The day apple and amazon hate holden caulfield

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: jhorton <jhorton () rockiehost com>
Date: March 10, 2010 6:01:11 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: [RESEND with corrections] The day apple and amazon hate holden caulfield

Hi Mr. Farber, love your ip list.

Todays messages about Apples content made me want to send you a blog
post I wrote recently that has my concerns about the future.

If you find it interesting please feel free to forward.

I aplogize, I found a couple errors after I sent, please use this copy instead if you like
it.

-----------------------------------------

The recent actions of Apple and Amazon to punish e-book publishers that
had differing views and to further control over book consumption. As
well as the death of J.D. Salinger and the issues surrounding his book
The Catcher in the Rye lead me to believe we should be concerned about
the future of books for all of us.

Both Amazon and Apple are moving to control distribution of e-books to
their respective devices, and thereby dominating delivery and
consumption as has happened to music. The music business has been very
happy to get Digital Rights Management services on their itunes music
and we should expect the same from the book publishers. You will not own
your book but instead have a possibly term limited, third party
controlled access.

The unfortunate thing is that people are more likely to try and break
the controls on music and not on books. The very information that we
have collected to advance our society will be exactly that which is
locked away. The library industry is surely fretting at its ability to
continue to delivery borrowable materials in a world where the false
scarcity no longer exists. But we still need the library, we need the
access and we do not need it limited.

Now what does Holden have to do with this. Well for anyone who doesn't
know, the book has had a long history of controversy for its content. I
quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye

 "In 1960 a teacher was fired for assigning the novel in class. He was
later reinstated.[28] Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was
the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United
States.[29] In 1981, it was both the most censored book and the second
most taught book in public schools in the United States.[30] According
to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the
tenth most frequently challenged book from 1990–1999.[9] It was one of
the ten most challenged books in 2005, and has been off the list since
2006.[31]"

There were then, are today, and will be books that annoy parents and
various groups. But maybe next time the material will exist in an e-book
DRM vendor controlled format. That makes it only one short click from
being filtered forever.

Who would do such a thing? Well this is where we get back to our
vendors. Amazon had pulled an entire publisher Macmillan, and Apple is
well known for filtering and rejecting Apps with little or no feedback
or reasoning. And they both have this power as they are the only way to
get to those users.

Someday, Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs companies will come under pressure to
filter, or define material as inappropriate for their platforms. When
that day comes I hope Holden and his future friends have also spilled
some real ink and not just been as virtual as any other imaginary
electronic world.

Jeff Horton - Idea Technician
rockiehost.com/jhorton
twitter.com/jeffhorton





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