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Sony To Convert Online Bookstore To Open Format
Dr_Barnowl writes "The BBC reports that Sony is to convert its online bookstore to the EPUB format. While this format still allows DRM, it's supported on a much wider variety of readers. Is this a challenge to the Kindle? It's nice to see Sony opening up to the idea of open standards. Even if you still have reservations about buying a Sony device, you might be able to patronize their bookstore sometime soon."
From a construction page it looks to rely on XHTML, CSS and XML which, like both the open doc formats, makes complete sense. Not only is it trivial for me to build a document but with a very simple XSLT I can transform all of my epub files to very readable web pages. What boggles my mind is how long XML has been out there and yet we have to wait until now for big companies like Sony to adopt this over something like Amazon's AZW file format. The epub format looks simple and elegant and logical ... I'm honestly a little bit scared that I'm missing something since it's root kit Sony using it.
My work here is dung.
Sony? The company that brought us Memory Sticks, UMDs, Betamaxes, Minidiscs, and hundreds of other propietary formats, using an open standard?
*head explodes*
Seriously, I'm glad that Sony is starting to open up a bit. In addition to the usual Memory Stick slot, Sony's new eBook readers come with Secure Digital slots too. Things like this are making me seriously consider buying a Sony for my first eBook reader.
Sony is such a large company, the left hand probably has no clue what the right hand is doing. Give it time, I'm sure eventually the evil root kit department will catch on. The format supports some DRM, I'm sure using that and creative interpretations of the standards they can break interoperability.
After all, why sell a customer a working product when you can repeatedly sell them replacements for a defective product? I say this as I remember how Sony portable music players went from high quality near-indestructible products to DRM ridden a few years ago.
This is open-washing.
Is there a word for that? Like the eco companies green-wash, Sony, Microsoft etal have all been open-washing all their stuff lately and it just isn't open by the non corporate double speak definition.
That was actually one of the goals for the format--all you need to make an ePub is a text editor and a zip utility. However, the zip file must be assembled a certain way (a mimetype file must be the first file and zipped with no compression so the rest of the file starts at a certain byte offset). I've been fiddling around with the format for a few months and it's really quite nice and fairly robust (as far as ebook formatting goes).
This guy's the limit!
...you might be able to patronize their bookstore sometime soon...
Heck I can do that right now. Nice to see you joining the 20th century Sony!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
After all, why sell a customer a working product when you can repeatedly sell them replacements for a defective product?
Ah, the joys of capitalism. My 35 year old Soviet radio in the kitchen still works perfectly.
I have a first gen Sony reader and the thing that sold it to me was that it could read RTF and PDF formats, so I don't get why this is news.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
This really is a great move on Sony's part. I've had a Sony Reader for a few months now, and I've really taken to the ePub format (especially compared to Sony's LRF/LRX format). First, the Adobe ADEPT DRM scheme has been cracked, so I can decrypt all the books I buy. And second, because the ePub format itself is relatively simple to understand, I can easily go through my books and reformat them the way that I prefer (use a certain body font, change the margins and paragraph indents, remove blank lines between paragraphs, etc). The problem was that there were only a handful of ebook sellers in the US that sell books in the ePub format. However, it's pretty prevalent in Europe and elsewhere in the world, so I've been buying my books from overseas (and some have even been cheaper than their domestic non-ePub counterparts thanks to the weak dollar). But being able to buy new books in ePub format straight from the Sony bookstore for $9.99 a pop is pretty enticing. I'm looking forward to the transition.
This guy's the limit!
If they can't, then I generally support the move. However, I have a hard time believing that Sony "Root Kit" Corporation would do anything that would actually allow the users a measure of freedom with their products. I remain skeptical.
It should be noted, a good many 35 year old(and rather older) capitalist radios are still humming along.
What you are experiencing is the joy of (relatively simple) standards.
A patent troll company is filing a lawsuit to stop this sudden outburst of common sense by Sony in its tracks.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Because zipping some text files normally would have been far to horrendous to even contemplate.
One more thing to mention about this. Since Sony will be opening up the bookstore to any ebook reader that supports Adobe-encrypted ePubs, there's a page that lists the devices that use this particular DRM scheme. (The Bookeen Cybook Opus is apparently a very nice little device.) Ideally the DRM scheme will eventually be abandoned (much like it was for iTunes) and any non-DRM-supporting ePub reader will be supported. But for the time being, there's a fairly decent selection of devices that will be able to be used with the Sony store once the transition is completed.
This guy's the limit!
Damn, this sucks.
I was hoping Sony would stubbornly attempt to refuse the adoption of open standards. I was hoping Sony would continue to take the line they have for the past decade+: restrictive formats for media both on a software and hardware level, mandating how a user should use their products, and generally trying to tap the user for as much cash as possible.
I hoped they would continue to do this because I think it would break them. I think the issues of open formats (and generally the nonrestrictive use of electronic devices) has gained enough traction nowadays to become a factor that companies cannot ignore; whereas in the past they could do so with relative impunity.
I'll admit to being very bitter but it's a shame that Sony might be able to get away with screwing people for years on end and then suddenly change it up simply because they cannot afford continue their extortion practices any more.
Oh well, free market and all that. Keep fighting the good fight Howard Stringer.
66819a6ac5d64d52436b4958ba72a6e047186d80
It's a bad, bad sign (for Sony, that is). The next marketing coup could only be a happy-faces-announcement that their book reader went Open Source... and you know what this means about the viability of that product / company...
Sony lost badly the first *war* (not just battles) with Amazon. Now they are trying to retreat, regroup and make alliances. In the meanwhile, Amazon keeps selling their Kindle ebook readers and receiving tons of money.
If I were Sony I would run away from this line of business as fast as I could. Now it's just Amazon, next year it would (might) be also Apple with their tablet.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
While the market is still burgeoning, content providers arenâ(TM)t going to back any e-book format that doesnâ(TM)t protect their copyright, so at least for now, digital rights management (DRM) is a fact of life.
Okay then, move along, nothing to see here. Safari Books Online lets me download technical books in DRM-free PDF format. Feedbooks lets me download public domain and creative commons fiction in DRM-free PDF format (I've just finished reading Ventus, which I'd thoroughly recommend). Why on earth would I buy DRM'd eBooks?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Eh. Every 35-year old thing you have sitting around had better be working, or you're just a pack rat.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, they're going to be layering Adobe's proprietary DRM on top of the ePub. So even if ePub is itself an open format, it's going to be contaminated by Adobe DRM. (There's still no way to read Adobe DRM'd books on the iPhone/iPod Touch, by the way, unless you crack them.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
But I think Sony using this in practice in the way you describe is considerably less likely than Microsoft porting Exchange to FreeBSD.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
IBM tried this language takeover thing in the 1980's, and it didn't work out for them. Otherwise we'd all be calling hard drives "fixed disks" and motherboards "planar boards".
They can't have "open". It means what it means and I have do doubt that Sony's implementation won't fit the definition. We just need to point this out to the idiots who are abusing our language and the problem will go away.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just to clarify, the Sony reader (I own a PR505) had embraced the ePUB format quite while ago.
So this is really a matter of Sony converting their older proprietary book document to ePUB to capture a larger ebook marketplace. It's not an epiphany, it's just a minor marketing evolution.
And YES, Kindle take note!
After all, why sell a customer a working product when you can repeatedly sell them replacements for a defective product?
Ah, the joys of capitalism. My 35 year old Soviet radio in the kitchen still works perfectly.
Does your Beta deck still work?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If you buy a safe at a yard sale, and it comes with the condition that you don't get the combination, but rather must gain the seller's assistance each time to insert or remove things, is the safe "open"? I think not.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Let's go with a Dave Barry quote here: That's like calling a plant the most eloquent asparagus ever.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Most old radios work because they're just a simple fucking radio. Now if you old soviet communism still worked, that would be impressive.
After all, why sell a customer a working product when you can repeatedly sell them replacements for a defective product?
Ah, the joys of capitalism. My 35 year old Soviet radio in the kitchen still works perfectly.
in soviet russia the radio hear you
AZW is actually mobipocket format with a token change (Device IDs for azw allow a character that isn't allowed for mobi), which in turn is ePub packaged to fit into a palm DB.
Sure, but the new ones are shit. I'm probably going to cry when my mid-80's digital alarm clock gives out. You can't get them with a proper circuit board any more, they're all printed boards that will die pretty quickly.
er, apparently I was mixing up OPF, (Also XML based, looks almost the same) and ePub. Oh well.
Corporate dissolution is suitable, since you can't incarcerate a fictitious person.
Sony has not "gone open" in any significant sense at all; the only thing they deserve credit only for is making a good business decision. Think about it: when Apple started the iTunes store, they were creating the marketplace, so they went proprietary. Then Amazon came in to the MP3 market, and "went open" because they were the one locked out of the marketplace.
Same thing is happening with eBooks: because Amazon created the marketplace, they went proprietary. Now Sony wants to break in, so suddenly they're all about open formats. But it has nothing to do with Sony in general. You can bet that the next time they think they can get another Walkman, they'll go to the mat with another Betamax/VHS, Blue-Ray/HDDVD, etc. fight to the death over their latest proprietary format.
Sony 3's controlling proprietary formats, they always have, and they (almost certainly) always will. They just settle for open formats when they're late to the table.
When Sony, of all companies, finally understands that the biggest problem holding back ebook adoption is not the hardware, not the software generally, but the DRM restrictions and users' reaction to them, they are going to be the ones to make headway over the competition.
Call me crazy, but maybe after the last 2 decades or so of Sony killing its own products with ridiculous DRM, proprietary schemes, and other follies, they more than anyone else have the experience to realize playing the DRM game isn't worth the hassle when it costs them money and their customers don't want it. Maybe they're finally turning a corner?
Good luck Sony. Ever since the rootkit fiasco I didn't think I'd ever be saying that.
What's the advantage of epub over a simple html file?
I read books with http://www.fbreader.org/ and it supports both epub and html (and other formats too).
Most of my books are html files so I get boldface chapter headings and whatnot (prettier than a txt file). What does epub add that I don't get with html?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Here's another page on constructing an ePub file. It's much easier than I thought, and the page has a nice set of template files. And the format is supported by Calibre, which is a great tool for converting between ebook formats.
The thing is, we should have been at this point a long time ago ... but noooooo. Every company had to try their own hairbrained proprietary scheme and hope they could get everyone else to conform to it and pay royalties, even though the basic idea is, well, kind of obvious these days (some kind of XTML/CSS-based format).
I suppose some patent troll will probably try to undermine ePub too.
Metadata (book title, author, publisher, title image, etc.) and machine-readable separation into chapters mostly. Additionally, it's compressed (as was already stated in the GP), which is a pretty big deal for human-readable text.
Metadata (book title, author, publisher, title image, etc.) and machine-readable separation into chapters mostly.
Interesting. Not that it's of much direct value to me with most books (who cares if a novel is separated into chapters, I'm not particularly interested in most cover art, and I keep the title and author as part of the filename. On the other hand, I can see where the chapter thing could be useful for technical manuals.
Additionally, it's compressed (as was already stated in the GP), which is a pretty big deal for human-readable text.
FBReader can read compressed html. "Herman Melville - Moby Dick.html.bz2" works fine with FBReader.
Thanks for the answer! I've learned something.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
You clearly don't understand the eBook market at all. The cost of adding new eBooks to your online store is virtually nil, and eBook publishers want their books carried in every possible store unless someone very big (e.g. Amazon) is actually willing to pay for an exclusive eBook arrangement -- which is yet to happen AFAIK, and likely subject to legal action if it did. As such, there is no reason besides Sony's own refusal to carry a publisher (which has been the case with Sony to my own exact personal knowledge) on why it can't offer all the same titles as any other eBook vendor. It's all in what kind of deal Sony offers to the publishers. If Sony demands 90% of the list price to themselves then publishers may want to skip over them. So far, Fictionwise is the most "expensive" eBook publisher, and the only reason that they have gotten away with it so far is because they also sell the most books. With new competition opening up this may change and FW may have to become more reasonable.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Claims that ePUB will kill Kindle are clearly bogus. All that Kindle needs to read ePUB books is a software update. If the market is getting away from Amazon because of a lack of ePUB compatibility then expect to see an ePUB update made available. Until then, they're doing quite well with Kindle since you don't need Kindle hardware to read Kindle books. Free Kindle readers for iPhone/iPod Touch are already available and expect them on other platforms soon. And these readers all integrate back to your Kindle if you have one (i.e. pick up reading on any one device right where you left off on the other one). I don't think Amazon is in any danger at all yet, and has good options to respond if they do find themselves in that situation. For now they're the iPod of eBooks.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Radio is still a standard supported by CURRENT products.
Beta is not.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, the corporation responsible for the rootkit, Sony-BMG, no longer exists. Sony-BMG was a 50-50 venture combining Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG). About a year ago, Bertelsmann decided to get out of the music business, and sold its stake to Sony, so Sony now owns 100% of a music publisher again. Convoluted, I know, but that is the nature of large conglomerates like Sony and Bertelsmann.
Sorry, correction:
In Soviet America TV watches you.
This correction inspired by an invention that the cable companies recently voted invention of the year. It allows them to tell which channel is currently being watched by which TVs.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
PDF is terrible for small screens. Although the text can be zoomed and/or reflowed, it's still a pain in the ass to read text that has been formatted for A4 sized paper on a 6 inch display. It's better to have a dedicated ebook format where the formatting metadata is designed specifically with these displays in mind. And of course, ePub, while it allows for DRM (just like PDF), doesn't require DRM. PDF is a great standard for what it's used for - not necessarily ebooks for dedicated ebook readers, though.
You clearly don't understand the ebook format at all. In the last 3 years, I have bought 3, read it, "three" ebooks - the rest of my 200 title collection were free, both in price and licence. Maybe you are part of the consumer culture, but either way you are wrong. Sony sells hardware, they are not a publisher. And I don't even own a sony device. Maybe you want everything "owned" by some corporate entity, you get what you pay for I guess. Personally, I want what I have already paid for, for nothing. There is nothing new worth having, at least so far.
Used a Betamax C7 just months ago for fun. It records and plays fine. There was also a super high end Betamax SLC9 (I guess) which has amazing features like invisibly marking tape with equal kind of electronics... It worked too.
In fact, if Sony (and others) made similar kind of quality electronics today, they would go chapter 11 because of the price (no Chinese sweatshops) and the quality (why change if it works?).
We, customers looking for 10 bucks cheaper products created this mess and now bitching about it. Look to those legendary devices, computers, none of them are made in dictatorships. They were made by properly educated, paid workers.
Just a warning in case you change your mind or get compatibility. Adobe Digital Editions are pretty down to "demo level". There isn't even a dedicated application. There is some Adobe Air thing which you can't buy anything.
Always have at least 3 downloads guarantee while doing anything with DRM books and make sure there is no time limit. I am saying these as I stare to a Kim Stanley Robinson e-book which I could never read after changing my mac, adobe lost interest, amazon changed to something else etc.
Well, still better than paying more price to shipping and handling rather than the author himself. (not in USA here)
Technology has been improving at rates that were unimaginable when your Betamax was built. It is in such a state of flux right now that there's no value in a 30 year old video player, phone, music player, display device, etc.
A simple device designed to do one job that used a glut of resources to build lasted 30 years (25 of it off and in a box somewhere). What a marvel of craftsmanship.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
We're talking about the rootkit corporation. The one that had the people making mod chips arrested. The one that has fought against open standards long and hard for a lot of years. Don't think so? When was the first Sony portable music player released, and when was the first one that supported anything other than Sony's proprietary formats released?
Sony is an interesting corporation and they do turn out some useful devices (along with some turkeys) - but one thing they are absolutely not good at is "open standards" and anyone who believes their public relations BS on this subject is a fool.
And my 50 year old capitalist valve set still works fine too.
Sorry, what was your point again?
In music, Sony sells the player and new content.
In books, Sony sells the reader, but only gives away old content.
Ergo, Sony is open in this device category because the company has no IP interest in the field. If Sony were to buy a publisher, things might change.
They're also much cheaper in real terms - i.e. work out how many hours an average worker needs to work to buy a radio now compared to 35 years ago. That being said I'm sure there are people still making clock radios that will last a long time, they're just more expensive.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
And to answer your question:
http://www.beam-ebooks.de/lesesoftware/
http://www.libri.de/shop/action/maga...ub_format.html
http://www.bol.de/shop/neuheiten-epubs/show/
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3249
http://www.fictionwise.com/help/eBook-formats-FAQ.htm
http://www.waterstones.com/waterston...e.do?ctx=10030
http://ebooks.whsmith.co.uk/
Which is part of current culture's problems. It's cheaper to make some disposable piece of crap, and in 30 years time, we toss about 6 devices away, filling up a huge junkpile.
We could have spend just a little more, and have something that actually keeps working, but then you'd not have the newest and most shiny device all the time, and hey, we just ship our (toxic) waste over to China anyway, so who cares. And if you don't have the money to buy the latest shiny thing, just borrow it. There's nothing wrong with spending more money than you own and can pay back your loans for, is there????
...is Amazon selling tons of devices. In fact they sell almost zero. I would think that world wide Sony is selling more the Amazon. Of course we don't know that as no one is releasing sales figures.
If anybody need to retreat and regroup it's Amazon after there European T-Online and Vodafone deals went sour.
I know that /. is US-centric - but the eBook market isn't and only 5% of the word population lives in the States.
Martin
As a German living in Switzerland I find postings like your rather amusing. I know that /. is US centric but that should not stop you from thinking more globally.
Yes Amazon dominates the US eBook market - but that is only 5% of human population. Amazon's T-Online and Vodafone deals when sour - so a world wide release for Kindle is further that ever.
More and more eBook shop go DRM free and DRM free ePUB can be read fine on your beloved iPhone.
As it is Sony dominates the market outside the US and Amazon inside and all bets are still open.
Martin
There are enough of them
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
The DRM layer is optional - there are quite a few customer friendly eBook shops who sell without DRM.
Quite interesting how ever pro Amazon argument I find here on /. does not scale up world wide. News-break: Humans living outside the US can read as well. And even worse: we also got money as well to buy eReaders. I know you view of the world has just scattered but there it is.
And speaking of B&N: Fictionwise which is owned by B&N and sells work wide also offers ePUB. In fact B&N themselves plans to move to ePUB as well.
Just to set things right: Sony had an eBook reader and an eBook shop before Amazon. And Sony is selling world wide - something that Amazon did no manage yet. So Sony is changing there already existing eBook reader and an eBook shop to be more attractive to customers world wide.
While Amazon only has the tiny advantage of being most successful in the US.
My Rocket eBook, manufactured by Nuvomedia (and later by Gemstar), finally dropped dead. I have about $300 worth of purchased content for it. It is DRM-protected and keyed to a serial number that is embedded in the device.
The customer representatives that could tell the server to re-encode it for a device with a different serial number have been laid off. The servers capable of re-encoding it have been shut down. And the company who has the records proving I own the content is long out of business.
What good would an open format have done me? I believe the Rocket eBook file format has long since been reverse-engineered. An open format would be nice, but the problem is the DRM, not the format. The free market has shown itself to be fairly capable producing format converters via reverse-engineering; they're not perfect, but they're at least as good as Microsoft's ability to convert from one version of Word to another!
DRM is not acceptable to me until it meets these criteria:
a) It indeed manages digital rights. That is, it is actually aligned with the true legal rights the vendor has, and does not permit the vendor to arbitrarily impose any restrictions it wishes.
b) It must give me what I get from a book: the right to fair use (such as photocopying portions of it if they are short enough for me to have taken longhand notes); the right to lend it to a friend, the right to sell it to a used-book store, the right to buy used copies, the right to expect it to be readable for a hundred years.
c) It must be fail-safe. If the company goes out of business, the book must not become worthless just because some electronic gadget reached its natural end-of-life.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Well, they designed it to keep working, so the audio bug in it is less likely to be detected. If it breaks, at the very least, they will either have to sneak another bug into your home, or you (or your repairman) may discover the bug and then you'll go on a hunt for all the other bugs in your home and office.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Not for long.
Seriously, the switch-off of analogue radio is looming almost as fast as the switch-off of analogue TV.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
As long as some sucker can delete a fucking ebook off my reader, I will never buy one. Fuck drm.
Also, fuck Sony and their rootkits.
OPF is just a packaging format, and is one of the standards ePub uses.