SAN FRANCISCO--An initiative in the works from the nonprofit Internet Archive to centralize the electronic distribution of commercially viable books could upend the publishing industry and declaw Amazon.com, an industry analyst said.
On Monday, the Internet Archive, which among other things has been working for some time to digitize countless numbers of public domain texts, showed the first public look at its BookServer project, an initiative its dubs, "The future of books."
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told CNET News that BookServer is about creating an open system that allows search engines to index books that are available from a wide group of sources. Effectively, commercial publishers, lending libraries and even individual authors would have a way to index their work and offer easy digital distribution under BookServer, Kahle said.
Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, on Monday unveiled an initiative called BookServer, aimed at making all books availble for digital distribution.
(Credit: Internet Archive)Kahle's timing is interesting. Also on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported details on Barnes & Noble's $259 e-reader called the Nook, which will compete with Amazon's Kindle and Sony's E-Reader, a move which heats up the market. More interesting may be Google's announcement last week of its "Google Editions" store, an initiative aimed at offering digital editions of books from publishers with which it already has distribution deals. Google said that should mean about a half-million books would be available initially, either through Google itself, or through sites like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
But it seems the Internet Archive is thinking even bigger than Google.
Kahle said that he's been thinking about such a project since before the advent of the World Wide Web, but that the technology has never been ready. But that's changed over the last 20 years, he said. "We've now gotten universal access to free (content)," Kahle added. "Now it's time to get universal access to all knowledge, and not all of this will be free."
He explained that BookServer is built on the notion of a Web server, and that only a good indexing system is standing in the way of making all books digitally and easily available to consumers, whether they're using a laptop computer, an iPhone, or a Kindle.
Today, he said, publishers, libraries, and others usually turn to outsiders to build them an online distribution system, and that each of those systems stands alone and unindexable. With BookServer, the Internet Archive is hoping that for the first time, consumers everywhere will be able to buy or borrow any text they want while leaving control over pricing and terms of such distribution in the hands of the content owners.
"Right now, they're largely sitting it out or dying," Kahle said of publishers and libraries. "Publishers are not dictating the terms of the distribution of their work. They're handing it over to others...This puts them back in the driver's seat."
And while Kahle imagines that BookServer would by no means result in the end of bookstores or even online booksellers like Amazon, he hopes that publishers and libraries will finally be able to set up their own distribution systems to better compete.
Though it's early days for the BookServer project, which could take several years to complete, Kahle expects that users will first look for what they're looking for on a search engine, ideally something like the Open Library, the Internet Archive's own book search system. Once someone finds the title they're looking for using their search engine of choice, they would be redirected to the publisher's site if they want to buy the title, or to a library's site if they want to borrow it.
"It will be as seamless as buying from a single store," Kahle said, "even though they'll be buying from (a) distributed (group)."
To Thad McIlroy, an electronic publishing industry analyst, BookServer is nothing sort of "incredible."
Amazon may find its business model under attack from efforts like BookServer and Google's recently-announced Editions store, not to mention the new Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble.
(Credit: Amazon.com)"Each time (Kahle) moves in to open up the world, he has a big impact," McIlroy said. "Between (the Google Edition) announcement and (the BookServer) announcement, this changes irrevocably the landscape, and Amazon's shares should go down tomorrow."
McIlrory was exaggerating, to some extent, but it's clear that he believes that Amazon's dominance--both as a seller of physical books and a distributor of e-books--is in serious danger if outfits like Google and the Internet Archive are deciding to take it on.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"This effectively ends anyone's proprietary effort...to close off the system, as Amazon's been trying to do," McIlroy said.
Control back in the hand of publishers
One of the most important aspects of a project like BookServer is that it could, once again, give publishers the upper hand in selling their books.
"The way Amazon is really screwing up the market, creating expectations around (lower) prices, is calamitous," McIlroy said, "and very, very damaging to publishing."
Essentially, Amazon is undercutting book prices and forcing publishers to make harder choices about which books to publish and how to edit them, he suggested. But now, with both Google and the Internet Archive on the job, Amazon may ultimately "be defeated by these two."
And while Google certainly has the might to make a go of its Editions store, it has recently lost a lot of credibility in the book world with the fallout over its Google Book search project. By comparison, McIlroy said that Kahle and the Internet Archive are seen almost universally as altruistic and selfless.
"You couldn't point to anything that hurt anyone," McIlroy said of the Internet Archive's various initiatives. "Everything (Kahle) has done has been truly helpful. But now, to step into this digital book situation is really fantastic. And yes, Google, they have a real credibility problem of their own making, and (Kahle) does not have that."
AUSTIN, Texas--IMDb founder Col Needham said the massively popular movie database has set as its major goal for the future to add one-button streaming for all of the 1.3 million titles it indexes.
Obviously, the vision is a long-term one, Needham acknowledged, and it faces hurdles from the slew of content owners who control the vast library of titles the Internet Movie Database provides information about, but as a leading movie-oriented site, it's a very important goal to articulate in public.
Needham was speaking Monday afternoon at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival here. Oddly, though his talk was part of the film festival, the room was packed almost entirely by attendees of the associated SXSW Interactive Festival.
Speaking at SXSW on Monday, IMDb founder Col Needham said the site hopes to eventually offer streaming at the push of a button for all of the 1.3 million titles in its database. Clearly, this vision will take some time to come to fruition.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Ostensibly, Needham was talking about the history of IMDb--from its founding even before the advent of the World Wide Web, to its launch as a dot-com site to its being bought by Amazon.com. But late in the talk, he explained how he wants to make it possible for the 57 million monthly unique visitors to the site to watch, with the click of one button, all the movies, TV shows, and other video content indexed on the site.
It will be difficult to fulfill the vision, Needham said, "because many of the films may not exist anymore and many may not be available for streaming."
But these days, free or paid streaming of movies is available from a number of sources, including: Netflix, Hulu, TV.com (a part of CBS Interactive, which publishes CNET News), Amazon, iTunes, and others. Each of those sources, though, has its own arrangement with the content owners, so for IMDb to get access to the entire library would be a massive undertaking.
Still, rather than being a throw-away line that didn't carry any weight, Needham reiterated at the end of the talk that the vision was one of the company's major goals for 2009 and beyond.
Already, IMDb has begun adding streaming content to the site, a program that began in September. Right now, Needham said, there are 14,000 full-length TV episodes and a couple of thousand full-length movies available on the site, as well as 120,000 other pieces of video content, many of which are movie trailers, interviews, and featurettes.
And he said that the site is adding thousands of new pieces of video content per week.
At that rate, however, it's sure to take the site quite some time to achieve the goal. Needham said he imagined a time three years from now when we will all look back at early 2009, when so many media sites are trying to solve the problem of making content available to those who want it in the face of resistance from the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America, and we'll shake our heads at where we were at.
"We'll laugh at how little we knew about what business models would work," Needham said.
You may have heard me say this before, but it's worth repeating: I love the Internet.
From my first forays onto Yahoo in the mid-1990s, to my slow, methodical construction of a perfect rating on eBay to the dozens of times I use Google every day, there is simply no question about it: I am head over heels gaga for the medium.
But no matter how many times I laugh at a YouTube video, read something interesting on NYTimes.com or consult Wikipedia, I think my true favorite online hangout is the Internet Movie Database, or IMDB.
What can I say? I love movies, watch them all the time and I find myself constantly doing searches on the site to find out where I recognize that actor in the third lead from or to see what other films or TV shows a director has made.
Yet even I was surprised when I discovered today that IMDB just turned 18 years old. Seriously. Eighteen.
Now, like me, you may not have thought it was possible for a Web site to be older than 14, since the Web didn't even come along until 1994. But there it was in my inbox today: an e-mail touting the fact that IMDB first launched on October 17, 1990, the creation of then-teenager Col Needham.
According to Wikipedia, the database got its start on Usenet newsgroups and later morphed into a proper Web site.
Regardless, this e-mail, sadly, also burst one of my bubbles of naivete (and sure, I have plenty of others left): the idea that IMDB was, despite its ever more polished look and feel, an independent site run by a small but dedicated team who just could not let a minute pass where someone like me can't find out whether Better off Dead or The Sure Thing came first (according to IMDB, they were both from 1985, but the latter preceded the former).
In fact, according to the release in my inbox, Amazon.com bought IMDB in 1998. Sigh.
No matter, though, because over the years, the site has stayed remarkably true to its original mission and to this day is the undisputed champion of movie and TV-related cross-referencing. Sure, it has a few bugs here and there, but in almost every test I've ever put the site through, it's given me exactly what I wanted, and settled more than a few arguments over whether this actor was in that film or not. He was. Or wasn't. I can't remember.
So, here's a big happy birthday to you, IMDB, on the occasion of your turning 18. Now, if only you could go vote on November 4.
More than 2,200 one-star reviews of the new Electronic Arts game Spore, left on Amazon.com as part of a well-publicized and coordinated user revolt against the game's digital rights management restrictions, disappeared Friday.
Before Amazon.com took down the reviews, there were more than 2,200 one-star reviews for 'Spore.'
(Credit: Flickr user TINZ)And while Amazon customers reacted angrily to what they said was obviously Amazon's caving in on a bad situation, the retailer itself said that the take-down was the result of nothing more onerous than a glitch.
Users have been angry at EA because the game's DRM system appears to limit the number of activations per copy of the game to three.
And as a way of striking back, some users had coordinated their efforts by leaving the more than 2,200 one-star reviews on Amazon.
On Friday, every single review for Spore for the game was gone.
But Amazon says there was no foul play at work.
After users of the new Electronic Arts video game, 'Spore,' revolted against its DRM restrictions by leaving hundreds of one-star reviews for the game on Amazon.com, the online retailer temporarily removed all reviews for the game, though it claims the move was nothing more than a 'glitch.'
(Credit: Amazon.com)"There's just a glitch on the site that ended up wiping those reviews clean," said Amazon.com spokesperson Tammy Hovey. "So we're working on putting them back up. I don't have any details (on what happened). But we're working on it so all the customer reviews will be back up on the site."
Asked if perhaps Amazon had decided to put the reviews back up in anticipation of bad PR for taking them down, Hovey said, "Customers always have their opinions about all the products on our site, and we don't censor them, whether they're favorable or unfavorable."
By 2:10 p.m. PDT, the reviews were back up on the site.
For its part, EA said it was looking into the situation.
Although the actual reviews were removed, Amazon did leave up a discussion thread on the Spore page. And during the period while the reviews were down, some users angrily employed the thread to paste in reviews that had originally been left for the game.
For example, "1.0 out of 5 stars Dumbed down experience and draconian DRM, September 7, 2008," Amazon user Keri Gibson-tutt posted.
"Utterly disgraceful," wrote Amazon user Paul Tinsley. "This means that the Amazon review system has not value at all to its customers. Sad days indeed."
It's not clear how users will respond now that the reviews are back.
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