Nate Hoffelder

When Lenovo was caught last week in the process of corrupting its customers safety and security in the name of selling ads, I thought they had committed such an outrageous act that no one would be able to match it.

Today I’ve learned that I lack sufficient imagination.

Ars Technica is reporting that two security software firms have been caught releasing security tools that incorporate  Superfish-like man-in-the-middle code to the apps they publish.

And just so you know why I’m feeling poleaxed, we’re talking about companies that make apps which are intended to protect you when you go online but in reality put you at a terrible risk of being attacked.

The first company, Lavasoft, offers an app called Ad-aware Web Companion. It’s intended to complement firewall and antivirus tools and protect users from phishing, browser hijacking, and other attacks, but in reality this tool opens up users to just as many issues as it prevents.

Like the Superfish adware bundled with Lenovo laptops, Lavasoft incorporated SSL-interception technology sold by Komodia when they made the Ad-aware Web Companion.

According to security researcher Filippo Valsorda, Komodia’s proxy software compromises a user’s security by tricking web browsers into trusting any self-signed SSL certificate. This drastically reduces the work a malicious hacker would need to do to exploit a target’s computer, making it easier for the hacker to convince a victim’s computer that it is visiting (for example) the real Bank of America website when in reality the user was directed to a site where the hacker is collecting personal info.

Lavasoft apparently licensed this tech from Komodia (and then failed to perform basic security testing to make sure it was safe). But the good news is, Lavasoft is in the process of updating the tool to replace the dangerous code.

The other tool, PrivDog, isalso in the process of being updated.

PrivDog is the creation of Comodo CEO Melih Abdulhayoglu, and it is intended to protect users from malicious adverts by replacing the untrusted ads with safe ones. That sounds like a great idea, but it turns out that at least one version of PrivDog has an even bigger security flaw than Superfish.

According to Hanno Böcke, PrivDog will replace any SSL certificate it receives  with its own certificates. This includes all certificates, including ones which weren’t valid in the first place. So not only is this tool compromising your security by bypassing a basic security step, it’s not even bothering to check to see who it is vouching for.

And do you know the really fun part? PrivDog is notable for not using even one line of code from Komodia, meaning that this bungling was entirely the fault of Comodo.

Luckily, the version of PrivDog which comes bundled with Comodo Internet Security does not contain the critical security flaw. Only the standalone version (which was released in December 2014) has this security issue, and Privdog has already released an advisory which warns of the issue and promises that it will be repaired. The notice says that 57,568 users are running the flawed version of Privdog, which will be updated tomorrow.

I’m sure both companies are serious about releasing updates, but if I were using these tools I would simply remove them and go find something else.

And then I’d fumigate my computer a half dozen different ways.

That’s not hysteria, but simply good sense. The only way to know you’re safe after having used these tools is to treat this as if it were a real attack and respond accordingly with all the necessary steps to repair the security holes.

image by johnvoo_photographer

Originally created to replace PDFs, fixed layout has become one of the standard methods to build an ebook. This format is used for everything from textbooks to cookbooks, and while it hasn’t actually supplanted PDF it has been made the centerpoint of Apple’s ebook efforts (iBooks Author).

But even though fixed layout is widely used (or perhaps because of it), FXL has its detractors.

On Saturday Alberto Petterin posted a critique of  fixed layout ebooks and asks whether FXL is accomplishing its original goals:

What are the advantages of a FXL eBook over the corresponding PDF?

…

The really interesting answer here is that (EPUB) FXL, being built with Web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), allows the author/publisher to semantically tag the contents, which in turn allows the user to personalize the "reading" experience according to her needs.

That is true, in theory.

In fact, almost all the FXL files currently on the market are not really fulfilling that vision. Even worse, they are limiting the user freedom, rather than augmenting it. Sometimes they are even inferior to their PDF version.

Pettarin goes on to detail two of the problems with FXL, including that it’s used in situations where it’s not necessary and that the code inside most fixed layout Epub files look like it was written by  a middle-school student.

He missed a couple of FXL’s shortcomings, namely that the major platforms have made poor decisions in developing support.

For example, Amazon’s fixed layout can’t be used in the same ebook as embedded audio and video. Also, Apple’s iBooks format can’t be read on the iPhone, meaning that all those pretty textbooks don’t even work across Apple’s entire platform.

All in all, his critique is a good read, and it’s worth your time.

But before you head over and read it, I have one last thought.

As I was reading his post earlier, it struck me as rather odd that digital publishing was using the latest web technologies to support a concept which most web developers no longer accept as valid.

At one point the standard for website design was to build websites with fixed width (this is similar in concept to FXL ebooks). But that started going away about 4 years ago as the idea of responsive design, or building websites that work with any screen size, became the standard.

It’s now 2015, and almost no web developer will make a fixed width website if they can avoid it (I have no explanation for why DBW chose to do so). The new standard is for websites to support visitors no matter the size of the screen they use.

And yet in 2015, FXL ebooks are one of the accepted ways to make an ebook.

Folks, it’s almost as if the digital publishing industry is fifteen years behind the cutting edge of web design. It’s gone from simple reflowable designs (circa 1995) to fixed width designs (circa 2000).

Don’t you think it would be a good idea for the industry to skip the subsequent 15 years and join the rest of us in 2015?

There’s some really interesting ideas floating around right now which would make nifty ebooks, including smart ways to reflow complex content based on the geometry of a device’s screen. (Plus, we have cookies).

Really, what’s holding you to fixed layout? Is it the similarity to print?

That strikes me as a poor justification, resulting more from a lack of vision than from any useful features which fixed layout may bring to the table.

image by Sergei Golyshev

Kobo ships its ereaders with a half dozen dictionaries (including English, German, Italian, French, etc). That’s more than enough for this ebook lover, but if you need more options then I have two pieces of good news for you.

Kobo lets you sideload dictionaries – including the many dictionaries that users have been making for themselves for the past few years. (You can even make your own Kobo dictionary out of a StarDict file, although that is a lot more work.)

Here’s how.

Tl;dr

Installing a dictionary on your Kobo ereader is as simple as downloading one of the ZIP files listed here and then copying the ZIP file to the .kobo/dict folder on your Kobo ereader.

You might want to also want to go into the settings -> language menu and uninstall the dictionaries you won’t be using; this will force the new dictionary as the default.

If you’re reasonably tech savvy, the process is that simple. But for those who need more details, here’s the longer version.

How To

1, Find a dictionary listed here which you would like to install. Download it to your computer.

2, Plug your Kobo ereader in to your computer over USB. Find and open the .kobo folder, and then find and open the dict folder.

If you can’t see the .kobo folder, your computer might be hiding them from you. The following links will explain how to reveal the hidden folders.

• Windows
• OSX

3, Once you’ve opened the dict folder, simply copy the entire ZIP file you downloaded into the dict folder.

And you’re done. You can unplug your Kobo ereader from the USB cable now.

The ereader should recognize the dictionary automatically. (At least that is how it worked for me.) When you next look up a word, you should be able to select the dictionary you just installed and read its definition.

Addendum

If you can’t find a dictionary for the language you read, you can roll your own. A blogger by the name of zalima has posted detailed instructions.

The act of making a Kobo dictionary from a Stardict file is simple, but the set up process is a bear. It requires a much higher level of technical skill than simply installing a dictionary, but it can be done.

Credit

That list of links to dictionaries was gathered by Alberto Pettarin, who has also been maintaining the list and updating it. He’s also the one who wrote penelope, the conversion script you can use to make your own Kobo dictionary.

Remember that modular education laptop which I scooped earlier this week?

It officially launched today.

One Education sent out a press release today with the the news that it is working on a modular laptop. They also gave an exclusive interview to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Pretty much everything I wrote about the XO Infinity on Wednesday was accurate.

The XO Infinity does exist, it is modular, and it looks exactly like the leaked renders. Or rather, the XO Infinity will look like that when the first prototypes arrive later this year (the first shipments are scheduled for early next year).

According to the details shared so far, the XO Infinity is designed to grow with the student. It’s simple enough that a 4-year-old can assemble one, and as the kid grows and parts break, new parts can be swapped in. A child can start with just the tablet component, and as they progress academically they can be issued the keyboard component. And as their needs expand, they can swap in a faster CPU, better screen, or additional storage.

or at least that is how it’s supposed to work. All we have at this point is a 3d-printed mockup based around the planned 9.7″ screen. But at least now we know what it could look in person:

When the XO Infinity is released, One Education plans to offer multiple OS options, including Windows, Android, Sugar, and Linux.

Many details, including partner tech companies, possible screen tech used in the display module, and even the CPU, are apparently still up in the air (I asked).  This is going to be a nifty gadget when it is finally available. But right now, it’s still just a great idea.

But at least now we have a better idea why One Education decided to develop it. As they see it, the current ten-year-old XO laptop project has reached the end of its life cycle, and since development has largely stopped (I share that opinion) One Education decided to step in and come up with a new and better design. That is going to be the XO infinity, or so I hope.

But one thing they haven’t done (yet) is come up with funding to make it. One Education plans to launch a crowd funding later this year campaign to raise money.

In a move that surprises no one, the government of France announced today that subscription ebook services, including Kindle Unlimited, violated France’s fixed price book laws.

Laurence Engel, la Médiatrice du livre (the Mediator of Books, kind of a leagal ombudsman for France’s book pricing laws), has released a legal opinion which says that Kindle Unlimited is not legal under French law. This opinion also applies to KU’s local competitors Izneo, Youboox, and Youscribe, and effectively requires them to reevaluate how they operate.

Kindle Unlimited launched in France in early December 2014 with 20,000 French language titles out of a catalog of around 700,000 titles (now 830,000 plus titles). Its competitors had been operating for years, but the launch of KU brought the subscription ebook model to the attention of Fleur Pellerin, the French Minster of Culture. She proclaimed that it was illegal, and sought a legal opinion from Engels.

According to Le Figaro, KU in particular is illegal because it violates the French laws which require that publishers set the retail prices for their books.

To be clear, the subscription model itself is not illegal; a publisher could launch a service with just their own titles and pass legal muster. Another possible example would be a service which sold credits which could be applied to read ebooks in a catalog, or a service which let readers pay to subscribe to specific publishers (similar to premium cable channels).

Following the release of the legal opinion, the various operators will have a month to discuss the legal issues with the mediator of books, and 3 months to bring their services in compliance with French law.

Curiously, Pellerin told Le Figaro that self-published ebooks as well as books by foreign publishers would not be affected by this opinion, just books published by French publishers.

Given that KU draws upon primarily non-French sources, that would give Amazon an advantage. The point concerning self-published books, however, adds a complication.

While we may say that the majority of ebooks in KU are self-published, that’s not completely accurate. The ebooks are drawn from KDP, Amazon’s ebook distribution portal, but since that platform is used by both publishers and the self-published it is a little hard to distinguish between the two groups.

Actualitte, Le Figaro

images  by Mike Licht, Osbornb

Fresh off a pyrrhic legal victory over its used ebook marketplace, the  Dutch site Tom Kabinet has launched a new ebookstore this week. Readers can now buy legitimately distributed Dutch ebooks, and should they so choose, sell those ebooks to another user.

Tom Kabinet was launched in June 2014 with the goal of offering a marketplace where users can resell the ebooks they had previously purchased. It was subsequently sued by Dutch publishers, and after winning the initial court case, the site won a partial victory on appeal.

The higher court ruled that used ebook sales weren’t necessarily illegal in the Netherlands, while at the same time also ruling that Tom Kabinet hadn’t taken enough steps to block the sale of pirated ebooks. The site had previously limited sellers to only offering DRM-free Epub ebooks or ebooks with digital watermarks, and it also added digital watermarks to the ebooks which passed through its marketplace, but that wasn’t enough for the Amsterdam court.

For a short time it looked like Tom Kabinet would have to shut down, but instead its developers decided to comply with the ruling by limiting the marketplace to just Epub ebooks which carry a digital watermark when they are uploaded to Tom Kabinet.

It’s not clear whether the judge signed off, but I do see that my source is reporting that Tom Kabinet is launching an ebookstore today in order to offer its users a legal source of ebooks which they can later resell. (This is possible because the majority of ebooks published in the Netherlands are sold either DRM-free or with digital watermarks.)  It sounds like an ebook purchased elsewhere might not meet the requirements set by the judge at this time.

Given that there’s no real way to guarantee that the seller actually deletes the ebook after it is sold (this would require a type of DRM stronger than digital watermarks), I’m not sure that Tom Kabinet can take enough steps to fight piracy.

But that’s for the courts to decide.

Nu.nl, Volkskrant.nl

image by Visit Greenwich

One Education, OLPC’s partner non-profit in Australia, has been quietly working for the past year on a new educational laptop which it plans to launch in the next couple weeks (this has been confirmed).

Details are still scarce, and the entire story is still quite secret, but based on what has leaked and the two teaser images posted online I am very excited. If you thought Google’s Project Ara smartphone was a nifty idea, you’re going to love the XO Infinity.

Based on the background image posted to One Education’s email notification page (here), the OX Infinity is a hybrid laptop/tablet convertible:

As you can see, the design takes certain design elements now available in commercially available tablets and applies them to the XO laptop. A user will be able to use the XO Infinity as a laptop, or, pop the tablet out of the dock and use it by itself.

This is not the first tablet to come with a dock, and it’s not even the first educational tablet to have one. Intel shipped a similar reference design last April.

But this could be the first educational device to combine a laptop/tablet hybrid design with modular components.

Do you see how the units shown in the image above have a colorful shell? If you pop the rear shell off, you might see something like this:

I found the above image buried on the One Education website. I do not know if that is what the XO Infinity will look like, but I did find the image via a search for the XO Infinity.

What we’re looking at is a tablet with modular components. The green module is probably the CPU (and RAM, storage), the blue one is the battery, the maroon one a camera, and the orange one  is probably Wifi (or other connectivity).

In short, One Education has taken the XO infinity a step beyond the design of the original XO laptop.  Rather than simply be repairable, a child will be able to repair the XO infinity by pulling a module and plugging in a new one.

Or at least that is what I am speculating.

All of this is based on but a couple images which may or may not have anything to do with the actual XO Infinity.

Update: And here’s a third image which shows the modular nature of the tablet from a different angle. As you can see, there’s an extra module (which I think contains the screen).

But what I can report with absolute certainty is that I have been informed that the XO Infinity will be launched in the next couple weeks. Paul Cotton of One Education sent me this email statement last night:

We’ve been working hard at the XO-infinity for the last year or so, and things are finally getting to the point where we can show people. We’re due to make the official announcement sometime in the next week or two, at which point we’ll be able to talk about it all day, every day. Up until then though, we need to keep mum or our media partners may be upset with us.

Cotton also pointed me at the page on Medium where the official announcement will be posted, and he suggested that I sign up for email updates (here).

And when I told him I had the second image, he replied:

Hah, good find! That picture probably tells you quite a bit already, and tells you why we’re so excited. We need to cover our tracks better 😉

But aside from that, I have no other solid info to report at this time – at least, not about the new device.

I do however have a few things to add about the history of One Laptop Per Child and its repeated mistakes in developing educational hardware.

I’m going to have to take you through a bit of history, but rest assured that I do have a point to make.

***

As originally conceived in 2005, the XO laptop was a low-cost, easily repairable educational laptop with a long battery life. But by the time it actually shipped in 2007, the laptop had a short battery life and cost a minimum of $200. When it was first available to the public, consumers could pay $400 in a "buy one, give one" program and take one of the devices home.

The XO underwent several hardware revisions over the next 8 years. It was followed up by the XO-2, an early failed attempt to replace the original with a better design, and the XO-3, a tablet version which was launched at CES 2012 and cancelled in December 2012.

Coincidentally, there was also an XO Tablet which ran OLPC’s educational software on a commercially available 7″ Android tablet. It was released in 2013, and was going to be updated in 2014. The replacement tablet never shipped.

The original XO-1 was also updated, first with the addition of a faster and more energy efficient CPU (XO-1.5), and then again to the XO-1.75, which had an even faster ARM CPU and a slightly lower cost ($188). (There was also the XO-1.75HS, but that merely replaced the rubber keyboard with a more traditional KB with plastic keys.)

And of course let’s not forget the current model, the XO-4. This model looks almost identical to the XO-1, only it sports a dual-core CPU, touchscreen, and swaps one of the 3 USB ports for an HDMI port. And as I reported yesterday, One Education is distributing a version of the XO-4 Touch. They call it the XO Duo, and it runs Android Jelly Bean.

And that brings us to the current day, and an edtech market which looks very different from the one which existed in 2005.

Many companies, ranging from Google to Apple to commercial device makers like Dell are invested in this market.

Google is promoting its educational platform; Intel is pushing a number of laptops, tablets, and other classroom hardware, Apple sells the iPad, and Dell (plus other companies) make tablets and laptops for the edtech market.

My point, folks, was to help you better understand the landscape of the edtech market, and to make this one final point.

Given OLPC’s past failures and marginal successes, One Education would be well advised to find a partner.

I expect that the upcoming announcement will include at least one major tech company as a partner/sponsor. My leading candidates are Google and Intel, in that order.

Google’s interest in Project Ara makes them a particularly good partner for One Education, but Intel would make a nearly as ideal partner.

But of course, that is pure speculation.

We’ll have to wait and see what is officially announced.

Stay tuned.

When the new XO tablet didn’t ship last year, OLPC and its efforts to build educational hardware fell off my radar, and that’s why I was surprised to discover the XO Duo laptop today.

One Education, OLPC’s partner non-profit in Australia and New Zealand, is now selling a version of the XO-4 Touch laptop which runs Android:

This device runs Android Jelly Bean on a dual-core 1.2Ghz CPU with 2GB RAM and 8GB internal storage.  It has 2 USB ports, an HDMI port, Bluetooth, Wifi, and it is specced to have an estimated 8 hours of battery life.

The screen measures 7.5″, and packs in a touchscree on top of a Pixel Qi-based dual-mode display that offers both a color mode and a sunlight visible grayscale mode.

It just came across my desk today, but from what I can find the XO Duo has been available to schools in Australia (and on the One Education website) since early last year.

The list price is $250 AUD. That looks like highway robbery for an Android device, but given that this laptop is both much more easily repaired than your average Android and comes with educational software, I’m inclined to avoid passing judgement.

If nothing else, this laptop could double as a training platform so kids could learn the basics of electronics repair as applied to the gadgets they break. And since it runs Android it is also far more open than Sugar, the OS which was originally developed for XO hardware.

P.S. This device turned up while I was looking into reports that One Education is developing a new laptop called the XO Infinity. I have yet to find much, but what I’ve found so far is exciting. Stay tuned.

Many startups have made a go of producing enhanced ebooks, and so far no one has had much luck in creating a real market. But  Clare Swanson , writing for Publishers Weekly, thinks that HarperCollins has found a way forward.

Swanson is pointing at the success of the enhanced version of Chris Kyle’s novel*, American Sniper, and asking whether it’s a sign that the time of enhanced ebooks has come:

For the first three weeks of the new year, the enhanced edition of Chris Kyle’s memoir,American Sniper, led Apple’s iBooks bestseller list, consistently landing several spots above the title’s standard e-book. Its hot streak was a rare victory for enhanced e-books (especially over their unenhanced counterparts). On the whole, sales of enhanced e-books have fallen short of expectations since publishers began investing in the format, which incorporates video and other interactive features, roughly five years ago.

Is American Sniper’s place at the top of Apple’s chart a one-off occurrence, owing to the popularity of the film adaptation (which raked in six Oscar nominations), or is it a harbinger of good things to come for enhanced e-books—pointing to a new trend, enhancing titles with TV and film adaptations, that may help publishers sell what has been a historically difficult format to market?

I was going to add that article to the Monday morning links post, but then I got interested in the idea and decided to answer the question.

It took me about 10 minutes.

In short, yes, this is a one-off success and not a bellwether for a new market, and I have a simple explanation as to why.

Swanson failed to mention one important detail in her article: price.

The enhanced version of American Sniper is selling in iBooks and the Kindle Store for $5.99 and $5.86, respectively. That is far cheaper than most enhanced ebooks, so until it is possible to sell most (all?) enhanced ebooks that cheaply, this work is an outlier and not a forerunner for a rising market.

What’s more, given that the audio and video added to enhanced ebooks have a higher production cost than your average ebook, we also need to ask whether HarperCollins is making much of a profit on this title. (This ebook has 12 video interviews of the late author.) I don’t think they’d sell it for $6 if they were losing money, but I also don’t think they’re earning a whole lot.

And since HC has reported that they’ve sold 166,000 copies, I think it’s safe to assume that (at best) this is not a huge money maker which has justified the initial investment.

And so the success of this title is not something to get excited over. That is regrettable; I think enhanced ebooks are cool on a technical level. I’d like to see a market for them, but I just don’t expect that to happen.

P.S. In July of last year the Kyle estate lost a $1.8 million libel lawsuit brought by Jesse Ventura, thus proving that Chris Kyle is a very colorful storyteller and that this work is not biographical.

P.P.S. Coincidentally, the enhanced edition ranked higher in iBooks than in the Kindle Store following the release of the movie. Remember how Keith Moerer, the Apple Director of iBooks, said at the DBW conference last month that Apple did well with cross-promoting movies, music, and ebooks? I think we have an example to show what he meant.

images by melenita2012, clasesdeperiodismo

Here’s a late Friday night surprise for you.

Amazon has quietly expanded the Kindle Store with ebooks in 5 additional languages: Russian, Hindi, Polish, Latin and Hungarian.

Here’s one:

Amazon’s usually pretty fastidious about the languages they support in the Kindle Store (they’ll even tell you which ones are supported),  but lately there’s been a rupture between the languages  Amazon will let you upload and the ones which they’re selling.

There’s been no official announcement from Amazon, and they haven’t expanded the list of supported languages in KDP, but I can report that you will find the 5 languages listed in the foreign language section of the Kindle Store.

Of the 5, only Russian and Hindi have more than a handful of titles. There are 87 Hindi titles, and an unknown number of Russian titles.  I don’t know how many Russian titles are available, but I can report that Russian is listed as one of the 8 primary languages.

That detail is worth noting because each of the 7 other languages have their own national bookstore in their respective countries, and that suggests that the Kindle Store will launch soon in Russia.

And by soon, I mean very soon. If you’ll take a moment and visit Kindle.ru, you may note that the error 502 message is in Russian – in Amazon orange font.

That is most definitely not a coincidence.

The-eBook.org

Sometime in the past month Harlequin quietly shuttered its vanity press imprint Dellarte Press, replacing its website with a notice that the business is closing.

Harlequin was the second major US publisher to partner with famed vanity press Author Solutions when Harlequin launched Harlequin Horizons in 2009 (it was later renamed to Dellarte Press). That vanity press service launched only weeks after Christian publisher Thomas Nelson (a HarperCollins sub) eschewed the Ten Commandments and launched WestBow Press. 

Operated by Author Solutions with Harlequin acting as a front, Dellarte Press operated on a simple business model: sell authors overpriced bundles of self-pub services while at the same trying to upsell them additional useless marketing services.

As you can tell from my word choice, I have a low opinion of these services; the professional author groups had similar low opinion in 2009, which leads me to Harlequin Horizons' colorful early history, and why it was renamed.

The launch of Harlequin Horizons was not well received. The Romance Writers of America and the SFWA both responded by blacklisting Harlequin. They announced that titles published by any of Harlequin’s imprints would no longer count towards an author’s membership in the organizations. The Mystery Writers of America made a similar threat (it’s not clear if they followed through). And finally,  Preditors & Editors changed its listing for Harlequin to that of Vanity Publisher.

As a result of the pressure, Harlequin subsequently renamed Harlequin Horizons to Dellarte Press while also removing much of the Harlequin branding from the website.

DellArte Press has gotten little press in the subsequent 5 years, before it was abruptly shuttered sometime in the past month. The closure was only noticed this past week by Victoria Strauss of Writer’s Beware and by Mick Rooney of The Independent Publishing Magazine. Details are still scarce at this time (I’m still waiting to hear back from Harlequin) so I can’t tell you why Dellarte was closed or what will happen to the existing contracts authors may have had with Dellarte.

Rooney reports that Dellarte closed because it was a bust; he reports that it only shipped 16 titles in 5 years (I found 17 titles listed on Amazon). I don’t see how that could be true, but at this time I don’t have any evidence to the contrary.

I would think that the books distributed by Dellarte are now being handled by one of Author Solution’s many tentacles divisions, and thus bear a new publishing imprint, but I haven’t been able to confirm that supposition.

In any case, Harlequin is the second publisher to cut ties with Author Solutions; F&W Media’s Writer’s Digest ended its relationship last June when it closed Abbott Press. A couple months later Writer’s Digest opened a new imprint, Blue Ash Publishing, in partnership with the much more palatable and ethical BookBaby.

Author Solutions' current partners include Lulu, Barnes & Noble, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins, as well as several different units of Author Solution’s parent company, Penguin Random House.

Amazon launched its subscription ebook service in Canada and Mexico on Thursday. Readers in those two countries can now read as much as they like for only $10 (CDN) or 129 pesos per month.

The readers won’t find many best-sellers or traditionally published titles, but they can choose from a catalog of over 750,000 mainly self-published titles which includes a few titles like the Hunger Games trilogy,  the Harry Potter series, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Interpreter of Maladies, Flash Boys, and The Giver and Wonder Boys.

That’s a smaller catalog than that of Oyster, which boasts 1 million ebook titles at a cost of $10 per month, or Scribd, which also offers 1 million titles (ebooks, audiobooks, and comic books) for $9 a month.

Today’s launch follows the US launch by close to 7 months. The gradual global rollout of Kindle Unlimited continues to support my theory that Amazon only launches KU in a market where they can guarantee a certain minimum number of titles from local publishers.

This would explain why KU didn’t launch in Canada at the same time as in the US, or that the Mexico launch didn’t happen alongside the launch in Spain last November.

Kindle Unlimited boasts 15,000 French language titles in Canada, and 30,000 titles in Spanish in Mexico.

With reselling digital music now legal in the US, and app resales legal in Europe, Bloomberg raises the question of whether consumers should be able to resell the digital content they acquire:

Should consumers be allowed to resell digital songs, books, or video games once you’re done with your downloads? If it sounds unlikely, just remember that businesses trafficking in second-hand records and books were once considered controversial before society came to accept them as normal—at least up until the Internet undermined the logic of resale. The next several years should be key to whether a similar industry emerges for digital goods.

…

The big difference is that digital media items don’t get old. Used books or albums are worth less than new copies because they deteriorate with use, and it takes some effort to pass each copy from person to person. A "used" digital file, though, is exactly as valuable as the original and just as easy to distribute. The U.S. Copyright Office has already recognized that digital goods are fundamentally different from physical ones—first-sale doctrine, it has said, works only because of the specific nature of physical objects.

Aside from the author’s misunderstanding that media conglomerates like Fox would benefit from a digital resale market which would cut into the sale of new copies, it’s a smart article and it asks a question which needs to be answered.

Should consumers have this option?

As a consumer rights advocate, I think they should. And as a blogger I can report that ReDigi is "working with one of the world’s largest booksellers" to launch a used ebook marketplace later this year, but in all honesty I don’t think there’s really all that much interest.

I know that’s not the fiery response some might expect, but after watching the ebook market for the past 5 years I’ve come to believe that there’s little or no market pressure for the resale of digital content.

The consumers who most want to resell the content they buy have been voting with their pocketbooks. They’ve been buying physical media, and reselling that when they were through. They’ve been removing themselves from the market, and without them there’s less interest in the idea.

Take textbooks, for example.  College students need to resell the textbooks they buy, and since you can’t resell a digital textbook most students don’t buy it in the first place. Sure, some are being sold. But as we’ve seen from the failure of digital textbook startups like Kno and Coursesmart, there’s not enough to sustain a market for new digital sales, much less resales of previously sold content.

What’s more, I think digital piracy may be having an effect on the potential for a resale market. Those who can least afford to buy have taken to piracy instead, effectively dampening their interest in either selling or buying digital content when it is resold. And those who most object to the restrictions of DRM, or the lack of control it engenders, are also taking to piracy.

And without the interested buyers, there’s no market. Or am I wrong?

images by mikecogh, Sapphireblue

Monday’s news that Kobo has a couple new ereaders in the works has borne unexpected fruit. While I still don’t have any additional details on the devices themselves, I can report that the details on the screens have turned up a related opportunity.

A reader has found a German electronics wholesaler which says it has E-ink screens in stock. (Thanks, Micheal!) According to its website, Beck is now carrying a variety of screen sizes ranging from 6″ to 13.3″ – including the 6″ 300 dpi screen found on the Kindle Voyage.

This is not the first time I’ve seen E-ink screens for sale as components, but I was surprised to see a company claiming to offer the screen from the Voyage. I had thought that Amazon had had an exclusive on that screen, but now I see I might have been wrong.

I’m still waiting for pricing and technical details from Beck Elektronik, so at this time I can’t report on the specific condition of the screens – whether they are sold with bare cables or with an adapter board included.

Either is possible.

E-ink screens made by Pervasive Displays, E-ink’s partner in the DIY and hardware development market, are available both with and without those adapter boards. Pervasive Displays makes screens with sizes ranging from 1.44″ to 10.2″, all of which have unusual screen resolutions.

You won’t find them in ereaders, but you can find them through electronics wholesalers – DigiKey, for example. AdaFruit is also carrying a few products, although those are more intended for DIY market rather than hardware development.

As you can see from the prices on Digi-Key, the screens run pretty expensive when sold as a single component. I can’t tell you the prices Beck will be charging with any certainty, although I would expect the Voyage’s screen and the 13.3″ screens to be expensive. I’ve been told by Netronix that E-ink is selling the latter to device makers at $150 a pop.

Speaking of the screen on the Kindle Voyage, this new report increases the odds that Kobo’s new "Alyssum" device has a 6″ screen, and not the 6.8″ screen which I suggested on Monday. If Beck really does have that screen, then it would mean Kobo might as well.

And that is why I am doing breathing exercises at the thought that Kobo might launch a Kindle Voyage competitor this spring. At this point that is pure speculation, but I will be keeping an eye out just in case.

Beck