[diatribist]

The issue with most folks selling books about how to avoid the excesses of DRM and other exploitative practices is that most people are happy to pay a premium for the convenience of having a digital library managed by Amazon, Google, Facebook, &etc.

Big tech companies must pay the bills for their servers in one way or another and charging people money to keep the data in their digital vaults is a tradeoff most consumers and producers are more than happy with. Consider the alternative to this. It would require every creative to manage their own payment gateway and digital delivery infrastructure and they would more than likely end up either even or in the negative as far as their own profits were concerned.

Maybe Doctorow has a big enough audience to manage his own digital delivery infrastructure but most authors I'm certain don't have the same luxury.

[wffurr]

The problem isn’t running your own infrastructure. It’s the extortionate rent for the big tech infrastructure and the anticompetitive DRM lock in.

If there was a competitive ecosystem of client software and hardware and also online stores and it all interoperated, we would have a lot more choice, control of our purchased media and devices, and lower prices too.

[preventionist]

What prevents the existence of such an ecosystem? What are the main obstructions? The most obvious ones I can think of are the data centers and necessary protocols but those are easily solvable problems with enough cash. The other obstruction I can think of is that consumers don't actually want these stores and protocols because they're perfectly happy with the services that big tech delivers. Convenience seems to be the #1 factor and most consumers are happy to pay a premium to be in Google's, Amazon's, and Apple's ecosystems. Even if it would be cheaper for the consumer if there were interoperable protocols for these digital vaults I am almost certain that the average consumer would not care because whatever features the big tech currently offers is more than sufficient for their use cases. Very small subset might care but they're too small of a minority to make a difference. Google consistently kills products that HN users enjoy but HN users are clearly not the target demographic that Google actually cares about since they keep killing HN favored services and products.

So if the data centers and protocols are not the problem it must be consumer preferences and going by the software quality that most consumers are willing to put up with I am certain they don't know and care enough about interoperability to actually force the big players to develop the necessary interoperability protocols.

[polygamous_bat]

> What prevents the existence of such an ecosystem? What are the main obstructions?

You're ignoring the elephant in the room, which is anti-trust is dead, and the tech companies running the show are too damn big. If you start a competitor to audible, it can use its leverage with both AWS and Amazon and squeeze you until you're dead, and then continue on with its monopoly.

[cpill]

only if you take on VC. if it cost almost nothing to maintain and there is no pressure for ROI I think it can be done. also, the young, who mostly have no money will flock to cheap options and then it's a waiting game was they grow up.

[wffurr]

>> What prevents the existence of such an ecosystem?

It's in the OP and in my post: "anticompetitive DRM lock-in". Lack of interoperability.