Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle - Publishers, Developers and Piracy

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint

Don Marquis, Certain Maxims of Archie

Today is my birthday, but nothing has changed in the world of Newspapers, Periodicals and Books, my usual preferred gift whenever I had birthdays. The dilemma of decreasing readership still bedevils my world of printed media, despite its modern accents of Websites, Newsletters, embedded video content and RSS (Remote Syndication Subscription) feeds.

In the early 1900’s at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, this as not the case, as people were just beginning to have leisure time on their hands and as such Newspapers, Radio and Television co-existed, as albeit stretching into each others territory, they could never full supplant or replace the other and as such moved instead from being potential killers to being co-complementary as it relates to News, Sports and Entertainment.

The world of Newspapers has long been the bastion of privileged Upper Classes with education and fine English and the Robber Barons that in their heyday saw reading and even owning a Newspaper as a sign of power, as Newspapers furthered one’s interests and allowed the owner as well as the reader a platform for increased profitability from advertising sales and circulation, such as is the case with Gordon ‘Butch” Stewart, owner of local Tabloid Newspaper, the Jamaica Observer.

Thus when Newspaper readership began declining in the early 2000’s, alarm bells began ringing not only in the Newspaper industry but also for Publishers of anything read from paper in general as the laughable play toy of the Venture Capitalists during the busting of the Dot.com Bubble of the early 90’s, the Internet, was taking its revenge.

Much as I waxed reminiscent of my grudge against RIM Blackberry for their defeat of the Palm Pilot finally bearing fruit with RIM’s recent announcement of its touch-screen Blackberry 9800 and its much rumoured BlackPad, also touch-screen and also competing against the Apple iPhone.

The once might Newspaper Robber Barons were being pilloried and by 2007 had to bow to the might of the Silicon Valleys playtoy, namely the internet as per the article “US Newspapers look to online editions as possible saviours”, published Wednesday March 28 2007 by Catherine Hours, AFP, Yahoo! News with many folding and only existing as online versions.

The Internet appears to be the media outlet of choice for the next Generation Y [read 14 to 28 years old], with Generation X catching on [read 29 to 45 years old], mainly of course because so much of their favourite content, from music, comic books, magazines, games to news of concern to their little lives, comes from this now almost everywhere portal originally on Desktop PC via Wired Broadband (Broadband: the ONLY type of Internet they know!!)

Now on Laptops, Netbooks and mobile phones via Wireless Broadband on demand, wherever and whenever, served just how you like it, according to the prognostications of fifteen (15) year old Morgan Stanley Intern, Matthew Robson in the article which he wrote in 2009, entitled  “How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City”, printed by the Guardian Newspaper, Monday 13 July 2009 10.23 BST, The Guardian.

Alas, I guess grown-ups do not believe the ramblings of a fifteen (15) year old. And. Oh Yes, their content is free!………albeit not legally so. John Public knows that the evil smirk of Piracy is what makes the Internet so appealing to the Younger Crowd, as no-one feels guilty stealing content from apparently wealthy faceless corporations. Yet there is a Silver Lining in the form of the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad.

Granted the Amazon Kindle is now currently highly successful, despite not meeting shareholder expectations for profitability on Wall Street as stated in the article “Wasn't the Kindle supposed to be firewood?”, published July 22, 2010 2:45 PM PDT by Caroline McCarthy CNET News - The Social.

Even surprising Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as stated in the article “Soaring e-book sales speak volumes”, published Sunday August 1, 1:54 am ET by Peter Brieger, Yahoo! News who sums up what I have long suspected best in these simple statistics laden words spoken in July 2010: “Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books - astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months”.

Yep, e-books, long being the dark stepchild of publishing, are back, so at least novels, periodicals and Newspapers to some extent are saved by this device, now with a GSM and Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) version as stated in the article “Amazon unveils 3rd-generation Kindle e-book reader”, published Sunday August 1^st 2010 by Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY.

This makes support for its adoption by a local Telecom Provider in Jamaica a snap.

The same trend of a younger generation not reading books but getting their content on Wired and Wireless Broadband enabled devices also exists, ironically, in the same markets that Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter are yet to make significant headway: The People’s Republic of China, Russia, Korea and Japan, hence Amazon is also interested in getting into these markets as well.

Need I say more, as it appears the young Mr. Matthew Robson research note is spot on. The Barbarians at the Gate are in the form of the Barnes and Noble Nook, the Sony Readers and the multi-purpose cure all, the Apple iPad and all of its iPad-esque knockoffs in the skunk works from Google, LG Electronics, Hewlett-Packard, Dell.

Not to mention the currently popular Dell Streak and now Microsoft and CEO Steve Ballmer’s announcement of a tablet PC as stated in the article “Microsoft takes aim at the Tablet Market”, published Friday July 30th 2010 by Christopher Null, Technology Writer, Yahoo! News.

Not to mention recently announced news of a potential Apple iPad killer in the form of the RIM BlackPad as stated in the article “RIM said to Plan Tablert for November to take on Apple's iPad”, published Friday July 30 2010 by Hugo Miller, the BloomBerg Report.

Already Amazon, feeling the heat from the Apple iPad and its Devotees of all things and has dropped its prices from a high of US$259 to US$189 to be cost competitive and has made available apps for Blackberry, Apple and Google Android thereby making Amazon Kindle content available on all computers.

A suggestion to Amazon I had made based on emails received in 2009 from a young female friend of mine who works at MonaGIS (Mona GeoInfomatics Institute) in Jamaica as it relates to her habits on reading news articles on smart phones, now plainly the proud owned of a Blackberry based on her recent postings on FaceBook.

So it was believed that the Apple iPad, which launched with an earsplitting thunderclap on the weekend of Saturday April 3^rd and Sunday April 4^th 2010 AD, the wonder device which I, John Public, had suggested and hoped would save the day for the Publishers, being as it conforms to the desires of the younger generation as per research note in being touch-screen and being created by making an already popular device bigger, is not doing its job.

Apple is showing reluctance to support subscriptions for magazines due to the low level of turnaround for the subscriptions, as Time Magazine, one such magazine published in its full video advertisement supported glory, complete with Apple iAds, is facing problems with its champion Apple

This as Time charges only US$20 for its paperback edition for a year subscription, forcing Apple to require subscribers using the Time Magazine App to subscribe each month for US$4.99 to make profit, effectively a US$260.00 value, as Time Magazine is a weekly printed glossy of International News as stated in the article “Why won't Apple sell magazine subscriptions for the iPad?”, published Wednesday July 28, 2:53 pm ET by Christopher Null, Technology Writer Yahoo! News.

Apple cannot apply the same business model it does in paying its Developers to publications and would do best to follow the business model of Amazon and other large Publishers of content in terms of its pricing of Newspaper, magazine, periodical and other content or faced being squeezed out of the e-publication market, as other, cheaper e-reader enabled Tablet PC devices are sure as rain in on their parade like the sudden showers as Amazon Rain Forest is famous.

Even worse, the popularity of e-readers since the debut of the Amazon Kindle and the e-Reader cum Tablet PC since the debut of the Apple iPad may be creating a vortex for e-book Piracy, much in the same way the Apple iPod was an accelerant for the adoption of MP3 formats for music and later MP3 Piracy’s alleged explosion, albeit that is a debate for another article.

Like music, e-books are easily available on torrent sites such as the infamous The Pirate Bay file sharing website, know only too well to John Public as I had used it to obtain books for free online while a Student at the University of the West Indies in 2005 to 2009, as I am not crazy enough to spend JA$8000 on an Organic Chemistry textbook that hardly changes from year to year.

Thus an irony is now obvious. The Amazon Kindle and its imitators and the Apple iPad and its line of would-be imitators is achieving the aim, despite some difficulties, of getting more people to read books, be they Periodicals, Magazines, Comics, Novels and even Newspapers.

The problem now is that thanks to the silver lining of good fortune related to the massive adoption of these e-Reader and Tablet PC devices, it is also has the potential to increase Piracy of content to be utilized on these devices, now being potentially accelerated by the ruling being handed down by the Copyright Office in the United States of America in favor of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) that reinterprets the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

This and makes it perfectly legal to “jailbreak” your Apple iPhone or any smart phone for that matter as stated in the article “Apple: Jailbreaking an iPhone will (still) violate your warranty”, published Tuesday 27 July 2010 by Ben Patterson, Technology Writer, Yahoo! News and further elucidate in the article “On Call: Go ahead an jailbreak, its legal now”, published July 27, 2010 2:20 PM PDT by Kent German, CNET News - Dialed In.

Limitations exist, such as you have to jailbreak the Apple iPhone or Apple iPad yourself without assistance and once “jailbroken”, if your device becomes “bricked” or inoperable expensive paperweight in the process and you are unable to revert, you are still in breach of the Apple iPhone Software License Agreement between the customer and Apple.

Thus voiding the contract and absolving Apple of any obligation to fix what clearly is your fault as stated in the article “The jailbreaking exemption has its limits”, published July 29, 2010 11:45 AM PDT by Larry Downes, CNET News - Politics and Law!

Thus the problem of Piracy that has bedeviled the Music Industry and is now barking at the Door of Apple Developers, even forcing Google to address it in recent security update to Google Android as stated in the article “Google Licensing changes could cap Android Piracy”, published July 28, 2010 1:31 PM PDT by Jessica Dolcourt, CNET News - Android Atlas, is going to make it difficult for Newspapers and Publishers to collect the silver lining owed to them…………a prediction spoken here first by the eagle-eyed John Public.