Ignoring the sensationalist headline from TechDirt, the fact that Amazon is collecting user generated data on their devices isn’t all that shocking. There are a few technical reasons why they would do this, the simplest of which is the most innocent: if you lose your device and have to restore all of your books, your notes and highlights get restored at the same time.
Of course, the “popular highlights” feature dashes my hopes for the innocent explanation. Can someone dig through the Terms of Service to reveal what else Amazon does with the data you create on your device?
A small part of me loves it when a sci fi writer becomes an influential force in real world matters. Cory Doctorow has done just that with his insightful assessment of publishing legalities.
I wouldn’t say it’s fair to summarize this as “ereaders fail in college” as much as “Kindle DX fails in college.” The fact is that the Kindle (DX or 2) isn’t made for studying on; just displaying the content correctly doesn’t guarantee success. Until we have devices that are engineered specifically for the education market, we may not see the full benefits of digital content.
Come ooooon DynamicBooks!
A major win for the “Down with DRM!” movement!
Personally, I just want to see creative ways devs will get around the limitations of the E-ink screen.
This move is designed to spur the small publishing houses into giving Amazon more content, but hopefully it will also help bring the bigger content houses back to the table. Lots of them recently started imposing delays on their ebook versions of new releases due to fears of shrinking hardcover revenues.
One of the things that always bothered me about digital books is how their cost isn’t significantly lower than their paper counterparts. That one of the requirements of this program is that ebooks must be price at least 20% lower than paper books makes me pretty happy.
Other manufacturers take note: accessibility options need to be taken more seriously.
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t think the organizations representing the disabled had a case here (due to the Kindle possessing text-to-speech for all its books), but that’s why I’m not a lawyer! Turns out that while the books can be read out loud, the menus cannot, making it extremely difficult to navigate and use for the blind. So until Amazon adds that functionality, they can’t expand on campus trials of the Kindle DX. Very interesting, indeed.
Not really education focused, but an interesting piece on the importance of the Kindle, likening it to the first generations of iPods. The iPod as we all know and love it with the click wheel was actually the fourth iteration of the hardware, and the first one that guaranteed Windows compatibility thanks to the release of iTunes for Windows. The same argument comes here: forcing open this market will show content providers that they lose much more than they stand to gain should they ignore it.
