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Open Book: The ThoutReader Challenges
Publishers to Rethink Convergence |
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9 January 2006 |
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For all of the content company convergence showmanship at
this year's CES show in Las Vegas publishers and producers
are running scared as they try to not cede control of their
value propositions to technology partners trying to lock
down their content in proprietary schemes. Consider the
humble open-source ThoutReader that is gearing up to read
DRM-enabled OpenReader files. It offers a low-overhead
solution for publishers and users that may actually allow
them to control their own premium book and journal content
without being beholden to the tech biggies. Glitz may
sell in Vegas, but it's the packaging that satisfies users'
needs the best that will win out in the end. |
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This year's
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas highlighted the
convergence of media interests and consumer gadgets in which
electronic content companies themselves are increasingly the
star properties. Google and Yahoo dominated this event every
bit as much as tech stalwarts such as Microsoft with
announcements of new software offerings and new features for
consumers enjoying content on a broadening array of platforms
suited to their personal lifestyles.
Sony's new U.S. bound eBook reader was another star of the
show, offering more than 50,000 titles from major publishers,
long-life batteries and a highly readable paper-like display.
All very heady stuff of the techo-enamored content legions, to
be sure.
Then why in the wake of all of this am I more excited about
a piece of open source software from a garage startup in
Tacoma, Washington than all of the wizardry rearing its
head in Las Vegas? Because it has the outlines of how
publishers can actually control their fate in the midst of a
rapidly changing marketplace for premium content. While all of
the convergence of content and technology providers is going to
yield significant income for savvy companies, many of the
losers in the convergence movement will continue to be content
suppliers if they insist on tying their fates to a handful of
technology suppliers who hope to produce the widgets and
software that will keep users occupied with content. The
willy-nilly rush to encapsulate premium content in
vendor-specific and platform-specific DRM schemes is placing
publishers' content in a lock box that will strangle
their ability to grow in the years ahead without their platform
partners.
Into this fray enters
OSoft,
a startup that has challenged major
publishers to rethink the distribution of books, journals,
news and other premium content by embracing a proven concept:
give away
open source reader software to help popularize content
packaged in a convenient, non-proprietary format. The format in
this instance is the
OpenReader.org file format that includes an
easy-to-implement form of rights management that travels easily
from platform to platform. To promote the OpenReader standard
OSoft is adapting their open source
ThoutReader (named after
Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom and learning) to
use OpenReader-formatted files. ThoutReader is a free
download, which in its current form allows easy reading and
searching of books and journals in a highly portable reader.
The DRM "smarts" for premium content is encapsulated in the
files: the ThoutReader code simply acts as an unpackager and
presenter. This allows anyone to send content securely in
OpenReader format and to use the platform-independent
ThoutReader code in any number of applications to read and
manipulate the files.
The capabilities showcased in the current and forthcoming
version of ThoutReader are quite promising. It's being equipped
with features that allow readers to mark up book and journal
texts, share notes with students and colleagues or to create
altogether new works that include rights-managed content from
other works. Individual copies of a publication published in
the OpenReader format and read in a reader using ThoutReader
code can therefore be customized and personalized, creating
unique works that can have unique value to very specific
audiences or wider audiences and easily transmitted on a
peer-to-peer basis. Cut-and-paste functions will allow
publishers to define which specific parts of a text can be
exported to other documents. Lending models are easy to
implement on a personal and institutional basis, as is the
ability to set up rights access keys on a number of personal
platforms that allow a work to be shifted from one device to
another within a controlled framework. It's a great foundation
for OSoft and others to run with this open source code and to
amplify into a wider array of sophisticated applications.
All of this without a major software vendor in sight asking
for "technology fees" from publishers or a chokehold on
standards - and there for the taking if publishers are
interested in supporting the model. Think of it this way: if
music publishers had been engaged when MP3 file standards were
being defined, where would they be today? A lot less beholden
to Apple, for one thing. As sexy and important as many of this
year's CES developments are to the content industry, none of
them are likely to be as important as the open-source,
open-standards developments that have forced both publishers
and technology producers to play catch-up with a world that is
content to publish and consume content with or without them.
In spite of what the CES crowd was selling all of the
Hollywood showmanship in the world will not conceal the
fundamental drift of content away from specific technology
platforms and towards user-oriented publishing technologies and
open technology that can enable its use on any number of
platforms. Proprietary technologies can help to advance
key content features, performance and marketability in the
short run, but long-lived and communal content demands openness
in how content is defined, maintained and viewed. It's the
basis for the Web as we know it today - and will remain the
basis of electronic publishing's most promising routes to
profitability if publishers can resist surrendering control to
specific technology platforms whenever possible. Once having an
open foundation for premium digital content the value-add
capabilities can grow within that open framework in a very
cost-effective manner.
It's far too early to say whether the young and evolving
capabilities of the open source ThoutReader and the OpenReader
files that will power it are going to be enough to power an
open-source solution to digital content packaging for books,
journals and other premium digital materials. Other promising
technologies and standards exist and the publishing industry as
a whole is waking up to the need to use technology to drive
future profits. But in the ThoutReader is the powerful germ of
a battle plan for openness in packaging and consuming premium
content that will put the value of content right in easily
transported and shared digital objects that will be controlled
by none but their publishers and users. And it can work without
a lot of heavy-handed intervention from technology companies.
That's worth a thought - and a download - most any day.
-
John Blossom
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