Kindle for PC Now Available

This post was mentioned on Twitter by mystyleonfire: RT @thurrott: Kindle for PC Now Available: Amazon: Amazon.com today announced the availability of "Kindle for PC," .. http://bit.ly/2KKrX9

EPUB FTW!!! http://ebookstore.sony.com/download/ IF Apple comes out with a tablet type device, and IF it supports EPUB, Kindle will either need to switch to EPUB or die.

Thank you. Downloaded. Bought books I had been meaning to buy. Looks good on PC. Good timing, as Monday evening I answered a question about Kindle books by saying that there was a reader for the PC.

I'd like to see something come of this where it reduces the cost of instructional manuals. Where do publishers get off charging like $800 for a single university textbook? If electronic storage cuts the cost of publishing, we should see more of these types of books coming to eReaders. I'm skeptical that publishers will give up the right to charge insane amounts on their texts though, and lets not forget that bound books can be transferred to another owner easily. You can't exactly do that with a lot of these ebooks. I think that ebook readers should have some kind of secure transfer mechanism so that only one reader can utilize a unique copy of an ebook at one time, but can transfer it to a new owner. An ebook purchaser should be able to pay a *SMALL* amount (like literally only a couple of bucks) to have to ability to transfer the book to another user, but that transfer mechanism should be built into the ebook reader and the user shouldn't need to have any additional control over that. I'm thinking a direct, but wireless connection like IR. The ebook file can still contain all the DRM for only allowing it to be displayed on a single licensed device. Activation and deactivation shouldn't require additional DRM servers and a concurrent internet connection though - each device could be outfitted with a hardware encryption mechanism, similar to a TPM on a PC, that encrypts and decrypts the file. When a file is prepped for transfer with an unlocked TPM code, it could be moved to a secure buffer memory on the device that isn't accessible via PC. If the transfer fails, the buffer data is moved back to storage so that the original owner doesn't lose their purchased ebook. Only if the transfer succeeds does a handshake between the target device and the originating device occur where the target says the file has been received correctly, and gives the originating device the "OK to delete" command, while the originator sends the "OK to store" command to the target devices buffer, while the file is re-encoded with the target devices TPM codes, thus insuring that the file can't be used on another device by transfer through a PC. That seems pretty simple. Now, if IP rights are a concern, the author can just lock down the DRM controls on the content. The original purchaser could pay extra for an additional unlock code that they can synchronize to the reader hardware via PC to allow the transfer of the document to another users reader hardware.

BTW: Where in copyright law does it say that you can't alter the delivery method of the content (ie. the intellectual property contained within said delivery method)? Does it say that you [don't] own the delivery method?

The format of the book might be dependent on the technology. I'm not familiar with what your talking about, but it might be the case that EPUB is useful for tablet devices but not useful for "eink" devices. Making the Apple device not comparable to the Amazon device. That is my point, sorry I wasn't clear.

"I agree with you Apple is going to probably not use einks, because there are lots of rumors about comic books being published on this new device which would need color" BLASPHEMY!

Um, just a heads up: Microsoft is still maintaining the Encarta dictionary? Cool beans!

EPUB can include the DRM you speak of Wae. Currently EPUB has no official DRM scheme but a content provided can supply their own DRM on top of EPUB.

Not sure, just found this in Wiki... An EPUB file can optionally contain DRM as an additional layer, but it is not required by the specifications.[9] In addition, the specification does not name any particular DRM system to use, so publishers can choose a DRM scheme to their liking. However, future versions of EPUB (specifically OCF) may specify a format for DRM.[7] When present, DRMed EPUB files must contain a file called rights.xml within the META-INF directory at the root level of the ZIP container.[7]

"Where do publishers get off charging like $800 for a single university textbook?" Who are you to tell ANYONE what they can charge for their product? Are YOU authoring any university textbooks? They can charge whatever the market will bear. It's not up to me, you, or anyone else to tell them what they can "get off" charging.

"Who are you to tell ANYONE what they can charge for their product?" We all know that textbook makers are pulling in much more than the books are really worth. I had to buy several books this semester much over $100, that don't seem like they are worth that much. Anyway I am pulling for the "open source" textbooks where good professors in their respective fields come together and write a solid free or lower cost textbook to compete with the publishers.

That's good that they released this. Now a tablet or slate computer (especially a small one like Asus's Eee PC tablet netbook) would double as a Kindle. It makes a lot more sense to get one of those and get the full functionality of both a computer and a reader rather than pay several hundred dollars for a single-purpose device with an ancient-looking black-and-white screen.