Past as Prologue, Media Edition

Music vendors ended up creating a single dominant player - Apple with iTunes - by demanding DRM. They got device lock-in that made Apple the big player in that space. TechDirt explains:

Back in 2005, we noted that Apple's dominance over the online music space, which upset the record labels tremendously, was actually the record labels' own fault for demanding DRM. That single demand created massive lock-in and network effects that allowed Apple to completely dominate the market. If the record labels had, instead, pushed for an open solution, then anyone else could have built stores/players to work as well, and it could have minimized Apple's ability to control the market.

So with that history, what are book publishers doing? Why, they're demanding DRM, and thus ensuring that Amazon (with the Kindle) becomes the dominant force in that space. Like Apple, Amazon will be able to dictate terms that the publishers don't much care for. But hey - at least their valuable works will be safe with all that DRM... just like music was.

You can almost excuse the music vendors - digital music was just beginning, and there really weren't any examples to learn from. The book publishers? They're apparently too dumb to learn.

Update: Where the publishers will end up, if they decide that the RIAA's path is the right one.