When (multimedia) fiefdoms crumble

Mike coined the term multimedia fiefdoms recently. He points to a number of different streaming, purchase and rental services for video content (movies, TV series) as the new battleground for users (consumers in this case). There are of course a few more sides in this battle, including music and books, but the idea is still perfectly valid.

What he didn’t get into the details of is what happens one of those fiefdoms capitulates, declaring itself won over, and goes away. It’s not a fun situation to be in, but we actually have plenty of examples of it, and these, more than anything else, should drive the discourse around and against DRM, in my opinion.

For some reasons, the main example of failed fiefdoms is to be found in books, and I lived through (and recounted) a few of those instances. For me personally, it all started four years ago, when I discovered Sony gave up on their LRF format and decided to adopt the “industry standard” ePub by supporting Adobe Digital Editions (ADEPT) DRM scheme on their devices. I was slow on the uptake, the announcement came two years earlier. For Sony, this meant tearing down their walled garden, even though they kept supporting the LRF format and their store for a while – they may even do still, I stopped following two years ago when I moved onto a Kindle – for the user it meant they were now free to buy books from a number of stores, including some publishers, bookstores with online presence and dedicated ebookstores.

But things didn’t always go smoothly: two years later, WHSmith partnered with Kobo, and essentially handed the latter all their online ebook market. When I read the announcement I was actually happy, especially since I could not buy books off WHSmith any more as they started looking for UK billing addresses. Unfortunately it also meant that only a third of the books that I bought from WHSmith were going to be ported over to Kobo due to an extreme cock-up with global rights even to digital books. If I did not go and break the DRM off all my ebooks for the sake of it, I would have lost four books, having to buy them anew again. Given this was not for the seller going bankrupt but for a sell-out of their customers, it was not understandable that they refused to compensate people. Luckily, it did port The Gone-Away World which is one of my favourite books.

Fast forward another year, and the Italian bookstore LaFeltrinelli decided to go the same way, with a major exception: they decided they would keep users on both platforms — that way if you want to buy a digital version of a book you’ll still buy it on the same website, but it’ll be provided by Kobo and in your Kobo library. And it seems like they at least have a better deal regarding books’ rights, as they seemed to have ported over most books anyway. But of course it did not work out as well as it should have been, throwing an error in my face and forcing me to call up Kobo (Italy) to have my accounts connected and the books ported.

The same year, I end up buying a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition, which is a pretty good tablet and has a great digitizer. Samsung ships Google Play in full (Store, Movies, Music, Books) but at the same time install its own App, Video, Music and Book store apps, it’s not surprising. But it does not take six months for them to decide that it’s not their greatest idea, in May this year, Samsung announced the turn down of their Music and Books stores — outside of South Korea at least. In this case there is no handover of the content to other providers, so any content bought on those platforms is just gone.

Not completely in vain; if you still have access to a Samsung device (and if you don’t, well, you had no access to the content anyway), a different kind of almost-compensation kicks in: the Korean company partnered with Amazon of all bookstores — surprising given that they are behind the new “Nook Tablet” by Barnes & Noble. Beside a branded «Kindle for Samsung» app, they provide one out of a choice of four books every month — the books are taken from Amazon’s KDP Select pool as far as I can tell, which is the same pool used as a base for the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and the Kindle Unlimited offerings; they are not great but some of them are enjoyable enough. Amazon is also keeping honest and does not force you to read the books on your Samsung device — I indeed prefer reading from my Kindle.

Now the question is: how do you loop back all this to multimedia? Sure books are entertaining but they are by definition a single media, unless you refer to the Kindle Edition of American Gods. Well, for me it’s still the same problem of fiefdoms that Mike referred to; indeed every store used to be a walled garden for a long while, then Adobe came and conquered most with ePub and ADEPT — but then between Apple and their iBooks (which uses its own, incompatible DRM), and Amazon with the Kindle, the walls started crumbling down. Nowadays plenty of publishers allow you to buy the book, in ePub and usually many other formats at the same time, without DRM, because the publishers don’t care which device you want to read your book on (a Kindle, a Kobo, a Nook, an iPad, a Sony Reader, an Android tablet …), they only want for you to read the book, and get hooked, and buy more books.

Somehow the same does not seem to work for video content, although it did work to an extent, for a while at least, with music. But this is a different topic.

The reason why I’m posting this right now is that just today I got an email from Samsung that they are turning down their video store too — now their “Samsung Hub” platform gets to only push you games and apps, unless you happen to live in South Korea. It’s interesting to see how the battles between giants is causing small players to just get off the playing fields… but at the same time they bring their toys with them.

Once again, there is no compensation; if you rented something, watch it by the end of the year, if you bought something, sorry, you won’t be able to access it after new year. It’s a tough world. There is a lesson, somewhere, to be learnt about this.