Social anthropologists — they are the weird ones who like to hang out with tribes in the Amazon rainforest, or highland New Guinea — like to talk about the notion of exchange by way of economic theory. It is not the most complicated of ideas: you give me something, I give you something else back, whether it is cowrie shells or a pair of Gucci shoes, depending on the nature of the deal and the nature of the civilisation in which the transaction takes place. But the importance of the insight is that human beings seem to react poorly to the notion of giving something for nothing, which is why digital piracy seems so natural.

People who would find it impossible to put a CD under their coat and run out of the nearest branch of HMV, seem to be willing to head off to a filesharing website and rip off Cheryl Cole’s latest single. The problem with digital music, an amateur anthropologist might conclude, is that because there is no object being received, it is not obvious that any object — or rather money — should be handed out in compensation. Well, that and the risk of being caught; after all it is unlikely that a burly security guard will rugby tackle an illegal downloader in their own lounge or bedroom.

This, though, is where the iPod comes in, and makes life a bit easier for the music companies. The iPod objectifies the whole music experience, replacing the physicality of the CD — and once a consumer is in the iPod system, they can easily be dragged into the iTunes store, and actually pay for new music for once. But the role of a compelling device in helping to generate digital revenues is too often taken for granted.

Which is why the half-hearted UK launch of Kindle — the digital reader made by the other Amazon, the company — this week is so frustrating. It has taken years for the Kindle to get here (perhaps Amazon believes that Europeans can’t read from a screen). Sold directly from the US with a dollar price tag ($259), an American plug — you need a currency calculator, a knowledge of import duty, a socket converter, and a willingness to wait four to seven days (plus anything the striking postmen add on), simply to get the thing running. Even monthly subscriptions to quality newspapers, such as The Times, are priced in dollars ($22.99 — £13.98), which could be offputting to a consumer who might worry about what hidden costs are attached to using a credit card in a foreign currency.

Why it is so hard for Amazon to price its product locally, and at least ship a load to the UK remains a bit of a mystery. Apple seems to manage all right, selling iPods for pounds, and a conversation with Amazon’s Steve Kessel, the company’s senior vice president of Kindle business, leaves the caller none the wiser. He simply repeats how Amazon is focused on a “great customer experience” — indeed — and how it is a major achievement to create a device that can download electronic books and newspapers over the air in 100 countries without any cost to the Kindle owner in terms of phone bills. The last point is fair enough, but it doesn’t really absolve Amazon the responsibility of trying to flog the Kindle on its UK website, or even, dare one say it, Tesco, where it might just attract a few more owners. But perhaps Amazon is desperate to cut costs.

This is in an era when the volume of pirated books is gradually increasing — one literary agent complained to me yesterday that he increasingly finds his authors’ works on BitTorrent sites where copies of their books can be downloaded free. Some of these will find their way on to Kindles, as pirated MP3s find their way on to iPods. But if Amazon was making it easy to buy the Kindle, and perhaps linking that effort to a big marketing campaign to highlight what you can buy, consumers would at least have some sort of incentive to pay for books and newspapers online.

As it stands, only a modest number of publishing executives and tech addicts look likely to buy a Kindle this side of Christmas, and without object-lust penetrating the population at large, the kind of exchange that the publishers will need to start up won’t build up quickly enough. Either that, or Apple will come up with a killer e-reader, and we’ll all end up buying that instead.

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In the build up to Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, it was the BBC Trust that did its best to confuse. The BBC’s decision to allow the BNP on air is the right one — censorship is not their job — although the panel show may not have been the wisest format to pick.

What made no sense, though, was the trust entertaining the notion that it might prevent the programme being transmitted at all.

This satisfies nobody. Had the trust opted to block transmission, the authority of Mark Thompson, the Director-General, would have been called into question — a high-stakes position for the trust. But letting it through has left critics of the BNP decision feeling let down. The old formula, with the trust behaving as a court of appeal, acting only after programmes have been aired (which is when, after all, we get to see them), is the only one that makes sense.

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