The latest generation, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Scribe 2, Kindle Scribe 1, and Kindle and the upcoming Kindle Colorsoft, all have something in common. When you plug them into USB into your PC or MAC, they no longer appear as external drives. This prevents users from using file managers to back up their books or to sideload new books onto the Kindle. Amazon has also removed the download and transfer via USB option for purchased ebooks from the content page. This will likely prevent people from stripping the DRM from the books and sharing them on piracy websites. This is not
Very user-hostile, but very unsurprising.
Kindle hardware can be very nice, but almost every software decision is designed to keep users within their walled garden.
No epub support, no third party app support, no ability to load non-store audio, and now this. What a waste. These things could be so much more useful than they are.
Abolish patent law.
Maybe replace it with some very strict non-extensible protection, based on time since patent registration or profit made with it, maybe something else, whichever happens earlier.
Either that or get used to oligopoly in every area of economics affected by electronics and computers and even all scientific advancement.
That this takes time to happen, doesn’t change the fact.
Isn’t that pretty much how parents work already? They’re extensible, sure, but only up to 20 years total. Not only that but you’re forced to document it too.
Maybe 20 years is too long.
Certainly it could be, I would like to see some proper study done into it, but it’s probably borderline impossible.
Conversely patents are somewhat unobtainable by the average Joe, I think I saw it costing somewhere in the region of 25-50k to patent something by the time you factor in the cost of a decent patent lawyer.
Maybe a 10-15 year patent period with lower barrier to entry would be a good thing.