There’s been a strong and decidedly split reaction to Amazon’s new Kindle eBook reader, which was released this week. As of today, Amazon reports that they have sold out of the device, so people are obviously buying it. But concern over its closed nature, including binding users to Amazon’s DRM-based sales channel, have helped the reader earn a 2 1/2 out of 5 star rating.
But I think my favorite reaction thus far is an unintentional, ironic one.
Boing Boing, uberblog of randomness, endorsed a critical piece on the device today. The argument rests on juxtaposition, including a terrific citation of two utterly conflicting statements from Amazon.com:
When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.
Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Authorâ??s Guild, 2002
You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.
Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007
It’s a convincingly deft rhetorical juxtaposition. But there are two more juxtapositions in Boing Boing’s opposition to Kindle that are equally amusing. The first someone points out in a comment on the page.
I”m wondering why Amazon is able to sell me a monthly subscription to Boing Boing on the Kindle (http://www.amazon.com/Boing/dp/B000HC48TA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1195608066&sr=1-1).
I don’t think that falls under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
I don’t know if websites had to supply permission to syndicate their content on Kindle or not, but the irony runs as thick as the snark usually does on this site.
The second, more delightfully ironic juxtaposition is the one depicted at the top of this post. Boing Boing’s ad service, probably keying off keywords from the text, frequently serves a giant, minimalist banner ad for the Amazon Kindle itself. Note how carefully post author Cory Doctorow avoided linking to Amazon.com or the Kindle product in the post itself. Of course, nothing wrong with collecting a bit of impression and click-through revenue when your readers want to check out the product. You know, for, uhm, researching the opposition.
Of course, Boing Boing’s own irony trap suggests a further irony, one that drives web schadenfreude like Google bombs and web commerce like Amazon’s own collaborative filtering recommendation system: despite what the web might want to think, sometimes a link is not an endorsement. Sometimes it’s a condemnation. Wouldn’t it be nice if technology occasionally cared about the difference?
Comments
Charlie Park
The graphic at the top is amusing. I have a screenshot from a Google News blurb mentioning Microsoft launching a new search strategy, and the accompanying photo is of Bill Gates with his finger up his nose (really!).
On the CC licensing, two points. One, unlesss I’m mistaken, a NC-A license simply means that *other people* can’t commercialize the content of the blog. That is, you couldn’t take one of their posts, put it in a book, and sell it. It doesn’t limit their own rights to monetize it. (Presumably, quoting them on a blog that takes in ad revenue falls under fair use.) Secondly — and I think this is a fairly odd distinction — but Amazon’s not technically charging for the content, they’re charging for the access to the content. Presumably, that offsets the EVDO access costs (as opposed to standard EVDO costs, which are around $60 a month for me).
I liked a few of Mark Pilgrim’s contrasts (the quoted blog), but I thought his invocations of Orwell were extreme, indirect, and dilutive of his other points.
All that being said, I’m not going to get a Kindle. I’m saving my dimes for a Mac Tablet, whenever they come out.