Kindle – DCMA Invocation

I’m not sure how I feel about Amazon invoking the DCMA clause to prevent other e-books from being read on the Kindle. On one hand I think that if encryption on other books is being cracked to put them on the Kindle, that’s an issue for other e-book vendors, not Amazon.

However if this is to prevent Barnes and Nobles from selling e-books that can be read on the Kindle, I think that’s a mistake. In that case, Amazon isn’t pushing the e-reader as a platform, they’re pushing it as a service.

I can already get books from Mobipocket, or the Gutenberg project, or any number of other places and convert them on my PC, load them on the Kindle, and never pay Amazon for that privilege.

I think most customers that get a Kindle, will do so to buy books conveniently from Amazon. Lots of people won’t worry about saving $.50 to drive to a bookstore to get other books. Or bother going to another web site, downloading the book, connecting the Kindle, etc. It’s way more convenient to use Whispernet to grab books. I’ve done it both ways, and the convenience factor wins out for me 90% of the time.

Trying to get that last 10% of sales, or some similar percentage, will do more damage to the Amazon reputation than just allowing this to take place and pushing out more, and better, content from Amazon.com.