by DAldredge · 2003-12-22 07:31 · Score: 2, Funny

Elected Official Thinking MODE:

Then we should outlaw the selling of used books!
Re:We already have a standard for eBooks. by morcheeba · 2003-12-22 07:34 · Score: 4, Funny

I'd like to see the intricacies of the human nervous system represented in ASCII.

Oh, no you didn't say that. Slashdot trolls already have ASCII anatomical representations in WAAAY too much detail for my tastes!

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HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Re:We already have a standard for eBooks. by mikeophile · 2003-12-22 07:36 · Score: 3, Funny

EBCDIC Forever!
Re:Well, this explains it by Patrik_AKA_RedX · 2003-12-22 07:40 · Score: 3, Funny

So that's why I can't find The Anarchist's Cookbook on the net anymore
The real reason is that the modern anarchist isn't that tasty anyway.
the ubiquitous price-drop-to-come by webwench_72 · 2003-12-22 08:09 · Score: 5, Funny

Exactly! eBook prices would be much lower than the cost of an equivalent paperback, much like CD prices were significantly lower than cassettes and vinyl albums due to reduced production costs.
Oh, wait...

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