Textbooks and Apples

As many parents and students know, paying for new textbooks — whether for high school or university — can leave a wallet feeling decidedly lighter (or a credit card painfully overloaded). So many will have been delighted at the prospect that the cosy ‘cartel’ of textbook publishers was going to be cracked wide open by tech giant Apple. This month, Apple announced a new model for distributing textbooks via its popular iPad tablet device. Their digital books would be cheaper than the hardcopies stocking shelves, and would also allow individual schools and faculties to produce their own course material to match their syllabuses.

But hold the (i)phone, warn the editors at Bloomberg View. They note that the picture isn’t quite as rosy as Apple, and its supporters, are making out. For a start, the fixed upfront cost of buying an iPad has to be factored in — while well known, they certainly aren’t ubiquitous (even among young consumers who might be regarded as more tech-savvy). And Apple’s digital textbooks, because they are easier to produce, could render cheap second-hand textbooks obsolete more rapidly. In fact, rather than break apart the limited supply of textbooks, Apple looks to be carving out a new — and potentially lucrative — monopoly for itself. Its digital textbooks will essentially only be compatible with Apple devices (tough luck for those who are Android users), while Apple will claim a 30 per cent slice of the sales revenue from all digital textbooks sold. Given public funding of education systems, and direct subsidies for many students, the already wildly profitable Apple would be getting a decent bite at some serious tax dollars.

One way around this, as the editors propose, is to require all education institutions that receive taxpayer money to support ‘open’ digital resources. That would allow for platform-neutrality (so if you own one of Amazon’s Kindle readers, but not an iPad, you’re not going to be penalised). But it presumably would also weaken the benefits to Apple, since its capacity to make money from digital books would be reduced — you wouldn’t need to buy an iPad in the first place, but you also wouldn’t need to buy texts using its own controlled marketplace (through which it is able to take its 30 per cent cut). To a large extent, innovation in this area is virtually inevitable — as people become more accustomed to reading books on digital devices, they will surely come to expect the ability to study using those devices as well. But without profit, producers’ innovative drive will be lessened. The question here is, would insisting on a more competitive platform be better (at least from taxpayers’ perspective) than allowing Apple’s model to flourish now?

Copyright, censorship and an American-led digital world

Given how dominant US websites are on the internet, the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) would — if passed — have global implications. And with worldwide website ‘blackouts’, commentary on the subject has hardly been limited to the United States. Bernard Keane hasn’t let the loss of Wikipedia slow down his efforts to pump out a column on the subject, raising his concerns about the bills and how media titans are tackling the issue.

I’ve got to be honest, it’s not the most compelling piece of writing on the subject. For instance, quibbling over statistics about how much online piracy is taking place is a rather moot point — the fact is, piracy exists. Attacking the dubious origin of figures trying to quantify the trend may be satisfying, but it doesn’t change the parameters of the debate. Much closer to the mark is the lack of innovation within the entertainment industry. As Keane notes, the big players had every opportunity to set up their own digital distribution channels. But their negligence left the door wide open to the likes of Apple (iTunes), Spotify and Netflix. (Indeed, the evidence suggests that the availability of these legal channels has helped to dampen down illegal file sharing.) The old guard might be bitter about having to share the spoils of their business with new upstarts. But at least there are spoils to share — and in some senses, the old media companies can claim little credit for that given their own foot-dragging.

None of this is to suggest that content owners don’t have a right to protect — and profit from — their intellectual property. Indeed, it’s important for them to do so, because otherwise they will not bother to invest in content development in the first place. If no one were to ever pay for what they download, then there would be no commercial incentive to produce music, movies, TV shows, software, books and so on. (Yes, some would still exist — many musicians don’t expect to make money from their art, many coders contribute freely to open source projects — but output would be vastly lower, less diverse and arguably of lower quality.) The question is, in the digital world, what copyright enforcement measures are need to ensure the benefits of content production are realised at the lowest overall cost to society? Given the onerous burden that would be placed on internet service providers and major content disseminators — like Google, Wikipedia and Facebook — SOPA and PIPA certainly don’t seem to be the best answer.

The unfortunate truth is that if you want to change Washington DC, you have to buy it. And the big online internet companies, especially web-facing ones, have failed to pony up.

Media matters

Australia’s media inquiry is under way, with hearings kicking off in Melbourne today. Although it’s early days, the expectation appears to be that the inquiry will recommend beefing up the Australian Press Council — the ostensibly ‘toothless’ self-regulator of the print media. One popular suggestion is government funding to ensure a greater degree of independence from media operators (who currently fund the body). And Ray Finkelstein QC, who is presiding over the inquiry, has today floated the possibility of levying a fee on news publishers — which would increase with their revenue or circulation — to cover the costs of the Council.

Many would like to see the inquiry go further. Some want new regulations relating to who can own a newspaper — a ‘fit and proper persons’ test, that could be enforced through a licensing system. Others want specific measures to break the ‘dominance’ of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited in the domestic newspaper industry. For what it’s worth, my hope is that the inquiry recommends precisely nothing — though that, I acknowledge is exceptionally unlikely.

The openness of 'open government'

How public should public processes be? The answer depends on which country you’re in. And perhaps perversely, there is some evidence to suggest that those countries most prone to corruption are the ones opening up the fastest. Take Brazil, for instance, where all government procurement contracts are posted online within 24 hours. This supposedly allows the public to quickly spot any rort, thereby minimising the likelihood of such misconduct occuring. Indeed, technology, and especially the ‘Web 2.0’ trend of online interactivity (yes, for technophiles, the term is already a bit old hat — bureaucracies can only move so fast though), has encouraged the sharing of large chunks of data that had previously been locked away. Such transparency is refreshing. But it is not limitless.

As an international conference on open government next month draws closer, some are wondering whether enough is being done to open the doors of governments to the communities they serve. More comparative data on performance across regions and states, for instance, could allow people to see for themselves where any underperformance might exist. Those most likely to be shown up by the data will tend to resist their publication. And to be fair, that’s sometimes for entirely legitimate reasons — what appears to be ‘bad’ could in fact be ‘excellent’ given the local circumstances. Still, as Susan Crawford writes, more could be done to build support for open government.