An additional feature of the nookcolor is the ability for its owner to make ebook purchases outside of the Barnes & Noble marketplace, including the Google ebookstore. Unlike the Amazon Kindle, the nookcolor supports the EPUB ebook standard. There is a catch, though. In order to make these third-party ebook purchases readable by the nookcolor, the user needs to download and install Adobe Digital Editions, Adobe’s flash-based ebook reader software. This application serves as the DRM gatekeeper for the publishers allowing for only six activations of devices. Once the total number of activations have been met the user is required to contact Adobe in order to reset the permitted activations. Since the application is provided by Adobe for free, Adobe makes the claim that it does not provide support, meaning if you are need of help for your purchased ebooks you are directed to a poorly maintained forum. That is if the outsourced Adobe customer service representative knows about Adobe’s ebook reader. If you are required to download and install an application at point of purchase, certainly the installation is part of the commercial transaction, thereby making the application not free. Right!?
Nevertheless, because of these draconian measures to protect the rights of publishers, and which cause injury not just to the purchaser but also the authors, I have limited my purchases of ebooks to the Barnes & Noble marketplace and the Amazon Kindle store. In both cases, my purchased content resides on each retailer’s server. The list of activated devices is provided in my account area where I have control over the number of devices or computers in use. And I am not require to seek the permission from a third-party gatekeeper like Adobe who has no interest providing support. Thankfully, there are also smaller publishers that provide their books in multiple formats, including PDF, with no DRM and which are licensed to the user not the device or computer being used to read the ebook.
When Nikola Tesla went into George Westinghouse’s office to pitch him on his latest invention (a wireless energy power device that would be installed in everyone’s home and that would power the home and potentially their cars by harnessing the freely available electro-magnetic waves emitted from the planet) and seek funding from the power company, George Westinghouse refused, stating that there would be no means to monitor customer usage, therefore, how could he charge money for its use? And in one meeting the future of the world’s dependency on fossil fuels was set in stone. Imagine our world if Westinghouse had funded Telsa’s dream.
Telcos in an effort to rein in customers offered unlimited data plans, never thinking that some of their customers would actually use such plan to, you know, download data. In response to these customer’s fair use of their plans, the Telcos have instituted metered caps to their offered plans, while in some cases, still advertising these plans as “unlimited.” Network companies in an effort to undermine the principles of the internet have attacked Network Neutrality by proposing a tiered internet payment model whereby the consumer is charged twice for the same purchase. By doing so, these companies hope to exponentially increase profits through double-dipping, therefore, stifling innovation and making what was once accessible to all, accessible only to a few.
Imagine our world if unlimited data actually meant unlimited; or if the free internet would actually mean freely accessible to all; or if publishers treated their customers like valued assets instead of thieves. Imagine a world free of DRM, free of small-time hoodlums disguised as dark-suited executives, where wireless energy cells powered our devices and where innovation wasn’t undermined, but leveraged for a greater future. Imagine such a world as you lull yourself to sleep to the pulse of electro magnetic dreams.
