Newspapers are nervous, though, and can't think clearly. They pay enormous sums to digital shroud-wavers like Jeff Jarvis, to hear that they must commit suicide for the greater good of Web 2.0. Because Kindle makes subscribing easy - and subscriptions are a newspaper's Holy Grail - it's got the publishers twitching with excitement. Thanks to the Senate hearings last week, we now all know a little more about what Amazon is asking newspapers to do to kill save them.

Testifying before Congress last week, Dallas Morning News publisher James Moroney said that Amazon demanded 70 per cent of subscription revenue - and more - from any distribution deal struck. Moroney said:

"I get 30 percent, they get 70 percent. On top of that they have said we [Amazon] get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device. Now is that a business model that is going to work for newspapers? I get 30 percent and they get the right to license my content to any portable device—not just ones made by Amazon? That, to me, is not a model. Maybe what Plastic Logic comes up with or what Hearst comes up with, might provide a good model but today Kindle's are less than one percent penetration in the U.S. market."

[theregister.co.uk...]