As the Wall Street Journal points out, they're going to be layering Adobe's proprietary DRM on top of the ePub. So even if ePub is itself an open format, it's going to be contaminated by Adobe DRM. (There's still no way to read Adobe DRM'd books on the iPhone/iPod Touch, by the way, unless you crack them.)

I covered the FTC meeting for TeleRead.org (though since I'm connected right now through an iPod Touch from a hospital exam room I don't have any way to fetch the link).

I also was credited by name for a question asked at the beginning of the last panel. :)

It's interesting to note that Amazon OWNS Mobipocket, the encrypted format used by many of their competitors in the e-book industry, but have "embraced and extended" the format so that their Kindle is completely incompatible with other stores' Mobi encryption (without a lot of messing around with python scripts, anyway).

It occurs to me to wonder just how much longer Amazon will be content to provide DRM services to its closest competitors in the e-book biz. If it were to stop licensing Mobi DRM entirely, it could very well cripple large sectors of the rest of the e-book industry.

Well, now, pay attention people
Just in case you hadn't heard
There's some folks messin' 'round
With Mother Nature's little world, baby
And what they do is really freaky
They gets themselves a plane
And they fly it around with chemicals, baby
Tryin' ta make it rain
So when you're out there in that blizzard,
Shiverin' in the cold
Just look up to the sky
And thank the Government for the snow
And sing the low-down, experimental, cloud-seedin',
Who-needs-'em-baby? silver i-i-o-dide blues
Oh, yeah.
Woo!

--C.W. McCall, "Silver Iodide Blues"

That's the only reason I can think of for this story suddenly coming up right now--this is what the iTouch uses for its location-detection (and I suppose the iPhone uses it, too, in conjunction with its cell-tower/GPS thing). I never knew about it until I had reason to look it up and find out how my iTouch knew where I was.

I thought it was a little creepy the first time I realized my iTouch knew more-or-less my exact location--but on the other hand, it's also kinda neat. Too bad it only works in urban areas.