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."

Comments

Great Scott! It Actually Makes Sense!

[eldavojohn]

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.

Are we sure we're actually talking about Sony?

[Coopjust]

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.

Re:Are we sure we're actually talking about Sony?

[AmiMoJo]

Sony do seem to be mellowing a bit, and I think that should be encouraged as much as possible.

I was surprised to find that the Playstation 3 supports standard USB gamepads in all games. Anyone can make a compatible controller for the PS3 now, and in fact have done so myself. On the other hand, the XBOX 360 uses some kind of cryptographic authentication to make sure that no-one except Microsoft authorised third parties can make controllers (read: you have to pay them lots of money).

Re:Great Scott! It Actually Makes Sense!

[Ardaen]

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.

Layer DRM on top?

[sakdoctor]

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.

Re:Layer DRM on top?

[sakdoctor]

Googled openwashing and it only came up with 1,530 results, some of which where about open washing machines.

Whether this concept has an official name or not, open has lost its meaning, and only specific formats, licences and specifications have the property of open-ness as people around here would have it.
It's going to confuse the hell out of the public, now that consumers and companies have started to identify open-ness as a "DO WANT" attribute.

Re:Layer DRM on top?

[dkleinsc]

That's grade A BS right there.

DRM is by design and by law not user modifiable. If it were, it wouldn't work at all because users would modify it to give themselves free access. OpenSSL, by contrast, can be modified by anyone to their hearts content: you can make it use "4" as a random number every single time it needs one if you wanted to (not that I'm recommending this, of course).

Your either inadvertent or intentional blurring of the meaning of the word "open" is exactly what MS did with its "Office Open XML" format, which is precisely what GP was pointing out.

Re:Layer DRM on top?

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

It isn't "openwashing". There is a danger (to Sony) that the market for ebook hardware will be dominated by the big bookstores. Amazon and B&N, because books are their primary business, can provide a huge number of ebook titles, more than Sony's online store could ever hope to. These ebooks can only be read on their own devices (Amazon's ebooks on the Kindle, B&N's on the upcoming Plastic Logic device) and not on the Sony Reader, an Illiad device, or whatever. Well, they work on an iPhone, but that's a different market, not the e-Ink market. There is a danger to Sony that no matter how good or cheap their device is, people won't buy it because there's not a big catalog of books available for it.

So they hit on the idea of focusing on the ePub format, trying to make it the standard for sales of ebooks. If enough sellers go along with it, if most every non-Amazon and B&N seller goes along with it, then eventually there will be enough content usable on the Reader that Sony can compete with Amazon and B&N on things like hardware and price. They're trying to eliminate the big bookstores' inherent advantage, that's it. If a few people see this news and say, "Open formats, gee whiz, now I'll buy a Sony Reader" the so much the better (for Sony), but that's not their intention.

That said, the Sony Reader is also not really in need of "openwashing", because it's very good with open formats. This is strange to say about a Sony device, but it's true. The Reader already supports epub, which the Kindle doesn't. The Reader has always been better for open formats, even pdf (if you don't mind slow and cramped). You don't even need to use Sony's software. Just plug the thing in to a USB port and drag your ebooks over, like its an external flash drive. I've had a Reader (a PRS-505) since last fall and have read 60-70 full books on it. The only DRM that's gotten onto the machine was attached to a couple of pdf ebooks I checked out of the Chicago Public Library. The Reader has been quite happy with free and open files from Project Gutenberg, from Mobileread, what I've bought from a few small presses, and from what the excellent (free and open) Calibre software has pulled from the web for me.

Re:Layer DRM on top?

[rumith]

We're talking about different things.

DRM is by design and by law not user modifiable

Exactly my point. However, we're speaking here of the difference "This is our DRM method and we're not telling anyone how we've done it" and "This is our DRM method but any other developer can use the algorithms and substitute their own encryption keys". A piece of content crippled by either scheme remains crippled for the consumer, but the second case allows for reimplementations of the same thing by companies other than Sony. Have I made my point clearer?
And no, it is hard to consider OOXML "open" even by such a loose definition, because it isn't even possible to reimplement it due to poor documentation!

Re:Great Scott! It Actually Makes Sense!

[gEvil (beta)]

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).

Patronizing

[nizo]

...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!

Re:Great Scott! It Actually Makes Sense!

[Jurily]

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.

this is a good move

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Re:this is a good move

[gEvil (beta)]

You're right--the literary selection is fairly small. For instance, I can't get my Nabokov, Calvino, Borges, etc there (for now at least). But thankfully, I already have bookshelves full of their works. Going forward, though, many newly published books are being made available electronically, so I'm able to pick up a lot of what's been released in the past few years (though I'm still waiting for an ePub version of the new Pynchon that came out last week). And at the same time, the back catalogs are slowly expanding, too.

It's true at the moment that ebook devices are primarily the realm of genre fiction (romance, scifi, endless cashcow series, etc). But as more people adopt e-reading devices, ebooks will eventually break out of those restraints. And I'm willing to help lead that charge.

I got a pretty good deal on my reader, and since I've bought it, my bookreading has just about tripled. What used to be a book every week or two has now turned into a book every 3 or 4 days. I still prefer the typographic aesthetics of printed books, but I'm willing to make some sacrifices in order to satiate my desire to read. That's why I may seem pretty gung-ho about this whole ebook thing (and hence welcome this move by Sony). Purchasing my reader truly has changed my reading habits.

Re:Great Scott! It Actually Makes Sense!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

And meanwhile in East Texas

[RotateLeftByte]

A patent troll company is filing a lawsuit to stop this sudden outburst of common sense by Sony in its tracks.

ebook devices

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Bad, bad sign

[cbraescu1]

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.

DRM?

[TheRaven64]

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?

Not really as "open" as all that

[Robotech_Master]

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.)

If you buy a safe at a yard sale

[symbolset]

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.

Re:It's Not Sony, It's the Market

[Ilgaz]

If you ask audio and video professionals, there hasn't been a single proprietary, undocumented Sony device which doesn't tie to some mpeg standard ever.

Betamax is proprietary? For God's sake, they invented VIDEO, it better be proprietary. VHS was the same deal too, it was just JVC was clever to license it to rivals and nothing else.

BluRay is H264, AAC, VC1, Java, all open formats in 50 GB of space which movie industry desperately needs to race with pirates. Dolby/DTS audio codecs are "secrets everyone knows" BTW.

Let me tell what actually happened. First, Sony has a new CEO. Second: Amazon was really stupid to play games with intellectuals who READS BOOKS and abuse their DRM. Sony guys also reads slashdot etc. and they have seen comments like "at least Sony e-reader exists", from NY Times respected authors to. So, they wanted to milk the situation in hand benefiting end users.

Same goes for Amazon Mp3 store. If iTMS and the horrible myth that iTunes has own, secret codec didn't exist, Amazon would happily deal with MS and go with Wmedia DRM. Wanna bet?

Re:Do you believe them? Really?

[AmigaBen]

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?

Uhm, 1979 and 1979? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkman#Cassette-based_walkman