Is Amazon Waiting for Mobipocket to Die?

I wanted to write about using Mobipocket on a smart phone for eBook reading as an alternative to using a Kindle, Sony Reader, or other dedicated eBook reader. I did what I set out to do, but some of what I found out surprised me.

For one thing, Amazon.com's Kindle store routinely undercuts Mobipocket's prices. Since Amazon has owned Mobipocket since 2005, this is not likely to be a coincidence. Then mix in fictionwise.com, a company owned by the Barnes & Nobel Company. Like Amazon, they also deal directly with publishers and offer many of the same titles. They also provide content in Mobipocket .mobi format, complete with DRM that limits what the reader can read his published, purchased content on.

Control was an important part of getting the publishers to go along with electronic publication. At the beginning of this decade, it was widely assumed that the public would embrace "no-dead-tree" electronic publishing, but the hardware and the public's will had yet to be determined.

Adobe was soon getting trashed over poor eBook security and their handling of one Dmitry Sklyarov, who delivered a presentation entitled "eBook Security - Theory and Practice" on July 16, 2001 at DEF CON in Las Vegas. Adobe complained, and the FBI arrested Sklyarov before he could return to Russia. Unfortunately, Adobe based their reasoning on the on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and claimed that copyright protections in their products were being violated by Sklyarov and his employer.

Many did not agree with Adobe's position. For one thing, Sklyarov was Russian, and the DMCA did not apply to actions he or others made in Russia.

Adobe eventually agreed, and asked that the case be dropped. That was on July 23, 2001, but by that time, Sklyarov was already mired in the US Justice System, where he remained until August 6, 2001, when he was given bail of $50,000 and required to stay in California. He was not allowed to return to Russia until December 13th.

Adobe's actions backfired in a way. The public, and the cautious, fickle publishers, had lost a lot of faith in the security of Adobe's eBook solutions.

Microsoft had their troubles in the first part of the decade, too. Microsoft Reader was released in 2000 and came standard on Pocket PC devices for several years. To access "Premium content" (or DRM-protected content) required that the application be registered against a Microsoft Passport account (what we'd call a "Windows Live Account" now).

Like Adobe, Microsoft made a few missteps. In 2002, an English programmer named Dan Jackson, supposedly "frustrated by the tight security and lack of interoperability" of Microsoft Reader eBooks," released a command-line program called "Convert Lit" that reduced the protection of premium content from level 5 (full draconian DRM measures) to level 1 (virtually no restrictions).

Microsoft relied on other merchants, such as Barnes & Noble, to distribute the content. By the time Vista rolled around, the reader was no longer in the ROMs of Windows Mobile devices and using it in Vista required the tablet tools or an addition called Origami for UMPC (Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers). In a move that earned the ire of both authors and publishers, Microsoft Reader, on those platforms, could read the content aloud to the user. The publishing establishment maintained that this exceeded the licensing.

Whether explicitly or not, Microsoft seems to have made the decision to let Microsoft Reader die. The reader has not been updated since May 19, 2005.

So, with Adobe and Microsoft effectively out of the eBook picture, that left Mobipocket soldiering along, mostly on Palm and Pocket PC devices.

I read several books (and wrote one) on my Palm devices. They were great for the times that I'd normally spend just waiting or twiddling my thumbs. They were purchases of convenience, and they were not frequently made. They did not stop my once-per-month habit of going down to the used book store to trade titles. In a way, Mobipocket was an old friend of mine, but we had fallen out of touch.

I can think of no reason why Amazon.com could not roll the DRM from Mobipocket files into their DRM for the Kindle except for their not wanting to. Maybe there are other legal/licensing reasons of which I'm not aware.

But I can see the effect of pricing at Mobipocket and at Amazon.com. Mobipocket users are being punished economically for not having a Kindle. They are further being punished by Amazon not allowing DRMed content purchased from Mobipocket from being used on a Kindle.

How enthusiastic fictionwise.com will be to support the Mobipocket platform after Barnes & Nobel release their "Nook" version of an eBook reader remains to be seen as well.

But things are not looking too rosy for Mobipocket. It looks like Amazon and Barnes & Nobel would prefer that Mobipocket just quietly go away.

Related Reading

Mobipocket eBook Reader for Windows and Mobile Devices - Before the Kindle and Sony Reader, eBooks had to be read on whatever device you had. This is still an option for those with many types of smart phones. Why buy a Kindle if you can use your phone as an eBook reader? Here we try out Mobipocket in Windows and on a Palm Treo smart phone.

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