Have We Seen the Back of the Hard Copy Reader?
By Sergey Dmitriev
Special to The St. Petersburg Times
I use the metro both in St. Petersburg and during my occasional trips to Moscow. On it I have seen people reading books and newspapers for as long as I can remember. Over the last few years, however, the category of ‘reading material’ has been supplemented by several other quite interesting groups — occasionally glossy and ‘less bright’ magazines, popular thematic “wonder-issues” such as Apelsin, and the free paper ‘Metro’ (a brilliant idea!), which has a commanding lead over all other material. Another new category is content consumed by means of pocket computers, and already on mobile telephones —the yearly increase in screen size of the latter can now satisfy some metro-readers, using a Java application. Statistics: I noticed the first handheld computer (Palm m100) on the St. Petersburg metro in 2001. Last year on average I noticed two during my twenty to thirty minute-ride a day. Now, three — sometimes five. There is yet another, almost unnoticeable, but growing segment of the reading market — audio books in MP3 format. They can be listened to not only with Flash, HDD players and mobile telephones, but also with Discmans which support this format. It’s interesting to note that in Russia in general audio books are of a legal variety. In the U.S. they use a popular fee-paying service using which one can download articles from newspapers and magazines in MP3 format — in this way one could catch up with the latest issue of Fast Company at the wheel of one’s car. Press releases on Cisco’s website are not only in a form of a text, but now, thanks to podcasting, one can receive new content in the form of speech automatically (as opposed to simply dowloading it each time). Following the trend for telephone screens to increase in size, the screens of MP3 players are getting bigger and now available in color. With the possibility of displaying photographs, and in advanced models of playing videos, it is possible they will soon be another means of reading text. Screens based on OLED, or electronic ink technologies, can help them with that task. Flash and mini-HDD MP3 players are interesting devices, but their potential is not yet fully clear. All of this means that the market of e-content (that at present basically means mobile content) is one of high growth potential. The hard-copy format is doomed to fall in its share of the market. The Internet University of Informational Technologies gives a few of its courses in the traditional way, despite their complete accessibility on the web site. The university’s administration believes that free publication on the web in no way influences book sales, because those who read books and those who read books on a computer are different categories. It’s true that for many one can justly affirm that to get along with complicated technologies (program languages) the means of acquiring material should be simplified, and so a well published book still beats any electronic medium (particularly portable ones). Meanwhile the total number of printed copies of newspapers published in the U.S. falls every six months by about one to three percent. And Business Week announced December 7, that it was stopping paper editions of its European and Asian version so as to be able to concentrate on its customized web edition and printed versions for the developing markets of China, Russia and Poland. The reason? The audience is leaving for internet-mass media, and now to blogosphere. Personally I can’t imagine an offline edition which can replace the news line I get on cnews.ru The quantity of people passing their time in the metro with the help of publications such as Apelsin sincerely saddens me. The contents of such products consists of a selection of jokes, fables, pictures and photo montage. One sees with such reading material citizens who, judging by their appearance, one wouldn’t have said were interested in fables, fiction and “zany” pictures. But if one looks at this as a business case, one could suggest that such an audience, most likely, would happily swap to similar content on a mobile device. Without the need for paper and physical delivery the costs will fall. At the same time one can make ‘cool’ things richer in design, adding sounds and interactive elements, for example, using Macromedia Flash. Telephone ring tones and wallpapers are, in any case, only temporarily profitable. Content Providers A couple of years ago I expressed doubt concerning the rosy future of mobile networks based on GSM/3G technology — then the situation of content providers wasn’t obviously under forthcoming threat. Now it is easier to suggest that changes to the market of mobile communications (disruptive technologies and globalization) will seriously infringe content providers. Traditional companies connected to the mobile business are for the moment still feeling OK, but harmful changes in technology and business models are becoming increasingly obvious. Wi-Fi, forthcoming WiMax, Voice over IP (e.g. Skype available for Microsoft mobile platforms) — the functionality of mobile devices is constantly enriching itself. This is happening because of an increase of the hardware base and program components. This in turn is related to the fact that mobile devices fully understand standard computer language — JPEG, MP3 and MIDI files, are connected by the USB-interface, by wireless interfaces (IrDA, Bluetooth) and with the help of memory cards. The time is over when the only way to copy something new to the memory of your telephone was through its service operator. The various systems of protection against copying were always ineffective, for example, zonal DVDs, tied files from iTunes to iPod, and the probability of the new system DRM protecting content does not appear high. Sooner or later open source will settle down in the mobile world. Motorola released a mobile with Linux, and Nokia is already selling a Linux-based internet tablet. On such platforms the installation of DRM systems is pointless. A similar thing occurs with information as text. From sites such as lib.ru or fictionbook.ru one can download a significant amount of books in Russian. A library of CDs and DVDs are also easily accessible, costing between 60 and 100 rubles. In most cases such content is a pirated version. English books are less accessible, but the project Gutenburg.org legally presents the classics of world literature, where authors’ rights do not exist. In due course much can be expected from the much-hyped Google project called ‘Print.’ It can therefore be said that there is plenty of similar, accessible content. Moving the text to pocket computers and mobile phones by oneself is less and less complicated. A shift in our system of values is now taking shape. When a new generation that now downloads illegal music from the internet and uses open source software will age, it will more likely change the law than its way of thinking, namely its attitude towards digital content in particular and intellectual property in general. Namely, “if it’s possible to independently make a copy and use it for a personal and non-commercial end, there is no need to pay for the copy.” In the near future the attempts of media companies to change the attitude of users toward copying — adverts and law suits against people who have “downloaded” music — have not been convincing to say the least. It means that content in itself is not recognized as a good. And of interest to the market, from a commercial point of view it can only be as a contextual part of a more complicated service. Such thinking, and its corresponding business model, is clearly visible in such companies as Google: on one hand their services are impossible to copy, on the other for end users they are free.
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