BizOp News asks the question:

Is the Kindle DX: Amazon’s 9.7″ Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation) a disruptive device for the textbook market?

via The BizOp News | Due Diligence : Can Kindle Replace Text Books?

His main argument is that “Kindle threatens the established textbook market, because textbooks can be treated as software, and rental items. You only want the text for one course, you rent it.”

He believes, along with others, that Amazon will likely act to push legal textbook authors to publish ebooks — but they will be accompanied with licensing and DRM that will ensure their limited distribution and use and, presumably, undermine the used textbook market as well.

I believe the Kindle — and perhaps other devices like it — may indeed revolutionize the market. I am not convinced that all textbooks are amenable to an electronic model in terms of ease of use, but that may not stop the attempt by Amazon to push it.

To be honest, I suspect the entrenched nature of law and law schools will prevent Amazon’s complete success in any rapid fashion — I suspect a complete changeover to electronic books will simply run into too much resistance.

I also believe that “renting” textbooks stands a decent chance of generating a backlash against the current ebook licensing approach, as students (never ones to enjoy restrictions, especially ones that cost them money) discover they can’t pass on their textbooks to others by selling or giving them away.

Still, Amazon still has a chance to disrupt the market without such a backlash — if the purchase price paid by students for books justifies the more limited rights they will enjoy. If Amazon can pull it off, everyone will benefit — if they give in to publishers and keep prices artificially high — we will see a backlash and disruption of a different sort.

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Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com apologizes for the 1984 Kindle fiasco:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos

Founder & CEO

Amazon.com

via An Apology from Amazon — kindle Discussion Forum.

I appreciate the apology. It’s good customer service. I’m not sure it makes me more comfortable with the law in this area, but it does improve the likelihood that I might someday purchase a Kindle myself.

Image via Wikipedia

Yet another example of the problems with DRM and the Kindle:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

via Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others — Pogue’s Posts Blog — NYTimes.com.

This also clearly illustrates the problem from the consumer perspective of “licensing” what was previously sold. With physical books — or even electronic sales — the “first-sale” doctrine applies, and the seller cannot unilaterly reverse the transaction and take back the item (even if they credit the consumer for the price). Nor can the seller in a traditional sales transaction prevent resale, etc. — which Amazon also prohibits.

Will consumers adjust to this new model, or will we rebel and insist on our traditional first-sale rights?

This certainly discourages me from buying a Kindle — or, especially, from purchasing my Kindle books through Amazon. Better to get them via Project Gutenberg, where they cannot be taken from me later on.

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Greg Lambert at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog writes:

Generally, the discussion has tended to lean toward the idea that online research will trump print research due to the convenience of the format and how the upcoming generation will prefer online over print media.

via 3 Geeks and a Law Blog: Legal Research Metrics & Ethics: $499 a Year Or $825 an Hour?.

But Lambert points out that many researchers have discovered that in certain situations and with certain kinds of material, even young lawyers are discovering that online access — at least, as delivered by the current providers — just doesn’t work as well.

Cost is a major element of this: online access to a treatise (a compendium of legal research, opinion, etc. that’s an extremely useful resource for understanding an area of the law before diving into more specifics) can run to around $825 an hour, while the print version of the same treatise costs $499 per year (or less, if you don’t mind out-of-date treatises). But it’s more than simply the straight-up cost of access — print research can be more effective and time-efficient for many tasks:

Then along comes a recession and all of a sudden it becomes apparent that online research is “expensive” and for some forms of research — specifically treatise research — online research doesn’t work very well. Take a poll at one of the practice group meetings you attend and ask the attorneys point blank: “When researching in treatises, do you find you are more efficient using the print version of a treatise, or the online version of a treatise?” I’d almost give you 2 to 1 odds that the print version will be the preferred method.

via 3 Geeks and a Law Blog: Legal Research Metrics & Ethics: $499 a Year Or $825 an Hour?

Myself, I find that online case-law research so much more effective than the print alternative that I strongly support eliminating the print versions of decisions completely. There is simply no point in filling libraries with dead trees holding out-of-date case law that’s difficult and time-consuming to cross-reference.

However, treatises are a different story. The longer, more in-depth format, combined the the benefits of browsing vs. searching when it comes to broad areas of the law, make the print versions far more attractive than their current online counterparts.

This is essentially the same reason why I do not read books on my computer screen: it is uncomfortable and limiting.

The Kindle and other e-readers substantially reduce this argument, however, and that is exactly what I see for the future of treatises. The benefits of “online” access (especially linking) simply do not outweigh the per-hour charges or the inefficiency of search vs. browse. Electronic readers, with one-time charges like print, add effective electronic searching while preserving much (but not all — flipping back and forth between sections, or having multiple volumes open at once are still not possible) help bridge this gap.

My prediction: treatises will move to electronic media, and “online” access via LexisNexis or Westlaw will be reduced to quick scans and database searches, with researchers then taking it “offline” to their Kindle. (Of course, the “online” vs. “offline” distinction is inaccurate, since the Kindle has built-in wireless networking — so we need to find a better term to capture the distinction.)

You are able to redownload your books an unlimited number of times to any specific device.

Any one time the books can be on a finite number of devices. In most cases that means you can have the same book on six different devices.

Unfortunately the publishers decide how many licenses, that is devices, a book can be on at any one time. While most of the time that will be five or six different devices there will be times when it’s only one device.

At the present time there is no way to know how many devices can be licensed prior to buying the book.

According to the customer rep, there is a project to try to get that information available to the customer but it’s not yet available.

Finally, when you have reached a limit of six devices and you swap one older device for a new one, it does not automatically reset the number of licenses so you can add the new one. Amazon can release all of the licenses which will remove any given book from all of the devices and then allow you to re-download it that same number of times.

via KindleGate: Confusion Abounds Regarding Kindle Download Policy.

It sounds like Amazon’s trying to get the right balance for you — but this points out a general problem with DRM in the marketplace: it’s very confusing. This undercuts a general argument out there that “the marketplace has spoken” in terms of acceptance of DRM. If consumers have limited access to information, the market is inefficient, and cannot accurately measure consumer desires.

This kind of issue always makes me leery to purchase DRM protected media, and when I do, it encourages me to see if there is a way to remove the protection (so that I can freely use what I’ve purchased, not so I can share it with the world) — even if I never do so, it’s nice to know I can if the company fails or changes the rules on me.

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Frightful Kindle | TPM:

Finally, only a few months ago, I purged a decent chunk of my collection. And most are now in storage. But in our living room we have two big inset shelves where I keep all the books I feel like I need or want ready at hand. And last night, sitting in front of them, I had this dark epiphany. How much longer are these things going to be around? Not my books, though maybe them too. But just books. Physical, paper books. The few hundred or so I was looking at suddenly seemed like they were taking up an awful lot of space, like the whole business could dealt with a lot more cleanly and efficiently, if at some moral loss.

In response Dave Hoffman writes at Concuring Opinions,

It’s certainly true that there’s something reassuring about having lots of books in a room, but I suspect Josh is right that their day is ending. And this is probably for the best. My books weigh me down: they make me less flexible about traveling, they take up space in the house, they are hugely expensive, and they are inefficient.

After noting some of the “rent-seeking” behavior of traditional publishers who justify, on the basis of problems binding large books, splitting up said books into additional volumes (and end up selling more to a captive audience), he writes, “Bring on the revolution.”

Much as I too appreciate the physicality of paper, I am quite fond of my (inherited, old) e-reader from Sony. I find myself wishing that textbook publishers would move to the format. Granted, some textbooks just work better in paper format, but after spending $140 on a single law book last quarter (cost justified, at least in part, by it’s huge size), I couldn’t help but wonder if an electronic version wouldn’t have worked much, much better.

How much of the cost goes into binding such a volume? Certainly there are editing costs, plus author payments (not huge, I’m sure), but beyond that, shouldn’t such a book in electronic form be a more reasonable $20 — $40, perhaps? I suppose publishers are scared of students simply sharing the text with other students, but honestly, set at the right price, it would be easier to buy it than share it, I suspect.

I wonder how long it will be before law books reach e-readers? Longer than it should is the only prediction I feel comfortable making.