1 Oct 2011

You Don't Have to Pay for This Post

This past week, I read Content by Cory Doctorow for my doctorate. Doctorow, who is a sci-fi novelist, co-editor of Boing Boing, and technology activist maintains that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is futile, as it ends up inhibiting the very creation and alteration of creative content upon which the media/entertainment industry is based. In Doctorow's view, digital content should be at least as unrestricted as physical content. I believe he would further argue that even physical content has too many restrictions placed upon it already.

Take, for example, the ways in which ebooks are more restricted than physical books. When I purchase a physical book, it is mine to do with (for the most part) as I please. I can lend it to whomever I wish, sell it to whomever I wish, read it anywhere, give it away, copy it in part or in whole (despite warnings that doing so may violated copyright law). Yet if I were to purchase the same book in an electronic version, I would find that my options of what I can do with the content are much more restricted. I may be able to lend it to someone else, if they have the accounts and device necessary to view it (and even then the lending period is not determined by me or my friend, but by the e-tailer who sold me the digital book). I cannot resell it. I can read it only on "authorized" devices. I cannot give it away. I cannot copy it. 

The problem with this, according to Doctorow, is that it treats lawful owners of content as criminals-in-waiting and it suppresses the very kind of innovation and creativity needed for new artists to emerge and create new content. Instead of restricting who can access digital material and what they can do with it, Doctorow favors minimal restrictions and free access and distribution of digital content. He believes that this will lead to new, innovative ways of creating content. Instead of destroying media markets, it will encourage artists and industry alike to find new, creative ways to monetize their content. 

His opposition to DRM is why he offers his books for free in digital format, believing that the lure of reading a novel in paperback is long-lasting. In his assessment, free digital content will shore up the sales of physical versions of the same content. The essays and articles that make up Content were written between 2005-2007, for the most part. In the digital age, that's nearly two generations ago. Facebook had just started accepting users with .edu email addresses, Twitter was just starting to make a buzz at SXSW, and Google only offered snippet views of public domain books. Things have change quite a bit since the author confidently declared that, 
the problem . . . isn't that screens aren't sharp enough to read novels off of. The problem is that novels aren't screeny enough to warrant protracted, regular reading on screens. Electronic books are a wonderful adjunct to print books. It's great to have a couple hundred novels in your pocket when the plane doesn't take off or the line is too long at the post office . . . Mostly, we can read just enough of a free e-book to decide whether to buy it in hard copy--but not enough to substitue the e-book for the hardcopy. (Kindle location 756 and following)
How times have changed. 

Amazon's Kindle has jumped from a clunky device with limited selection in its fall 2007 debut, to a competitive ereader that is forecast to sell 17.5 million devices in 2011, with Kindle book sales accounting for a whopping projected 10% of Amazon's overall sales. This past week, Amazon announced the newest version of the device, the Kindle Fire, which moves away from its e-ink heritage and into direct, mulit-tasking, web-browsing, app-supporting competition with Apple's iPad. Amazon raked in 95,000 preorders on day one.

What does this mean in light of Doctorow and Content? It reinforces how quickly things can evolve and change in the ITC (information communication technology) world. Just today, Doctorow released a follow-up to Content titled Context. It's available in print only, no free ebook to be found. And as for his stand against selling digital versions of his novels? His Amazon Kindle page tells a different story. 

But I don't think that Doctorow is all wrong in his assessment or his vision of the future. In 2009, Apple removed DRM from songs available in iTunes and made DRM removal retroactive for songs previously purchased through the iTunes store. Why? Because with a growing number of portable digital music devices entering the market, and multiple places to purchase digital music, they realized that they stood to make more money by allowing users to play music purchased from iTunes on any device, and allow music purchased from any store to play on iPods. 

With this week's announcement of the Amazon Kindle Fire moving it into more direct competition with the iPad and with the Color Nook, I think we'll see changes in the Kindle ebook store soon as well. Soon Amazon will come to the same conclusion as Apple. To remain competitive and increase revenue in device and content sales, they will need to let books purchased in the Kindle store be read on any e-reader, and enable Kindle devices to read any kind of digital content, no matter where it is purchased. 

The next challenge is not going to be so much about access to content, but about the filtering of content. Facebook's recent changes to their algorithms, and the ensuing conversation, is one example. The TED talk below is another. In very short order, we will not be talking about whether or not we have access to digital content, but how we wade through and determine the value of that content. As more and more information is made available for free, and more and more people gain access to the technology needed to consume and create digital content, what are the means by which we determine which content is worth our time and which is not? Do we rely solely on the algorithmic gatekeepers of giants like Facebook and Google? Do we argue for unfiltered access only? If the former, how do we avoid living in an algorithmic induced "digital bubble" as feared in the video below? If the latter, how do we find relevant content as the amount available increases exponentially?