TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home |
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TeleRead calls for well-stocked national digital libraries in the U.S. and elsewhere. TeleRead's moderator is David Rothman (dr@teleread.org). For occasional highlights from this blog, join the TeleRead Mailing List.
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Sunday, June 30, 2002
Words to remember next time Jack Valenti talks about copyright extension and creativity
"Ms. Lansing has never shown any interest in a greater corporate role. But the movie business is changing, and she may not want to change with it. 'Her career has been based on content,' Mr. Rudin said. 'Now it is more of a marketing business, and that may have less appeal for her.'" - New York Times, June 30 The TeleRead take: And don't think that book biz is any different from show biz. Time for more focus on a library model?
The case for bringing the books HOME "'When kids read during the summer, they do better in school,' said Carol Rasco, president and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental Inc. 'But just as importantly, summer reading should be fun and help kids discover that books can take them on great adventures.' It's in those moments looking through the library stacks, choosing a page-turning mystery or a sports biography -- with no test or book report looming beyond the final page--that kids learn the true entertainment value of a book." - Miami Herald, June 29, via Library Stuff The TeleRead take: But what about the rest of the year? Imagine the benefits if children could also browse around for the right book from home?
"P2P Streaming Radio" Pirate radio on the Net--which the RIAA can't trace? That's the claim discussed in Slashdot. The TeleRead take: Another example of the ingenuity of bootleggers--and the need for sustainable and user-friendly business models, whether for music or books.
A high-tech stage coach "Unfortunately, the bulk of resources in most libraries is still available only in conventional printed form: bound, numbered and arranged on shelves. You can try doing all your research electronically but at some point, you will have to hunt down a book on one of those shelves, sit down and thumb through its pages. In libraries of the future, researchers at Johns Hopkins University say, that kind of grunt work could be handled by robotic systems linked to the Internet." - New York Times, June 27 The TeleRead take: Mixed feelings here. This would be a great transitional technology and a long-lasting one to use for retrieving rare books, but let's not accustom ourself to limitations such as the one-reader-at-a-time approach. The true solution is a TeleRead-style digital one. Let's not content ourselves with even a high-tech stage coach.
Saturday, June 29, 2002
"Library Digitization Projects and Copyright"
Practical how-to guidance from Mary Minow, a library law consultant for LibraryLaw.com. Carried by LLX.com.
NPRwatch.org National Public Radio has leveled with us in offering one reason why it fears unfettered linking. Horror of horrors, what if people criticize NPR on their own sites and use too many NPR links? Why, they might even charge subscription fees. I myself am an NPR booster but relish the prospect of this nightmare unfolding. Gadflies are an essential part of media ecology, particularly when they're right. I was curious to see what NPR critics might actually be out there, right or wrong. The possibilities intrigued me. I already knew of media watchers such as ChronWatch. And earlier today I had run across PostWatch's reproduction of a piece called Post Op-Eds: Boring, Predictable Playground for the Center and the Right by none other than ex-Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy. Written originally for a pulped-wood version of the Progressive, the McCarthy article didn't include links to illustrate specifics. Still, given McCarthy's past prominence at the Post, the piece was bloody fun to read. More than ever, I hoped that bloggers and other Web publishers of all ideological stripes would prevail over Corporate Control Central. Inspired by PostWatch, which I found through a blog called Ombudsgod, I checked to see if there existed an nprwatch.blogspot.com. No dice. But over in the whois area of VeriSign, I did see NPRwatch.org, which at this point was offering nothing more than an "Under Construction" page. An email address listed in the whois, however, led to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America--a very, very real site. From an NPR perspective, CAMERA turned out to be a show of horrors. I found that this site did not focus just on NPR--apparently that would be the job of the related NPRwatch, registered in 2000--but it was a potential linkfest for media skeptics. CAMERA was taking on Time, AP, MSNBC and CNN, not just NPR, and while I was immediately skeptical of some of the claims there (was the partly Jewish Geraldo Rivera really a "Palestinian-ist"?), this organization was entitled to have its say and use links to make its points. Within CAMERA, I discovered a host of anti-NPR items--for example: --June 26, 2002: NPR: Palestinians Who Murdered Israeli Mother and Children were "Commandos" (with a deep NPR link included) --May 3, 2002: CAMERA Calls on NPR to Fire Foreign Editor Loren Jenkins --January 2, 2002: NPR Distorts Even Its Bias --December 26, 2001: NPR's "On the Media" Distorts Interview with CAMERA --September 26, 2001: Despite Terror Attack, NPR Maintains Blacklist of Leading Terror Expert, Steve Emerson Quickly touring the above, I did not exactly see any intent to make people think that CAMERA was part of NPR, a risk that the Link Police in the past had mentioned without alluding to CAMERA. Just the opposite, of course. What's more, if anything, I had a link-related gripe of a kind that NPR might not have understood. I didn't see enough deep-linking to NPR to back up the points that CAMERA wanted to make. In CAMERA's place, for purposes of rebuttal if nothing else, I myself would have linked to a page where NPR's ombudsman discussed the Steve Emerson case and other accuations of bias. Had CAMERA wanted to link, in fact? Might NPR's old policy of ask-first have inhibited CAMERA? If so, the policy had backfired. Expect your critics to link to you to back up their points, and then they would have a harder time attacking--since the standards of proof would be higher. Whatever the facts, the CAMERA site has struck me as a textbook example of the need for NPR to do away explicitly with all restrictions on linking by advocacy groups, even implied restrictions. I don't care how many times NPR assures us that it won't use its linking policy to scare critics. Do we really want CAMERA and its future NPRwatch.org to rely on NPR's goodwill to do links? Even now, the revised NPR linking policy states: "We reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link." That's hardly a great example for a respected jouralistic organization, lest it have to depend too heavily on the kindness of strangers, who can throw the NPR precedent right back in the network's face. Requiring permission to link is truly an anti-journalistic mindset--a bit like filing a suit to do away with Times vs. Sullivan. Never mind the anti-link sentiments of certain greedy and clueless publishers. They are businessmen people, not working editors and reporters. By contrast, NPR "is pledged to abide scrupulously by the highest artistic, editorial, and journalistic standards and practices of broadcast programming." As it turned out, when I phoned CAMERA Executive Director Andrea Levin about the old and new link policies, she said that she herself didn't even know of the NPR linking controversy and had not received any letters from lawyers. Just the same, more than ever, I saw the legal risks here, especially since CAMERA told me that NPRwatch.org could indeed be the address of a real site in the future. Like most surfers on the Web, her staffers apparently weren't bothering to read the terms of service agreement--a good illustration of the risks that linking policies could pose to freedom of expression online. Asked about CAMERA's attitude toward NPR's linking policies, she referred me to her group's associate director--more informed about the Web than she is, I understand--from whom I'm still awaiting a call. Later this weekend I'm going to do what I should have done earlier. I'll write a nice polite letter to NPR and ask for a full list of sites with which the network's lawyers have corresponded about link matters. If I can see copies of the actual letters or email messages, then so much the better (never hurts at least to ask). I'm eager to find out more about the claimed "instances where companies and individuals constructed entire commercial Web ‘radio’ sites based on links to NPR and similar audio." Or about "advocacy groups that have positioned the audio link to an NPR story such that one cannot tell that NPR is not supporting their cause." In the first instance, the commercial sites, I wonder if NPR is simply talking about audio portals, and in the second, I wonder if trademark defense rather than link-based action would be the true solution. Meanwhile I would repeat my earlier recommendation against a boycott of public radio. No need for one; it isn't as if the network has stonewalled critics. The facts are on the side of us pesky link advocates, and I suspect that sooner or later NPR will come around. Via links, everyone gets zinged at times--in the free and open spirit of the World Wide Web. And here at the TeleBlog, we'd find it hard to envision the Web any other way.
Friday, June 28, 2002
NPR ombudsman's comments--and another friendly suggestion for the network
For the perspective of NPR's ombudsman, check out Jeffrey Dvorkin's page. He is open-minded enough to quote some of the network's critics, and he even includes a link to this TeleBlog. While I still dislike NPR's linking policies, I myself favor the gentle approach and would oppose the withholding of contributions to public radio stations. It isn't as if NPR is stonewalling us. A dialogue is still possible on such issues as linking by advocacy groups and businesses. What's more, as shown by a sympathetic segment that a Minnesota affiliate did with Cory Doctorow, a boycott would indirectly punish working-stiff interviewers and producers who are on our side or who at least are neutral. The network meanwhile has improved its terms of use--no more form to fill out before linking--and hopefully will be making other changes to address the serious and rather valid concerns of bloggers and other Web publishers. I see this as a matter of education. The more restrictions NPR imposes on links, the more risky it will be for the network's own Web operation to link to sites in the news. Perhaps NPR should contact lawyers at EFF and reporters' groups to check out different legal viewpoints from the one it is now getting. NPR holds itself up as an organization with strong journalistic values. That is exactly why the perspective of reporters' organizations might actually be more helpful than those from profit-minded publishers or broadcasters. A library-oriented lawyer might also help. If nothing else, NPR should keep in mind its mission statement--which in many ways overlaps with those of librarians, another group concerned with credibility. At the grassroots level, I know that Jenny the Shifted Librarian would have more than a few things to say.
Microsoft to pre-empt existing TCP/IP? We don't know and won't speculate. But author-columnist Robert X. Cringely is having some fun with the possibilities and even suggesting that Microsoft has deliberately left security holes in its products to stir up discontent with the existing Net. What we can say is that the telecom thieves completely justified Cringely's paranoia about them.
Time for NPR to cover the linking controversy Has NPR itself done a story on the linking controversy? Not that I know of so far. When I called the office of Nina Totenberg, the legal corresondent, I was told she didn't have time. But presumably NPR has other good, qualified reporters. The topic is important enough to be covered. If it isn't covered, then either (1) NPR will provide yet other evidence of cluelessness or (2) we'll know that NPR refuses to cover itself. Time for the NPR ombudsman to go into the air? Meanwhile, Jenny Levine, the Shifted Librarian, warns NPR not to "waste their own time and resources tracking links, sanctioning links, and paying lawyers to send threatening letters, all the while becoming the butt of an ever-growing web joke meme. You can bet that every story about linking ever will refer to NPR and that it will become the poster child for web cluelessness." Hello, hello, NPR? Librarians and teachers are normally among your biggest fans, and your linking polices are not making them very happy.
"Copy protection takes stealth approach" "Consumers may think they are successfully burning a CD protected by Smarte Solutions, but may discover otherwise when they try to play it... Privately held Smarte Solutions is working with software publishers to incorporate its SmarteCD technology into their wares. Unlike existing copy-protection schemes, which prevent CD burners from copying a disk, SmarteCD allows the user to burn a copy of the disc, explained company president Bala Vishwanath. The software can be installed from the bootleg disc and will appear to run normally, until the program reaches a point determined by the software publisher. Then the application will halt and present users with an invitation to purchase a legal, fully functional version of the software." - ZDnet, June 18, 2002 The TeleRead take: How long until e-book publishers cook up similar schemes, assuming they haven't already?
More on the FBI and libraries: The Saladin/Lolita factor So how helpful will circulation software be when G-men come to visit? LibraryPlanet.com gives one librarian's perspective. Interesting fact: Some forgetful patrons actually wanted their reading habits recorded over the long run so they'd know if they were reading the same book again. But at least one library software maker never enabled that feature, presumably with privacy concerns in mind. The TeleRead take: Yes, TeleRead could be designed with privacy protections. At same time I can also see the FBI's side on the need to track down cyberterrorists before they grow too smart about dams and air-traffic control routines. If the feds can go through due process and have specific people in mind--well, that would would be different from frivolous searches and routine monitoring of Americans' reading habits. As noted, too, terrorists actually did use one of my favorite library branches, Sherwood Regional, right there in Fairfax County, VA, perhaps to communicate with their fellow jihadists. Just the same, I'm delighted that librarians consider this a gut issue and are skeptical. Much of the crucial information isn't even in libraries but on the Net--including perhaps the dam and air-traffic information. What's more, everyone knows how leaky FBI files can be, and millions of Americans remember the old McCarthy-era abuses. As I hazily recall--it's been decades--an old family friend was even driven out of a midwestern town because the neighbors perceived her as too "liberal." Were the feds checking out Raphie Lou's reading habits? Never know what and who might offend. J. Edgar Hoover actually feared Albert Einstein as a subversive. So what happens if among us we have an Arab-American Einstein who is thoroughly loyal--to the U.S.--and just happens to have a passion for friendly biographies of Saladin? Someday will a Big Brotherish computer go through the circulation records of a public or university library and flag our friend as a security risk? If nothing else, the usual concerns arise about the use of sensitive information in, say, divorce cases, given the leakiness of files. Pity the beleaguered spouse who checks out Lolita at the wrong time.
"NPR Retreats, Link Stink Lingers" A good update on the NPR link controversy appears in Wired News with quotes from Cory Doctorow and me, two of the uppity linkers who believe that even NPR's revised policies threaten freedom of expression. Meanwhile a decision is expected July 5 in a deep-link-related case in Denmark.
"Save streaming audio on your PC!" ZDnet writer Preston Gralla offers links to several possibilities, but in my opinion, his best bet just might be Super MP3 Recorder, which "can save any audio stream coming into your sound card. It automatically chooses the best recording options, and then saves the stream as an MP3 or WAV file. This download records streaming audio in many formats, including Windows Media Player, QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Flash." The TeleRead take: This is the kind of technology that sends shivers down the spines of the RIAA members. I love it. RIAA and friends are working contain such magic, and I'm most grouchy. Um, we're in time shift territory--fair use and all that. Even content-providers, in fact especially content providers, can find uses for such tools. What if you're a financial radio show host and want your programs to go on the Web? No hypothetical situation. I designed a Web site for a financial advisor, and thanks to TotalRecorder, his radio station's Web audio could be saved and up at his own site within an hour or so of the original broadcast. In a book context, the implications are obvious. Whatever could be displayed on a screen could in theory be picked up. Oh, the fun of Draconian copyright law. Time for a more realistic library model?
Blowback time, Hollywood style: a preview Hours ago we noted that by turning the Net into a more and more of a cyberwar zone, a Hollywood-friendly proposal could alienate hackers and even jeopardize U.S. national security. All too helpfully, a BusinessWeek article from June 27 reinforces our point. See below. Even without Congress not (yet) falling for a wacky proposal from Rep. Howard Bermain to legalize cyberattacks against certain alleged copyright violators, it would appear that the risks are very real. Beware of blowback--a snake-cage-full of wanted consequences. Yaha Worm Takes Out Pakistan Government's Site; virus uses victim computers as denial-of-service agents, and tries to recruit Indian hackers into a cross-border cyber war The official Web site of the government of Pakistan is apparently the victim of a politically motivated attack launched by the latest version of an Internet worm. Virus experts said the Yaha.E worm, first identified on June 15, contains a payload designed in part to disrupt the home page of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with a rudimentary denial of service attack. Attempts to reach the site, located at www.pak.gov.pk, were unsuccessful Wednesday... Update: Whether because of the attack or for other reasons, we could not access the above site at 5:22 a.m. EST Friday.
"Archive to Hold History Of the Dot-Com Era" "Historians will be able to look back 200 years from now and read the original proposal for Boo.com or Kozmo.com or eToys.com and hear audio histories from executives and worker bees from the companies. Ideally, future students and business leaders will learn something from the mistakes that were made." - Shannon Henry, Washington Post, June 27. The TeleRead take: A much-needed project--from David Kirsch, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. No conflict with the valuable Internet Archive, which focuses on the preservation of actual Web pages. Perhaps by learning from the past debacles, we can avoid another @Home or--within the telecom area--WorldCom.
"No free lunch" department "Online magazine publisher Salon Media Group, Inc., faces the prospect of going out of business if it can't raise money this summer, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission." - AP, via the New York Times, June 27. The TeleRead take: So even with the optional Salon Premier subscription plan, Salon isn't making it? This is a most unfortunate evidence to back up our mantra that good content costs. Salon can be infuriating at times--but despite its many flaws I'd miss it if it were gone. What about this free TeleBlog? Well, it and the rest of TeleRead are absolutely free of any corporate entanglements. But I'd love to be able to give it more time. I remain in search of a business model that would not compromise TeleRead's integrity. Feedback welcome on this and other matters. As best I can determine from stats from LFC Hosting, at least several thousand people a week are now reading the TeleBlog.
The word from Larose, Louisiana--and a lesson in the limits of blogging Nice letter received yesterday from a gungho library fan down in Larose, Louisana, who says a newspaper story to which I linked did not give the full picture. Check out my followup at the bottom of the original item on library-related gouges. Interesting lessons arise here on the limitations of blogging. Other TeleBlog contributors and I will try to link to good publications, but we can't police them in advance for accuracy, fairness or completeness. Especially when it comes to local stories, we're at the mercy of whatever the reporter chooses to write from the scene. Blogs are useful as information filters, but should never be considered a substitute for conventional media. Here at the TeleBlog, we link to a mix of both conventional and not-so-conventional sources but do our best to go for the most factual, whether they're newspapers or blogs or radio networks. This appreciation of credible news sources, as blog grist, is one reason why we've been pushing for NPR not to fetter itself or Webfolks with stupid linking policies. Bad news for the level of discourse. Carrying the concept further, you can see the advantage of enriching the Net with thousands of books online to which bloggers and other Web publishers can send use stable links to direct surfers. Not that TeleRead or a perfect NPR linking policy would have saved us from linking to the botched news story from Larose. But you get the idea. Meanwhile, speaking of the relationship between blogs and the conventional media, news consultant Steve Outing has just come out with a column suggesting that news organizations make blogs available to any reporter or photographer who wants one. Remember, blogs can carry pictures, too. Great idea, just so the blogs augment conventional news stories but do not replace them. As Steve points out, however, reporters do notebook dumps anyway and hoard surplus material, so why not make it public? An aside: It goes without saying that many of the TeleBlog links and maybe even most will not go to any news organization or even a quasi-news organization. Notice? Today I linked everywhere from Jack Valenti's official bio--no, I cannot and will not verify the veracity of the facts there--to the home page of the Larose Chamber of Commerce. That just happens to be the nature of the Web. No endorsement implied. I myself prefer to see source material, not just predigested information from news organizations, even if it may be flawed.
Thursday, June 27, 2002
Ugly Americans in cyberspace: Unwitting allies of al Qaeda
No, we won't question the patriotism of Jack Valenti at the Motional Picture Association of America. He's the Johnson aide who slept better during the Vietnam war because LBJ was in the White House. Just the same, Valenti and his friends like Hiliary Rosen of the RIAA might want to consider the damage to national security that they are doing with their unceasing war against hackers and the rest of the Net. Hackers and free-spirited sharers of files are the Viet Cong to people like Valenti and Rosen. Both depict themselves as upholders of civilization in cyberspace. And yet here's the RIAA smiling at a proposal that would allow copyright holders to mount attacks on illegal file-sharing sites--undoubtedly a 'tude shared by Valenti. What an efficient way for Americans and their copyright laws to lose respect on the Net and turn more hackers and others against us. Like it or not, the big-time copyright interests and their bought politicians are doing the work of America's enemies. Valenti and Rosen are the new Ugly Americans of cyberspace, the equivalent of the our political leaders who destroyed Vietnamese villages to "save" them. In fact, if lobbyists and obliging "public" officials keep trashing the Net, then even some secular hackers overseas may feel like joining forces with our al Qaeda enemies--as cybermercenaries. Lest you think these issues are academic, keep in mind that according to a story in today's Washington Post, al Qaeda's thugs would love to find hackers to use the Net to wreak havoc on the U.S. infrastructure. Dam gates might open to flood and kill thousands, and air traffic control systems might stop working. While Valenti and Rosen will correctly think that it's a long way from sabotaging P2P sites to letting jumbo jets smack into each other, this distinction may be lost on future recruits for al Qaeda and cybermercenaries who just might see this all as one big video game of a jihad. Here's a suggestion for Valenti and Rosen. Aren't many movies marketed these days according to the whims of focus groups? Maybe Valenti and Rosen need focus groups to identify the intellectual property models with which young people feel the most comfortable. A TeleRead-style national digital library approach, offering fair payment to content providers while staying as true as possible to the Carnegie model, just might win out. An aside: I myself hate the corruption of the word "hacker." It used to mean people who loved to explore the innards of computers, rather than stealing or destroying. Anti-kudoos to the big media for blurring the distinction between hackers and, say, "crackers."
Thanks, NPR--but your linking policy still has a way to go National Public Radio has dropped the controversial requirement that other people's Web sites ask permission before linking. Many thanks to NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin for speaking out on this issue even though I realize he isn't exactly in charge of NPR. While the new policy is a major improvement, I dislike NPR's prohibition against framing of its Web page. Not good. What's the problem as long as Joe or Jane Blogger does not misrepresent the source of the content? I also have difficulty with the rule that "the linking should not (a) suggest that NPR promotes or endorses any third party’s causes, ideas, Web sites, products or services, or (b) use NPR content for inappropriate commercial purposes. We reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link." Look, how many people are going to say, "NPR endorses the Association for Golden Retriever Killing"? That's a limited risk at most. On the Web, linking just does not imply endorsement unless there is explicit language saying so. Too, I'm a grouchy about "inappropriate commercial purposes." What's "inappropriate"? Even a fee-based site that charged money for a critical examination of NPR content should be allowed to make free use of links--in fact, especially a site like that. Analyzing NPR content is not the way to great riches. What's more, criticism is healthy. And if a fee makes the site more sustainable, then, reluctantly, given my preference for the free, I can tolerate that. At any rate, no pun intended, I like the idea of people having full freedom to make derivative works. That's what the Web is all about. In another problem with NPR, I notice that the network says, "We reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link." Any? Even if it doesn't mislead surfers? If backed by courts, this could open the way to reprisals by NPR against critics. While I can understand the usefulness of good linking policies in pre-empting bad ones--not everyone would agree, mind you--I'm don't think that even the new NPR policy is in the "good" category. Progress? Much. But no nirvana here. Furthermore, keep in mind efforts by governments to internationalize Net law and reduce geographical barriers. What happens in the future if the barriers aren't so formidable, and if NPR puts up a link that offends a government or business overseas. The network's Web side could suffer. Of course, the bottom line won't just be the policies but how they're enforced. I'm hoping that NPR will ignore the sillier parts of the policy revisions. Meanwhile stay turned for a news story tomorrow on one of my favorite Web sites, Wired News, which has energetically kept up with the important linking issue. I learned of NPR's latest policy when reporter Farhad Manjoo called for comment. Needless to say, I eagerly await the chance to link to Farhad's next Wired News story. How ironic that a private "commercial" news organization is far more open-minded about linking than is National Public Radio.
More on the Billington sell-out "As I've pointed out many times, protecting 'copyright owners' means protecting big business, not artists. That the Librarian of Congress views songs solely as property, discarding their status as culture, is even more appalling." - Dave Marsh, in a Counterpunch article, via librarian.net. The TeleRead take: Time for Marsh and others to call for Jim Billington's resignation? While the Webcasting case happens to have received big-time publicity, what about sell-outs where Billington is more quietly doing damage?
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Library Stuff chosen Fox blog of the week
Congrats to Steve Cohen of Library Stuff. Uncongrats to the FBI library snoops for providing him with the grist for some of his items for the winning blog. Absolutely no sympathy for terrorists here--just a concern over loss of civil liberties if citizens' reading habits can be examined on whims.
An eBay for campaign donors? Why should pols and special interests waste valuable time when frictionless capitalism could come to their rescue? I propose an eBay that would let clashing interests bid for the votes of politicians. That way, Cisco, Intel and friends could compete openly and directly against anti-Net industries like movies or the big-time recording biz. Imagine the economies. Special interests wouldn't have to shell out big bucks on, say, Jack Valenti or oversized offices on K Street. We could do away with trade associations and campaign dinners. Just think how pleased H.L. Hunt's ghost would be. Luckily the above is satire. Not so happily, the item posted earlier this morning, about Rep. Berman, is reality.
Bought pol wants to legalize attacks against file-sharing sites "Copyright holders would receive carte blanche to use aggressive tactics to stop the illegal distribution of their works on online services like Morpheus and Kazaa under legislation outlined today by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.)." - Washington Post, June 25. The TeleRead take: "His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail," the Post reports, "but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems." The words "carte blanche" might be overdoing it, in fact. But the bill is strong stuff, just the same. Hollywood's is truly getting its money's worth from the Minority at-large whip in the House of Representatives. Even considering that Berman's district is next to Hollywood and Burbank, he's done a stellar job of sucking up to the entertainment establishment. Opensecrets.org lists $185,141 from show biz types through March 31, compared to a mere $95,100 from lawyers and law firms and $32,000 from real estate for the 2002 campaign. The $185K is a hefty percentage of the $863K total. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Berman's office and hear conversations between him and lobbyists. For more cynicism, see Slashdot. What makes this situation even more fun is that Berman's committe assignments include both Judiciary and Standards of Official Conduct. Young hackers, why fear the law or reprimands from peers (and we don't mean just file sharers). When you're big and strong, you, too, can buy your own congressmen and bring down any Web site you want. Problems with the laws? Hey, just pay up to change 'em. Your congressional friends even oversee the FBI. Oh, and within the Judiciary committee, they can sit on the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, By company or other organization, Berman's top five sources of funds are Disney, $30,000 (how in character for The Mouse); AOL Time Warner, $28,050 (a fact for AOL to chew on next time its properties suffer hacker attacks); Vivendi International, $27,591 (maybe time to sell the entertainment properties and get back to the water business?); News Corp, $13,000 (one at least can admire Rupert Murdoch for his thrift compared to some of his rivals); and the American Federation of State, City and Municipal Employees, $10,000 (so much for certain unionists as consumerists). This money came from either employees, members or political action committees. Oh, and speaking of AFSCME, what's Local 2929, Council 36, have to say about Berman? Will 2929, representing LA Library employees, keep supporting this friend of affordable content? In fairness to 2929 members, perhaps they didn't entirely know what they were buying with the $10K.
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
The post-Billington Library of Congress
Who should replace Jim Billington as leader of the Library of Congress? And might it just be time to rethink the nature of the job? No endorsement of anyone right now, but Billington's serving as an unwanted in-house RIAA for librarydom is just one indication that he needs to step down. Feedback welcome on possible replacements. So much innovation is happening elsewhere, under Michigan librarian Christie Brandau and other library professionals; and the contrast with the 73-year-old Billington will only widen, as he stays in his own little time warp and technology moves on. I myself like the idea of changing the librarian's job so there is more emphasis on actual librarianship and technology and less emphasis on the head librarian as a czar of culture. Instead we could expand the roles of visiting scholars, artists, musicians and writers and others. Meanwhile the actual librarian could focus on the nuts and bolts of bringing the Carnegie model online. If the librarian were young and from outside the Beltway, so much the better--though I won't count on it. Perhaps good talent could be found among the grunts who have been doing the work for which Billington has taken ample credit. Just imagine what professional librarians and information scientists could accomplish without Billington around. However impressive is LOC's online collection, it is not a true library in the range of its holdings. Call me old-fashioned, but a "national digital library" without contemporary books is a little surrealistic. Thomas Jefferson would not be pleased. Jefferson "believed that self- government depended on the free, unhampered pursuit of truth by an informed and involved citizenry," and as one of the premier techies of his time, he would not have loved Billington's statement that e-books are anti-social. Chances are that Jefferson would be pressing for a decentralized, TeleRead-style approach to strengthen local libaries as opposed to building empires in Washington. Given all the library's present failings, Jefferson might also call for Congress to modify LOC's mission statement so the library was less a tool of Capitol Hilll and more a library for the entire country, especially in regard to putting books and other items on the Internet. Not to neglect our solons' needs. But they could be handled through an independent and expanded Congressional research service, apart from LOC, so that the library could focus on what should be its foremost mission, an informed citizenry in the Jeffersonian tradition. As for the copyright office, a library-oriented approach is best, and the office should not budge from the bosom of LOC, especially with Billington out of the picture. No more in-house RIAAs, hopefully. What an obnoxious Hamiltonian. One other lesson is that we badly need an official term limit for librarians of Congress. Billington is to the Library of Congress what J. Edgar Hoover was to the FBI--a pathetic relic who has outlived his usefulness but can still do plenty of damage. A brief LOC history by John Y. Cole, with a preface from you know which 'crat, says that there is no term specified for librarians "even though in the twentieth century the precedent seems to have been established that a Librarian of Congress is appointed for life." In effect librarians of Congress have often been like Supreme Court Justices. While lifelong appointments are right for a deliberative body in the vein of the Court--even then, cynics still joke about the justices and election returns--I question the needs for a similar situation at the Library of Congress. Long terms? Yes, of course. LOC needs independence. But, please, don't sentence the country to Billington-type dinos "for life." As a matter of fact, Billington's predecessor, the distinguished historian Daniel J. Boorstin wisely retired on 1987 as librarian after having served just short of 12 years. He was 72 at the time, a tad younger than Billington. Ironically, in an era of anthrax and dirty nukes, Billington could do real damage to our precious cultural heritage by not supervising the digitization of LOC as expertly as a younger, more tech-savvy person could--someone not just with the technical skills but the vision and the administrative savvy to see a well-stocked national digital library system become a reality.
Librarydom's in-house RIAA: Time for Jim Billington to go The decline of Web radio might have one positive--perhaps the start of an uproar against Jim Billington, the Librarian of Congress who kept the royalty fees high enough to kill off young stations. Time for this aging T-Rex to go after 15 years. Without doubt, Billington is among the planet's leading haters of tech. Here is a 73-year-old man who, in the interest of job protection, let more open-minded people at LOC put up a first-class Web site--and yet at the same time has spoken against having the library digitize books for the masses. He sees e-books as anti-social and says "you don't want to be one of those mindless futurists who sit in front of a lonely screen." What a dino. Professional librarians can be relieved that he is a political appointee, a historian-Kremlinogist, rather than a librarian from the start. Billington is thus free to embarrass us nonlibrarians. In today's Washington Post, Marc Fisher briefly tells how Billington bought the recording industry's arguments against a fair shake for Web radio. But that's just part of the story. Billington reeks of hypocrisy. "So far," he ranted in a speech in April 2000, "the Internet seems to be largely amplifying the worst features of television's preoccupation with sex and violence, semi-literate chatter, shortened attention spans, and near-total subservience to commercial marketing." And yet this noble soul cold-bloodedly killed off small Web radio stations that were playing alternatives to the standard violence and sex from the entertainment giants. "The amateurs who run Web stations haven't a prayer of making a living of it," Fisher wrote. "Theirs is a labor of love and dreams. Even the biggest Web operations, such as classical Beethoven.com, had only five figure revenue last year, but now face six-figure royalty fees." Thanks, Jim. Oh well, I suppose you can think of Beethoven the same way you thought of e-books during that revealing appearance at the National Press Club. "It is dangerous to promote the illusion that you can get anything you want by sitting in front of a computer screen."
Hollywood, hardware and HTML solutions for REB 1100 owners "If new PCs have copyright protection built into them, no one will want them and they'll just stick with the old ones. Which is exactly what might happen to those first Rocketbook readers. I remember lamenting how quickly the...RBs became outdated. Now I'm starting to think we might be able to sell them on eBay someday for a handsomely sum." - Jenny "Shifted Librarian" Levine, June 24. The TeleRead take: Among other things, Jenny is sensibly warning of the damage that Hollywood-inspired legislation could do to the PC industry--or, to be more exact, the users of the machines. What's more, in terms of the present, she dislikes another anti-user tool, proprietary formats, which Gemstar is trying to herd its customers toward, lest they contaminate holy products with converted HTML and get in the way of gouges for overpriced books. Are you yourself a Gemstar victim? Do you own the REB 1100, a newer version of the Rocket eBook, and do you want to read HTML files even if Gemstar would rather that you not--and in fact has even posted misleading information online to discourage you? Then go to Miscellaneous Stuff within the RocketBook/RCA eBook fan site for links to some handy conversion tools. Enjoy your HTML classics, or, for that matter, your own notes or works in progress. Savor your victory over the incorrigible urges of Gemstar boss Henry Yuen to turn you into a consumer rather than a doer. But, hey, enough of that. It's already payback time for him.
Monday, June 24, 2002
E-books: More than just for reference
E-books Investment Pays Off is the title of a generally upbeat piece in yesterday's Tampa Tribune. Still, keep in mind that this article is very set in the here and now. It is true that most of the library users are turning to e-books for references or for retrieving information from home at odd hours--as opposed to reading e-books hour after hour for pleasure. But it isn't as if e-ink or the equivalent is decades and decades away, or as if the Tablet PC and better screens won't give e-books a boost. Time to start planning now for the inevitable. Already, moreover, many young people are growing up in front of computers and very nicely accustomed to reading off them, even without wrinkles like e-ink. Big thanks to Library Stuff for spotting this item even I'm more optimistic than Steve is about e-books for reading hour after hour. Won't happen immediately in most cases. But it's on the way, especially among "well-screened" chldren. One area where Steve and I would agree is audio e-books in MP3 format. I can't wait for them to catch on in a big way beyond what's happening at Audible.
Time for NPR to rethink online biz model, not just link policies Wired News today discusses a Danish linking controversy and the continued fuss over National Public Radio's ask-first linking rule here in the states. Meanwhile let's look beyond law per se. NPR would advance its own mission of elevating public discourse if it came out solidly in favor of unrestricted linking. And that's not all. Pehaps it's time for NPR to think less about policies and more about business models. Of course, I'd rather see NPR offer a free, open and adless site. And if it can, then why should it worry so much about deep linking? Especially in this case, I won't buy the "context" argument that deep-link foes use even with free sites. Does NPR do its audio segments under the assumption that people will listen to the network all day? What's more, I doubt that links compromise its journalistic integrity. Almost always, surfers know what is NPR's and what is originated elsewhere. With the free, open and adless model especially, there is not justification for link restrictions. But let's say that NPR does need for the site to produce serious revenue, as opposed to being subsidized by donations or grants or little arrangements with the like of Audible for archiving downloadable material. One idea would be serve up ads for noncontributors to public radio--and adless pages for contributors. NPR could share subscription revenue with affiliates; contributors could even key in their zip codes. What's more, contributors who gave more than $100 or so might benefit from NPR-related products and services such as maybe an NPR-optimized news aggregator or a plug-in for an exisiting aggregator or browser. I know that Jenny has some interesting thought on libraries and aggregators, and she might want to share ideas here. Perhaps, like UserLand, NPR could even offer contributors some special news feeds in the .RSS format for customers--maybe even New York Times material and other goodies similar to what UL folks enjoy.
A starter TeleRead at the state level? Just about--in Michigan Check out a LibraryNotes item today. In this era of library budget cuts, Michigan's expanded ebrary collection is a shining example of technology as a resource-stretcher. It's almost a starter TeleRead at the state level even if it is not quite the same. At least if my hunch is right, between the lines, Michigan depending heavily on netLibrary for much more than just e-book-related software. TeleRead would use a very multi-vendor approach. Furthermore, hardware issues would be an integral part of TeleRead. The TeleRead take: Now imagine the efficiencies from a well-stocked national digital library system. And keep reading on. If you extrapolate from the Michigan figures, a TeleReaderish collection of books and other items might be possible at the national level for $100 million or so for annual online rights. For the sake of caution, let's assume that the $3.6 million mentioned in a newspaper column is not for purchase of perpetual rights. As for hardware issues, TeleRead calls for schools and libraries to lend out appropriate machines to encourage students to buy their own, and with delight I see that the Detorit Free Press reporting on a successful program in a Virgnia county to equip students with laptops. TeleRead could work on laptops, desk tops or tablet-style machines--ideally on tablets (with optional keyboards for email, word-processing and the rest). More from Michigan: Mike Wendland's June 24 column in the Detroit Free Press explains why the service is limited to state residents who provide "Michigan driver's license or state ID numbers... "Because, said state librarian Christie Brandau, the state had to pay $3.6 million to get the online rights to 1,600 popular business and health magazines, 10,000 nonfiction e-books and a wide assortment of databases, almanacs, card catalogs and research material previously only available in person in libraries across the state. "'To get permission to put all that material online, we had to assure the publishers that it would only go to Michigan residents,' said Brandau. 'This is the first time that this type of authentication has been tried anywhere in the country, but it now truly opens our libraries up for our citizens because they can now access us anytime they want from their home or office.' "The e-book feature is one of the most unique offerings with the new design. After finding a book you want to read, you check it out, just like in a regular library. You need to establish an account, a process that takes only a few seconds. The e-book is read through a special netLibrary Online Reader application and displays it in your Web browser. You don't have to download anything. "Like a regular library, the checkout is only for a limited time, though you can extend it with an e-mail. But unlike a regular library, if you don't return it in time, there's no fine. Instead, the e-book is removed from your individual display and 'returned' to the e-library." Further comments: TeleRead would let you download an e-book for your own hard drive or equivalent if you wanted, and you could keep it as long as you wanted. Problem with many systems--including perhaps Michigan's, though I don't know--is that there are limits on how many people can check out the same book at once. TeleRead could compensate suppliers of content according to actual accesses to the material, not just by the number of checkouts or other less sophisticated ways. Meantime, as long as we're discussing state-level library resources, keep in mind the differences between Michigan and Mississippi. Time for a national system in the TeleRead vein to address the "savage inequalities" among states? TeleRead could use a mix of public and private funding to assure maximum freedom of expression for content providers, who, of course, would also be free to distribute books and other items directly or through bookstores. Finally, let's do some quick math. Michigan's population is around 10 million out of a U.S. population of some 285 million--in other words around 1/29 of the national total. Multiply Michigan's $3.6 million by 29 and you come up with around $104 million. Even if you assume that's an annual figure--the $3.6 million is most likely not for perpetual online rights--that is a rather minor expenditure in the grand scheme of things in a $10-trillion economy. Add in more money to allow for infrastructure and the amounts are still small compared to the benefits. Needless to say, it would be interesting to hear about the cost details not only from Michigan but also from Indiana, Maryland, Connecticut and other states putting resources online for residents. This could be one way to get TeleRead off to a start and slowly expand from there to guard against bureaucratic bloat.
Budgets and the T word "...purchases of books and all other materials have come to a complete halt. Readers will soon notice that there are no new materials coming in, reference resources are not being updated and children’s books are not being replaced." - Web notice from the Asheville-Buncombe Library System. The TeleRead take: As you can see from LibraryPlanet.com, these unfortunate cuts are part of a national trend. Usual reminder: TeleRead could make book distribution more efficient and strengthen local libraries by giving them a wider range of titles to work with. Right now, by the way, just a fraction of library spending goes for content. TeleRead would mean not only more resources for content, but also for guidance and mentoring of schoolchildren and other users.
Internet cafes for the poor--and an idea for libraries "Internet cafes in South Africa are providing many with their first taste of the web and e-mail. " - BBC, June 24. The TeleRead take: Thanks to wireless and reduced costs, even the poor will eventually be able to get online from home. Meanwhile Net cafes are one solution. Speaking of which: Do any libraries have relationships with cafes? Computers are not substitutes for library branches, obviously, but are any libraries working out arrangements with cafes and other businesses in low-income neighborhoods? Might be a dirt-cheap way to help reach people in underlibraried areas. Beyond offering the Web, the systems could come up with library-oriented home pages, and allow people to order books from the cafes, with delivery via bookmobile.
"Lawyers in search of more business" department Will more books and movies really be preserved if copyright terms keep getting extended? That's what an American Bar Association document says in proposing formal support of the notorious Copyright Term Extension Act. Problem is, copyright-related industries like movies and book publishing have a miserable record at preserving films and the like. Besides, the issue isn't just the survival of physical or electronic copies. It's also keeping them on the minds of readers and viewers--best done by releasing works to the public domain in time, so they can be easily accessed from library archives or others, or used to inspire more recent creative efforts. No need for immediate release, of course. Copyright terms that don't stretch on forever, as, alas, they keep doing thanks to our bought politicians, will still inspire creativity. But enough is enough. 70 years past the life of an individual author? Come on. I myself have perped six books. I love my nieces and their future descendants, but even if I happen to win the lottery and do a best-seller, I'm not that keen on turning generation after generation of my family into what Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg has described as a "copyright gentry." Alas, the copyright holders are so fanatical these days that Disney has set its lawyers loose on a public library because a logo supposedly looks too much like the one showing Mickey Mouse. In a historical context, the gesture might be a little more meaningful if Hollywood hadn't allowed oodles of valuable old films to fade away. Horrifying thought: The wrong decision in Eldred vs. Ashcroft could eventually reduce the income of copyright lawyers. Thanks to Jenny Levine for this one.
Sunday, June 23, 2002
Content and wireless access
Two other finds via Jonathan Schull's blog: --Making The Web Relevant for Underserved Americans: What They Look For, a .pdf file from the Children's Partnership. Needed, among other things? More local job-related information and sites for people with limited reading or English skills. Needless to say, a TeleRead-style approach could help since commercial objectives are not always the same as societal ones. --The Community Technology Center's interesting Wireless Project. The proposal calls for Wi-Fi for three housing projects. Great way to reduce wiring costs. Excellent idea. Bring the Net home.
Gouge-proofing our libraries "A rent hike has prompted officials to consider moving a library branch out of the Larose Civic Center. Acting Library Director Paul Chiquet said the rent for the library has increased from $650 per month to $1,600. 'That is a big jump,' Chiquet said, 'and the Larose branch is our smallest branch.'" - The Houma (LA) Courier, June 23. The TeleRead take: The story goes on to discuss the possiblity of gouges at other branch libraries in the area. Pathetic, no? If this is like many other rural systems, then every penny counts. Keep in mind that with brick-and-mortar libraries, only a fraction of money can go for books. TeleRead would not replace neighborhood libraries but would make them less vulnerable to such gouges since over the years a higher and higher percentage of the collections would be electronic--thus making it easier to relocate branches. What's more, with a national, integrated approach, librarians would enjoy more bargaining power with vendors of all kinds. Followup, June 27: You never know who's reading this TeleBlog. Straight from Larose, Louisiana, comes a reply to the original news story, which apparently left out some key facts. "The article you've excerpted contains factual errors--the rent increase cited by the Library Director is incorrect. The landlord, a nonprofit community center, has rented 3,000 square feet of space for the bargain-basement rate of $625/mo, which includes utilities, pest control, bathroom janitorial services, security, and maintenance. The community center/landlord requested that the library pay a monthly rent of $900, and begin paying its own utilities. "Keep in mind, this library system has approximately $6 million in the bank. We're talking about the first rent increase in fifteen years, which will not go to a private landlord, but to a volunteer-supported community center. "I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of bringing additional electronic resources to the public. Your blog is great, but quoting snippets of published articles without a full understanding of circumstances doesn't help anyone's cause. Keep on blogging, but you might want to investigate your stories a little closer. "Thanks for the opportunity for feedback "A devoted public library user." The writer, whom I won't name because of her job, later added a few more details via corresondence, including the following: "The library has been a tenant in the community center since its construction--it's an 'anchor' within the complex. The library system does indeed have a huge surplus--several years ago, the citizenry voted in a millage increase for the library, and services haven't expanded in proportion to the funds collected. Currently, the library board of control is not legally constituted due to actions by the Lafourche Parish Council, which 'fired' the previous board (the previous board had the audacity to fire a director guilty of fiscal mismanagement). Thus, the sitting board doesn't have the authority to negotiate with the community center, so the whole issue is up in the air until the board's legality can be resolved."
Saturday, June 22, 2002
The high-tech "know" of "who you know"--and the TeleRead take
Speaking of Jon Schull's blog--see the previous TeleBlog post--he has a link to an interesting paper called Inside the Digital Divide: Connecting Youth to Opportunities in the New Economy. The paper from Bob Pearlman, former president of the Autodesk Foundation, cites an A.T. Kearney study to back up a statement that a "student's social network can have a significant impact on his/her career choice. Students whose parents are both in high-tech careers are more likely to be interested in technology careers themselves. In addition, 83 percent of students rely on personal connections for career-related information and guidance." "Networking is white people's affirmative action," the paper quotes one graduate of a regional desegration program in Boston. "So how do you enhance social networks for all students, particularly those from disadvantaged communities?" the paper asks. "Obviously you are not going to change a student's parents or relatives or community, but you can give them schools, and programs, that link them to caring adults in the new economy." The TeleRead take: All true. In fact, a subhead in the Pearlman paper says: "Education + Skills (Hard + Soft) + Social Networks => Student Success." What can help, of course, is the easy availability of books and other items so children from low-income households--whatever the race--can keep up with other students. Under TeleRead, rich and poor alike could easily share items covered by a national digital library fund, with accesses tracked to assure proper compensation for publishers and writers. Remember, not every book is a textbook. Bright childen may do some of their best learning from items passed on to them by friends. TeleRead would make this happen far more easily than otherwise, so that even within networks of "disadvantaged" children, books could be shared. What's more, the children could all be reading the same e-book at once--on their own machines. Compare that to the artificial scarcities created by systems that limit the number of children checking out a book. Needless to say, by increasing the range of library items available, TeleRead would also make it far, far easier for "caring adults in the new economy" to mentor children both in person and from afar.
"I don't understand the vituperativeness of the NPR controversy" "NPR will learn, now what about the critics? I don't really understand the vituperativeness of the NPR controversy. Public Broadcasting (NPR, PBS) in America is a national treasure--quality, taste, and humor and an important working business model for an indispensable information service that is free, open and publicly funded. We would all be well-advised to help Public Broadcasting learn to feel, and be, at home in what will soon be their new medium." - Jon Schull in his Weblog today. The TeleRead take: A firm but gentle approach is called for. In my opinion NPR's folks aren't lying; different interpretations of link-related laws are possible. Still, the network will harm the evolution and spirit of the Web if it continues to have an ask-first policy on linking or keeps other onerous restrictions in place. Methinks NPR should adjust to the Web rather than the other way around. That way, even NPR, in fact especially NPR, will come out ahead. Enforcement of restrictive linking policies would reduce site traffic and interfere with NPR's mission of promoting a well-informed citizenry. Let's look beyond NPR, too. The TeleRead proposal, for example, suggests a mix of private and public funding for a national digital library system, and we advocates would rather that TeleRead not contain ask-first linking restrictions. Let's hope that the present NPR policy vanishes fast so we don't have the wrong precedent (please note that the federal government directly contributes only a tiny fraction of NPR's money). Meanwhile, Jenny "Shifted Librarian" Levine thoughtfully observes: "David makes an interesting suggestion that NPR start using blogs, which are built primarily on links, in order to better understand links (although I think individual blogs, rather than a top-level NPR blog, is a better idea). However, an organization that is this scared of incoming links is going to be even more terrified of outgoing links. Until they understand the fundamental principles of linking, NPR will never blog." Jenny makes some excellent points, but as I see it, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin could start in a low-key way and if need be do links only to safe destinations such as pages elsewhere within the NPR site and those of NPR's business partners. Them, as he grew more confident, he could progress beyond the obvious choices like Yahoo. Sooner or later he would understand how link-related inhibitions could harm the quality and especially the clarity of Web-based writing, not to mention the range and accessibility of the content itself. He's no dummy and, within the limitations of a busy schedule, could make a great blogger. Finally--a pointer to an earlier item so people can read a followup. Dan Gillmor has clarified an earlier comment and said he is not avoiding NPR interviewers. Rather, at least for the moment, they seem to have tired of either tech or him. Time for NPR to put him and Cory Doctorow on the air in a link-rated segment--along with Jeffrey Dvorkin and like-minded people? Of course ideally the NPR folks by then will better understand the benefits of linking and be much closer to his side and Cory's than they are now.
"Getting Touchy-Feely With Tablet PCs" "Yahoo News [is] currently running a story, Tablet PCs gaining momentum, describing a renewed enthusiam among computer manufacturers for Tablet PCs, in the face of skeptics who are, apparently, abounding. The skeptics insist, between bounds, that Joe Public just won't pay the extra $150 that touch screens add. Having spent much time lusting over Wacom's $3,500 Cintiq 18sx, a combined graphics tablet / 18" LCD screen and one of the few pieces of hardware that I would consider starting a family with, I beg to differ." - Post on Slashdot. The TeleRead take: Years ago in an earlier, much-revised incarnation of TeleRead published in Computerworld, I talked up multipurpose tablet-style machines and called them TeleReaders. It's great to see the marketplace on its own coming up with similar and even more advanced creations, though the TeleReader concept could still help by increasing the demand and driving down prices. Under TeleRead, libraries and schools could receive guidance and funding for buying machines to lend out to users, as, in fact, is already happening at some libraries--just as, years ago, I hoped it would. Having gained familiarity with borrowed machines, users could go on to buy their own. Like Microsoft e-book director Steve Stone, I believe that within the next five or ten years, the right hardware could go for well under $100 and maybe even $50 or less. This interest in hardware is part of TeleRead's integrated approach. What good is the best national digital library system in the world if only members of the tech elite have access to the right machines?
The glories of e-paper as an LCD replacement "Imagine your laptop PC and its keyboard changed into a sheaf of flexible e-paper that wirelessly receives full editions of periodicals (in Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Reader formats with screenmapped hyperlinking); that can display a touch-sensitive keyboard; that you simply roll up around its tiny battery/CPU/receiver cylinder and slip into your pocket or purse when done; and that lasts several weeks on a charge." - Vin Crosbie in E-Media Tidbits. The TeleRead take: Significantly, too, e-ink will be just as readable as ink on pulped wood. Policymakers more than ever should look ahead to the era of digital libraries--given the constant improvements in the related technologies. A recent GAO report, though dealing with preservation of government doucments rather than e-books per se, is certainly of interest.
Memo to Dan Gillmor and NPR Followup: See our June 29 update on NPRwatch.org. DAN GILLMOR: In your lively blog for the San Jose Mercury News, you wrote: "I have appeared on NPR quite a few times in the past. I doubt I'll be appearing there much in the future." You might rethink that. The people who set the NPR linking policy are not the grunts who produce and report the programs. If you're for unfettered linking, you might as well be for unfettered interviewing. JEFFREY DVORKIN, NPR OMBUDSMAN: While Dan G would be wrong to cut back on NPR interviews, his comments typify the reaction your network is stirring up among the clueful--vexation that will continue as long as you're not open to linking by "left-handed socialist diabetics." And notice? Dan uses a blog to help stay in touch with the needs and interests of his readers. Not every NPR listener is on the Internet, and only a fraction keep blogs or otherwise publish on the Web, but I suspect that millions of NPR listeners keep up with small Web sites and heartily dislike your network's attempts to restrict linking, regardless of the ideologies involved. Why not do a Gillmor and use a blog to keep up with the pulse of the Internet so you and NPR can avoid similar mistakes in the future? Here's a way to add some Net context to your impressive experience in other areas. I'm just across the Potomac River from you and would be delighted to drop by and offer some free advice on a Dvorkin-NPR blog, though your in-house Web folks could probably accommodate you just as well or better. Blogger and Radio are merely two of the blog products you might consider. Via your blog, you could effortlessly link not just to NPR programs referenced there but also to listeners' contributions to your discussion boards. Followup: Dan Gillmor clarified his statement that "I have appeared on NPR quite a few times in the past. I doubt I'll be appearing there much in the future." Looks as if NPR, not Gillmor, is why you shouldn't expect him on there soon. He wrote me on June 22 that "They've tired of technology [or him], and haven't had me on in months--and I don't expect any change." Hmm. Exactly the problem, assuming that tech boredom is the reason. If I were NPR, I'd have Gillmor on pronto to explain why no-fuss links matter. Linking and other Net-related issues aren't going away. The Internet is important just like the foreign news so dear to NPR, and at times the two categories may even converge. I'm surprised and disappointed that NPR would stop using a first-rate, well-tested expert like Gillmor.
"It's not a book culture. It's a movie culture. It's a TV culture..." "I tell people all the time I'm a famous writer in a country where people don't read. It's not a book culture. It's a movie culture. It's a TV culture. It's a sports culture." - Best-selling writer John Grisham in an interview with Katie Couric, as quoted by AP. The TeleRead take: Exactly. A well-stocked national digital library system would hardly turn every American into a book-crazed soul, but it would help. Ditto in other countries. Point is, books work out best when offered in context, and ideally with the recommendation of a friend. Via TeleRead, people could easily link to books from their Web sites or e-mail messages--or maybe eventually the two-way videos they exchanged. Keep in mind, too, that with books in digital format, it would be a snap to create audio books via speech synthesis. So people could jog or garden while they listened on MP3 players. As an editor quoted in the AP story points out, people have less and less time for reading, and via audio books and otherwise, TeleRead could help change this.
Friday, June 21, 2002
Nice try, NPR--but please change the policy ASAP
In an update of a legal page, National Public Radio today said its controversial ask-first linking policy "was originally intended to maintain NPR’s commitment to independent, noncommercial journalism. We have encountered instances where companies and individuals constructed entire commercial Web 'radio' sites based on links to NPR and similar audio. We have also encountered Web sites of issue advocacy groups that have positioned the audio link to an NPR story such that one cannot tell that NPR is not supporting their cause. This is not acceptable to NPR as an organization dedicated to the highest journalistic ethics, both in fact and appearance." The TeleRead take: The statement goes on to acknowledge that the "majority of the linking on the Web is not infringement." Exactly! Why should the whole Net suffer for the transgressions of a few? Via technology, it would be possible either to lock out abusers or at least track them and then obtain the information for lawyers. I would suggest that NPR be careful, however. Just because an advocacy site says a story comes from NPR doesn't mean the site is saying NPR supports the cause. Hopefully a revised policy can acknowledge that truth. There are also issues as to how much of a site should rely on links to NPR. What if the site is devoted to critiques of NPR stories? Meanwhile, at least until the policy revision, the NPR legal page still contains the unfortunate words: "Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. If you would like to link to NPR from your Web site, please fill out the link permission request form." Sorry, no can do. Followup: Nor, obviously, can EFF's Cory Doctorow. Clarification: Actually I would agree with Cory that links can't infringe; URLs are public facts pointing to documents' locations. Besides, as every true expert from Tim Berners-Lee on would say, the Web was designed for unrestricted links. My thinking, however, as a nonattorney, is that through framing or otherwise, there could still be attempts to mislead surfers in one way or another, perhaps raising trademark issues, for example. But, in my opinion, that is a different question from linking as such. What's more, as noted, such cases would be the exception and are no reason for the average Webmaster or blogger to suffer.
"Reverse Psychology at NPR" "'...Seriously, what's wrong with their brains? Everyone knows that the key to getting site hits is links, the more the merrier. Ask any blogger The ironic thing is that NPR's hits have surged because bloggers are now punishing it by flagrantly violating its policy and linking. Could this have been NPR's plan all along? Maybe I should post my own 'no linkage without permission' notice so I can be punished too." - Madeleine Begun Kane as quoted by Jenny "Shifted Librarian" Levine. The TeleRead take--further thoughts: Maybe Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR's ombudsman, should try blogging just for a month to see what it's like to handle links. Best way yet to appreciate the many-to-many model. Along the way, a bloggish approach just might increase the readership of his page. He could still write long, reflective items but keep them more timely--and with more specifics available to the reader, given the powers of linking. No need to imitate Jim Romenesko's MediaNews, but some lessons can be found there.
NPR ombudman: Link policy will be "more reflective" of net.realities Just received from NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin: "NPR has received emails from many interested observers commenting on its linking policy. For the most part the emails have been useful and enlightening. Occasionally polite. "NPR will be reviewing its policy about linking. NPR understands that with the rapid changes in information technology and the culture of the Web, its policy should be more reflective of the Internet realities to permit a freer flow of information." One way for the policy to be more reflective, of course, is for NPR not to worry about the "integrity" of its pages being compromised by those pesky left-handed diabetic socialists. If NPR can avoid imposing tricky conditions on linking, that will go a long way toward ending the problem. It is acceptable to forbid links that make people think that the diabetic socialists are part of NPR, but at least don't get into the business of automaticallly excluding certain controversial groups. Meanwhile thanks to NPR for the progress so far. May more be ahead. For more on this issue, check out some thoughts from Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Business and government vs. the Net Vint Cerf and other net.luminaries are correctly worried about pushy and greedy corporations bogging down the evolution of the Net--by, for example, setting up fee structures that discourage the growth of two-way broadband. They also see government as a risk. The TeleRead take: What a timely article. NPR, not governmental but close to it, should pay close attention as it rethinks its link policy. A strong Net without micromanagement from The Powers that Be would mean more democracy, better government and higher corporate profits. NPR's present linking policy is a threat to democratic discussion. And innovative entertainment companies could be hurt by Net-related consumer gouges from cable and phone companies--shrinking the market for new forms of creativity. Even post-terrorism recovery could suffer in the future, given the growing importance of telecommuting and remote work and the increasing usefulness of broadband for applications such as teleconferencing.
Why I don't own a Gemstar-style e-book reader VHS has been around for two decades. And yet Circut City is dropping it for DVD. The TeleRead take: This, of course, is why I'll never buy an e-book reader in the Gemstar vein. And why libraries, too, should try to avoid them nowadays. Of course, a TeleRead-type digital library system could address format issues far more successfully than individual library systems could on their own.
Thursday, June 20, 2002
Web radio decision: Far from perfect for small-fry
"Federal copyright regulators on Thursday set new royalty rates for online radio companies, halving previously proposed fees that had drawn bitter criticism from Net companies. Under the new rates, Web companies would pay 0.07 cent, or about a fourteenth of a cent, every time they played a song online for a single listener. Radio stations would pay the same amount when they put their music programming online." - Cnet, June 20. The TeleRead take: A disappointment--even with lower fees than some had expected. Many small Web-broadcasters could still go out of business. Oh, well, Jim Billington is hardly the biggest friend of the Net or at least of e-books. The Library of Congress Web site is slick but hardly a substitute for a well-stocked national digital library system. Followup: More details from New York Times.
NPR Update: Some progress Jeffrey Dvorkin, National Public Radio ombudsman, tells me that the network most likely will loosen the Web-link rules requiring permission. A final decision, following a meeting earlier today, could come in days or weeks. He asks that protest letters stop as he's quite swamped. Meanwhile the issue of who can link, without a hassle, is apparently still alive, even now. Earlier, in an interview with Wired News, the ombudsman registered concern about links from even some noncommercial sites: "It depends on your homepage--what if you're an advocate for left-handed socialist diabetics? We wouldn't want to give support to advocacy groups." Whoa! Maybe NPR should reconsider. Fascinatingly, Mr. Dvorkin is on the cusp of going from the hypothetical to the real. My wife isn't left-handed or socialist but is liberal and diabetic. Besides, among groups, doesn't NPR want to contribute to informed debate? Being linked to isn't the same as NPR's endorsing any viewpoint. Too, even commercial sites should be able to link freely to NPR. If you were shopping for a lawyer or automobile and a site said an NPR story was useful in evaluating a service or product, wouldn't you want to see the story itself--not just a biased paraphrase? Easy linking would help you, not hurt you, as a consumer. Simply put, unless some site is passing itself off as part of NPR or is guilty of something else equally outrageous, the network should not police links. For more details on the controversy, see the latest Wired News article--Want to Read This? Ask First, from Jon Rochmis. The TeleRead take: Just another reminder: Easy linking without bureaucracy involved is one of the core concepts of TeleRead. Any national digital library worth its salt should have stable links without interference from The Link Police. Furthermore, the library should enjoy long-range funding from public sources and also support from private ones. And independent distribution systems for books should be available in meatspace and on the Net. TeleRead assumes that government censorship will occur--hence this interest in bypass mechanisms for Big Brotherish occasions. While NPR is not a government agency, it certainly functions in many ways as a quasi-governmental one, and the present link policy ill-serves the cause of public enlightenment.
NPR rethinking the deep link rule -- Speak up if need be A Wired News story by Farhad Manjoo chronicles the growing resentment against National Public Radio's linking policy, which requires permission for deep links. NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin has just told me that the legal, news and Web sides will reconsider the policy this afternoon--he himself will participate. I'll think good thoughts. During our conversation, he asked some open-minded questions about the nature of deep linking, and I promised to use this blog to point him to background on the topic, including a Christian Science Monitor article on a Scottish linking feud between two newspapers. Meanwhile people might want to hold off on the protest until they learn how the public radio decision goes. You can use NPR's home page to stay updated. If NPR does not reverse the policy, you may want to contact the corporate sponsors and philanthropies that fund NPR. Would this crimp NPR's freedom of expression? Hardly. In fact, that's the problem--NPR is crimping ours. Look, this is supposed to be public radio. And it's long been accepted that links do not imply endorsement, just so they're not misleading. That's the standard etiquette on the Web. Furthermore, the permission-first requirement will backfire against NPR if this continues. What if like-minded corporate Webmasters start actually taking such nonsense seriously and lawyers sue NPR for letting its Web site do deep links? So much for the freedom of linking by NPR's online journalists. If nothing else, actual enforcement of the permission-first requirement would reduce traffic to NPR's own site--assuming, of course, that Netfolks by the thousands didn't defy the lawyers for the sheer joy of it. Thought: Nina Totenberg should cover this controversy if it continues and maybe even if it stops. Just what will NRP's legal maven on the news side have to say? As best I can determine, the NPR does not publish her email address, but perhaps you can politely write her care of All Things Considered at atc@npr.org. If I were Ms. Totenberg, this would be one of the times I spoke up, if need be off the air. Freedom to link is a core journalistic issue. She herself was a 1992 recipient of the James Madison award from the ALA--given to "those who have championed, protected and promoted public access to government information and the public's right to know." You can also write Jeffrey Dvorkin himself if the decision does not go the right way. No flaming, please. Again, at this point, it would seem he is open minded. Note: I will be away from my office and will not be able to make updates immediately.
The Deep Throat e-book--and the copy-protection issue Are you a librarian? Wanna circulate John Dean's new e-book from Salon? Good luck. Jenny "Shifted Librarian" Levine writes insightfully of copy-protection issues and other potential problems associated with Unmasking Deep Throat. Among other things, she mentions the $5,000 price of Adobe's serverware, which offers protection. One of her readers suggests a sneaker.net approach and signing the Dean e-book in and out. But as we see it, that is hardly a solution when libraries offer material remotely. What's more, Jenny is also rightly concerned that Rocketbooks and Franklin eBookmans can't read .pdf files like the one used for the newest Deep Throat speculation. The TeleRead take: Obvious. Copy-protection, rights-management issues and format ones are among the basics that a TeleRead-style library system could address to ease the burden on local libraries.
"The Wayback Machine, Friend or Foe?" "As a Webmaster of numerous sites, I'm curious how others feel about the Wayback Machine. What particularly interests me is the fact that the Machine is a relatively new animal, yet it contains snapshots from my sites dating back to 1998. I can't help but wonder: where did they get such old copies of my websites, and who gave them permission to make those copies?" - A message to Slashdot. The TeleRead take: As defenders of the Wayback Machine have pointed out, it's easy to keep your site out of the Machine--by tweaking a standard robots.txt file. TeleRead could use similar techniques.
"Librarians want more pay, and they're learning to ask for it" - Newspaper headline  "We must overcome the stereotype of the librarian as the selfless, dedicated and devoted worker, who is in the profession to do good and will accept any pittance of pay." - Maurice Freedman, new president of the American Library Association, as quoted by an Associated Press account in the Savannah Morning News.The TeleRead take: A TeleRead approach could help the cause. With more material online, public librarians could spend more time acting as high-level guides, Web editors and the like--and less time on menial tasks such as checking paper books in and out. Librarians would be more productive. And such arguments could be used to lobby for more pay. With TeleRead, the public could better understand the issue of financial comparability with information-related jobs in the private sector.
"Blogspace vs. NPR" "Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. If you would like to link to NPR from your Web site, please fill out the link permission request form." - NPR's legalese. The TeleRead take: A TeleRead-style national digital library system wouldn't end stupidities like NPR's. But at least TeleRead would help. After all, it could include a rich assortment of books, articles and other items to which bloggers and others could directly link. Meanwhile, for more details on NPR's cluelessness, see Blogspace vs. NPR on the Slashdot site.
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Larry Leissig on copy-protecting Aristotle
"I have bought a number of eBooks, including Aristotle’s Politics. Aristotle’s Politics, of course, was never copyrighted, but the Adobe eBook reader forbids me from printing any pages of the book because the permissions have been set to disable any printing. If I try to interfere with those permissions .. if I write a bit of code to disable the limitations that forbid me from printing Aristotle’s Politics from my Adobe eBook .. that would be circumventing an access technology, which under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a crime." - Creative Commons founder Lawrence Leissig, as quoted in the Reason (found via Pocket PC eBooks Watch).
Bill Gates, Hilary Rosen, Sen. Hollings, Larry Leissig, others profiled in tech series "The world's richest man declined to comment or provide a favored policy prescription for this story. But Microsoft has one of the most prodigious lobbying operations in Washington, and it has recently become a heavy campaign contributor. Since January 2001, the company has contributed $1.46 million to the major political parties, with $1.2 million of that going to the Republican side, according to campaign finance records." - June 19 Washington Post, on Bill Gates. And you can bet that not all of that money is going to influence anti-trust policy, that some of it is going toward Microsoft-friendly copyright law. Elsewhere the same series on tech-related "thinkers" serves up profiles of Hilary Rosen ("The Record Labels' Pirate Slayer"), Ernest Hollings, the 80-year-old nontechie known as the Senator from Hollywood, FCC Chair Michael Powell, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, novelist-cyberjournalist Bruce Sterling, law professor Larry Leissig, who is behind the Creative Commons project, and lawyer and civil liberties advocate Zoe Baird, among others. I like the quotes from Baird, who, according to the Post, "would direct a large share of a $5 billion foreign aid account to give lesser-developed countries the tools and training they need to join the digital age. For example, she said, voice communication over the Internet could provide early warning of outbreaks of disease in remote and rural areas." True, true, true. In the foreign-aid area, check out the Electronic Peace Corps proposal, which has been around since the mid-80s. Also see How Technology Could Help Chiapas--and Mexico City.
Tuesday, June 18, 2002
Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-enabled handhelds
Toshiba Chases HP iPaq Lead - The Register, June 18. The TeleRead take: Toshiba's prices will be under $500 now--and most likely under $100 for the equivalent models five years from now. Oh, nostalgia. I remember when people were saying TeleRead was impossible because dial-up modems would never go above 9,600 bits per second. And now we're thinking wireless! The introduction of Wi-Fi models is especially significant, given the possibility of 20-mile coverage.
Literacy crisis in South Florida "More than 142,000 South Florida public school students share a sad secret. They can barely read. They make up more than 28 percent of third- through 10th-graders in Broward and nearly 43 percent in Miami-Dade County. These nonreaders are wealthy and middle class and poor. They are white and Hispanic and black." - Braedenton Herald, June 18. The TeleRead take: The best-stocked library in the world can't replace a good teacher. But TeleRead could help by vastly expanding the range of books that matched children's exact interests and could be read at home. One big problem is that female teachers often try to impose their literary choices on boys, one reason why girls tend to do better. That doesn't mean that schools should dumb down reading choices for boys. Rather all students should be able to find good books that they will like. Unconvinced that children could respond well to e-books if good teaching methods were used? Then check out Update 19 on the use of e-books at a budget-strapped school in Chicago. The teachers have accomplished plenty. And with all the choices available through TeleRead, they could help the students still more.
Let parents, not the state, control children's reading Web Porn Ruling Filters Down: Role of Censor Shifted From Libraries to Parents. - Washington Post, June 18. The TeleRead take: The state shouldn't be in the censorship business. Instead TeleRead would provide for parents either not to filter their children's reading or to use filters that the families themselves chose. Filters could come from companies, religious groups or other organizations.
Monday, June 17, 2002
Copyright holders in Wonderland
Good interview with Brewser Kahle in the Seattle Times today--spotted via Library Stuff. Among other things, the founder of the Internet Archive calls attention to the absurdities of an actual license--for an e-book of Alice in Wonderland--that in effect says parents can't read the book aloud to their children. See why we've been so gung ho on public domain books--and against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act? What's truly infuriating in the above example, by the way, is that the Lewis Carroll classic is unquestionably in the public domain as raw ASCII. Although the publisher withdraw the limitation in the wake of publicity, this is a great example of the mindset of some people in the book business, especially in regard to electronic books. Yes, we need copyright for contemporary books. But a little balance, please.
Librarians vs. publishers: The latest round "Libraries are one of the few places where there is real demand for electronic books, which so far have been a dud with consumers." - June 17 New York Times article on the clash between publishers and librarians (via The Shifted Librarian). The TeleRead take: For years, TeleRead has warned of the need to reconcile the worldviews of the publishers and librarians. We've advocated well-stocked national library systems, in the States and elsewhere, that would allow for the easy sharing of books and fair compensation for writers and publishers. "Lending over their Web sites--I think that is a problem," the Times article quotes Laurence Kirshbaum, chairman of the books division of AOL Time Warner, about libraries. "There is an inherent danger that would worry me--you are opening yourself up to being copied wildly without any control...." Time for Mr. Kirshbaum perhaps to check out TeleRead? The more widely books and other items were shared, the more revenue publishers would enjoy under this approach. With a decent-sized national digital library fund, incentives for piracy of books would be reduced. No cure-all here. But much improvement. And actually less risk than Draconian copyright laws mixed with insufferable copy-protection mechanisms. Keep in mind that millions of American children are growing up more comfortable with screens than with paper. Does Mr. Kirshbaum really want to imperil this future market? What's more, as noted below, TeleRead would even allow for megapublishers to gamble big money on best-sellers by paying fees up front and along the way. Point is, we badly need to reconcile the librarians' viewpoint with the publishers' more business-oriented approach. Both sides will need to compromise. If nothing else, maybe publishers should ponder the Times' observation that e-books have fared better at libraries than elsewhere. Mightn't the marketplace be telling publishers something: the need for an updated version of the library model and less of a fixation on the e-bookstore one?
"Copyright rows ring down the centuries" "When they started producing The Times newspaper by steam it was said that printers were going to go bust and die of starvation. New technologies do mean you can make copies more easily, but it's never quite as bad as the doomsters say." - Dr. Catherine Seville, an expert on copyright history from the University of Cambridge, as the BBC quoted her today. The TeleRead take: From Dickens to Sir Arthur Conan, authors fumed against American copyright laws--especially best-selling writers in Great Britain. Today, however, as a BBC's paraphrase of Dr. Seville points out, something has changed: "who reaps the benefits of better protection for an artist's works and who is pushing for changes. "This time it is not just the artists struggling for due credit. Changes to copyright laws or the use of technology to stop copying are not going to benefit musicians or struggling movie makers. Instead it's the big guns--the music publishers and record companies--who most fear the menace of the CD burner, says Dr. Seville. And it is they that stand to reap the biggest rewards from new copyright legislation." Such rewards may actually be short-term, however, as we TeleRead advocates see it. Guess which big American conglomerate made much of its fortune off public-domain classics and folklore? None other than Walt Disney--the biggest copyright hawk of them all. Did Walt really dream up all the characters and plots of "Snow White," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," "Pinochio" and the rest? Sooner or later, literature and folklore will be less vibrant if the big boys can put price tags on everything--one reason why the Creative Commons project is potentially so valuable, and why the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is such a menace to future Disneys and even the conglomerate itself. What's more, serious usability issues arise for buyers of large publishers' books, not just small publishers', when copy protection technology is lame-brained. Notice? The eWeek writer quoted below said he was refusing to buy certain e-books if he anticipated that he would want to share those works with friends. Oh, and there is also the pesky little issue of obsolete formats. Even with Open eBook, those questions remain. To a frightening extent, the big publishers have entrusted their fates to software companies, and, along with the rest of the businesss, the giants of the trade will suffer in the end if they are not as vigilant on the usability front as on the protection one. No jihads at this end against large publishers, though, despite our frustration. Yes, TeleRead would help small publishers and individual writers--by making it easier for their works to find markets and for books to be spread around with fair compensation for writers and publishers. But in special respects TeleRead would also offer benefit large houses that adjusted. They would be able to gamble money up front and along the way to bypass caps on the amount of royalties paid out on particular books. Big-time publishing, at the level of individual titles, is a loss-leader industry built on carefully considered gambles. Under TeleRead, the excitement could remain without a national digital library fund going bankrupt. Just as business insures itself against disasters, so could a TeleRead approach use the advance payments to "protect" against huge best-sellers. Perhaps it's time for Bill Gates' friend Warren E. Buffett to offer his risk-assessment talents. Meanwhile, may every writer reading these words prove to be a major "risk."
Wise words from eWeek writer, standard line from Microsoft exec "My biggest beefs have been copy protection restrictions and cost. Digital management rights code in Microsoft and Adobe eBook reader software makes eBooks much less flexible and less attractive than paper copies. Rights long established for books--that you can loan them, sell them, give them away or whatever else you want--all are taken away with digitally protected eBook content (true for most new eBooks)." - Timothy Dyck, writing in the June 14 eWeek. The TeleRead take: The comments of Cliff Guren, Microsoft's group product manager for eReading, are just as interesting. Dyck quotes him: "A lot of these issues are legal issues and I'm not a lawyer. This is being debated widely in Congress right now about digital rights. In terms of your technical question, in our format it is not possible to share an eBook, or loan it to someone else in the manner you are talking about. "One thought I would leave you with is that there is a cultural or societal issue that we are all working through. There are lots of things we used to do with print books; some of those we will be able to do with eBooks and some we won't. On the other hand, there are things you can do with eBooks you can't do with print books. There are tradeoffs with any new technology." Um, no hard feelings against Cliff Gruen, but aren't more than a few of these tradeoffs (existing and threatened) human-made? Is Jack Valenti or Sen. Hollings really a force of nature? The Hollywood-Washington connection is wreaking havoc not just on fair use but on the evolution of technology, and while films and music are the real reason for this unfortunate attention from Valenti and friends, e-books are suffering more than their share of collateral damage. If Microsoft truly cares about the medium, then it will take a constructive and proactive stance and distance itself from the well-named "American Techniban." Regardless of our comments against corpocrats and politicians in the abstract, however, it is important to know that at least Microsoft has been more open to the possibilties of technology than, say, James Billington. Steve Stone, Microsoft e-book director, has even said that TeleRead would be technically possible. As we see it, TeleRead is a good example of new business models that technology could enable. Indeed, Gruen himself has noted the flexibilities that technology could bring. Exactly! A major problem in DC is a stubborn tendency to try to dictate to future generations in the most obnoxious of ways. Under the influence of copyright interests, Washington is attempting to lock up intellectual-property laws at a time when the technology is still rapidly evolving. Hollywood's eternal fixation on copyright extention is a perfect example of the mindset here. What's more, do we really think that the same copy-protection techniques in use now will be in use many decades from now? Let's hope that when copyrights finally do expire, the more powerful computers of the future will make cracking easy in cases where authorized decoding may no longer be so available. A TeleRead-style approach could at least build reliable and permanent decoding into the general scheme of things. Furthermore, far more than the present copyright laws, TeleRead would recognize human nature--the tendency to share, for example. I can well understand why Dyck wrote: "I love passing on a book I enjoyed to friends, and can't have that enjoyment with a rights-restricted eBook. As a result, I don't buy eBook versions of books I anticipate I will really like because I want to be able to share the joy of experiencing them with others." His feelings reflect laudable constants that will never change no matter what technology is in use. Under TeleRead, you could share an included library book with a friend and still stay legal. Accesses would still be reported for the purposes of compensation from a national digital library fund. Simply put, just by being more in line with the way humans actually use books and other content, TeleRead would be better able to evolve than a Valentian approach. An aside, as long as we're discussing Microsoft: Bill Gates himself has visited the TeleRead site. Perhaps eventually he can be an e-Carnegie for real and pay to put online for U.S. readers The Great Gatsby, which he likes well enough to have bought rare copies for the library of his $50-million-plus mansion. It would be a symbolic first step toward financing a well-stocked national digital library--while at the same time giving it enough independence so that the library was not a mere marketing vehicle. May we offer similar advice for Larry Ellison, Steve Case and the others who multiplied their wealth during the dotcom era and say they intend to give back to society? Within the area of libraries, you'll be mere marketers, not philanthropists, if you can't fund an independent national digital library, as opposed to just starting captive projects.
"My name's too rude for MS Passport" From a letter to the Register--published June 17: "Some of us are in the unfortunate position of having the surname 'Woodcock'. This may (and I would expect it to) raise a giggle. In fact, I thought there was no original way left for me to feel really narked off with my forebear that decided 'Hey, Woodcock is a really good name'. He might have been a purveyor of prosthetic genitals, or he might have been enjoying some particularly impressive recreational pharmaceuticals. Still, I've come to deal with it and most people just find it slightly amusing, I have not yet met somebody who thought I was inherently offensive. "That is, until the fateful day recently when trying to sign up for Passport. When I try I get a little message that says 'Your lastname contains a word that has been reserved or is prohibited for .NET Passport registration. Please type in a different lastname'. If only the registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages had said something similar 25 years ago..." The TeleRead take: See the previous item. This will be the world ahead if corpocrats and pliant bureaucrats keep setting the tone for the Net. Increasingly, you will be denied access to content and services online if you fail to sign up for Passport or equivalents. A library-oriented, TeleRead-style approach would not be free of all bureaucracy, but at least would offer more accountablity than, say, Microsoft does. Most important, it would not try to bend human nature to fit the needs of control-minded corporations.
Copyright defendant: "Never questioned the importance of protecting copyright" Vladimir Katalov, president of a Russian software company and a defendant in a famous eBook-related copyright case in the States, was interviewed recently by PDFzone.com. Some of his remarks: "ElcomSoft never questioned the importance of protecting copyright, whether it protects software, music or books. Nor do we subscribe under 'everything in the Internet should be free' point of view. However, in the pre-Internet, 'hard copy' world, copyright laws generally provide for a balance between rights of authors and public's rights for fair use. Similarly, there must be a balance between, say, 'pay-per-view' or 'pay-per-download' content. At present, however, it seems that corporations recognize the Internet only as an instrument for e-commerce. Such an approach will definitely fail, now or later." The TeleRead take: Do libraries really want to depend too heavily on Mercedes-priced serverware from Adobe? Remember which company turned to legal means to protect its software when better programming techniques in the first place would have been a superior answer? Adobe has made its share of contributions, and in fact, here at TeleRead, we use GoLive!, but do libraries really want to entrust their fates online to Adobe? How long until a librarian is a copyright defendant in a criminal or civil case sparked by Adobe or a competitor? Adobe is still going after ElcomSoft even if, under pressure, it no longer advocates the prosecution of programmer Dmitry Sklyarov. It could yet turn around make life hell for a library or librarian. While libraries have institutional controls and are more cautious creatures than software companies, don't ever underestimate the audacity and influence of the copyright lobby and its friends in Washington. The bottom line is that prosecutors will enforce the laws that well-bought politicians pass in their never-ending war against the public domain and fair use. Like Katalov, we're not anti-copyright. In fact, by making it easier for readers to pass books on to each other--and at the same time providing for fair compensation for writers and other content-providers--TeleRead would actually update copyright law for the the times. The copyright interests need to know that voters aren't going to put up forever with politicians who care more about Hollywood donations than the fair-use doctrine. PDFzone.com interview found via eBook Weekly.
Bewster Kahle on preserving Web pages "Once archived, we never change a page. The Web wasn't constructed to be archived. It's so interconnected. A book exists outside of time. Archiving Web sites is like putting together a bomb after it has exploded. We do as good a job as we know how. If anyone knows how to improve it, please let us know or us change it. We can't force people to archive in a certain format. The Wayback Machine is the best way we know to look at the results." - Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, interviewed for RLG DigiNews, June 15, 2002. The TeleRead take: These of course are among the very issues that a TeleRead-style library could help address. TeleRead would not replace the World Wide Web. But within a library area of the Web, it would provide a way to help deal with the format question--and keep links stable, so that nonfiction works could reliably references each other, thereby increasing the power of the electronic medium.
Net radio: Still perils ahead "On June 20th, the eyes of Internet broadcasters and music industry insiders will focus on James H. Billington as he decides what royalties Internet radio stations will pay to record labels." - Christian Science Monitor, June 17. The TeleRead take: This is still a time for lawyers for Net radio stations to avoid smugness. Billington isn't exactly the biggest friend of technology.
Sunday, June 16, 2002
RSS .92 now available for this TeleBlog
This TeleBlog now has an RSS .92 feed via VoidStar for folks who've had trouble reading the BloggerPro version of .91. The feed-related links will be permanently in the left column of this page near the top. In case the above is a mystery, the change was done with news aggregators in mind. Software of this type can pelt your brain with many more scraps of relevant information in a given time than can old-fashioned hops from Web site to site. These programs are a turbocharged form of, say, MyYahoo. You can pick out customized news with far more precision and even include, yes, blogs. My own aggregator, NewzCrawler, contains feeds I've chosen ranging from SlashCode's to the BBC's--in addition to the standard Liblogs, aka library blogs. Alas, some aggregator-users with Radio and AmphetaDesk had problems reading the BloggerPro flavor of RSS. For what it's worth, different aggregators will be best for different needs. If you're on a tight budget, AmphetaDesk is the one to try. Unlike NewzCrawler, $25 after the 14-day trial period, it's free. Radio, $40 after a month's trial, has advantages of its own--you can create a fancy blog and generate your own RSS, not just read other people's feeds with it. NewzCrawler has creation features, but they aren't in Radio's league.
TeleRead and the 109-year old "I love to read any kind of book. It keeps my mind going. I don't remember how long I've been reading them, but they are getting racier." - Lena Dionne of Kenneth City, Florida, who turned 109 last week, as quoted in the St. Petersburg Times, June 16. The TeleRead take: No, TeleRead isn't around for Mrs. Dionne yet--but it could be for future 109-year-olds. And for other elderly people, too. Point is, the baby boomers are getting older, and we need to prepare for the time when they won't be able to drive. Imagine the wider choices they would enjoy with thousands of free books online--far more than bookmobiles could bring them. What's more, with e-books, they could more easily vary the type size and style for reading. Does this mean that we should do away with bookmobiles next week? Of course not. But the needs and preferences of elderly library users will slowly change. Milions of younger boomers will have spent most of their working lives in front of screens and keyboards. Beyond that, keep in mind that e-ink is on the way for those who insist on something close to a traditional book.
Saturday, June 15, 2002
Anti-corruption potential, too
The TeleRead concept isn't just for the States. Not long ago we even heard from a French high school student whose teacher had been discussing the idea. And in non-Western countries with severe book shortages, an adapted TeleRead approach would be even more useful. Over in Asia, TeleRead has caught the attention of Vivek Bhagwatkar in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley. Like me, he believes that computers for reading and other purposes could be a godsend in rural areas such as the one where he grew up. Whether in the States or developing countries, TeleRead wouldn't just promote digital libraries and machines fit for reading. The same low-cost hardware could be used for paperwork reduction in business and government, as well as general Web browsing. Greater economic efficiencies would help justify the expenses of the library. Sounds like science fiction for developing countries or at least the rural areas. But hardware costs are dropping. Furthermore, the machines could be used at first at the community level. And now comes some evidence of another potential benefit of computerization in developing countries--more honest government. "Information technology has transformed a village near India's high-tech capital of Bangalore, drastically reducing corruption and red-tape," says Habib Beary, writing for the BBC. "The village of Bellandur, 18 kilometres from the city, is credited with being the first 'gram panchayat', or village-level administration, in the country to introduce e-governance. "The gram panchayat covers as many as 10,000 people, and is spread over five villages. "And bribery, which is common practice in official corridors across the country, has been significantly cut. "'There is very little scope for that here,' said K Jagannath, the elected president of the village, who initiated the IT experiment in 1998. "'Computerisation has helped to provide an efficient administration. It has greatly reduced corruption and bureaucratic delays,' he said." Under the TeleRead plan, the U.S. government could promote local libraries abroad--especially in developing countries--that housed a rich assortment of local content, as opposed to simply being virtual colonies of Disney and AOL Time Warner. American culture has its virtues. But Washington should also help other countries digitally preserve their own art, literature and music and even archive it elsewhere, so that, for example, Taliban-style fanatics could never wipe out the folk music of Afghanistan. One way to help bring TeleReads to developing countries might be through an Electronic Peace Corps. * * * Meanwhile we wish Vivek and his family the best at a trying time. Here in Alexandria, VA, across the Potomac from Washington and close to the Pentagon, I myself live just a few miles away from potential targets for nukes. All the more reason for my interest in stability in the Third World and elsewhere--something at least slightly more likely to be realized if technology can help spread prosperity, fight resource-sapping corruption and elevate national pride in peaceful ways.
TeleRead: Help but not a panacea for writers and publishers TeleRead would offer a new revenue stream for publishers and writers, but it wouldn't be a panacea. There'll always be more books than the market can digest. Revealing statistics come from M.J. Rose, the novelist and Wired News columnist--writing in this case in the May-June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. "The strategy at the big New York houses is to get a lot of books out there and see which ones hit," she says. "As a result, over 3,500 novels are published each year (not counting paperback or genre fiction) in the U.S., while at best even the most avid reader buys fewer than 50 of them in a 12-month period." Not surprisingly, Ms. Rose writes approvingly of houses that are publishing fewer books but offering better marketing support for the writers who do make it into print.
Friday, June 14, 2002
Record execs seek new gouges
Now some record execs want to be able to charge royalties on the sales of used CDs, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. No official position yet from RIAA, but don't be surprised if that's one of the next goals of Executive Director Hilary Rosen and her battalions of massive campaign contributors.
"History in a Dumpster" "A divided Hartford Public Library board ordered head librarian Louise Blalock to stop throwing away materials from The Hartford Times archives Thursday while she reviews the remaining inventory and determines what should be saved." - Hartford Courant, June 14, via Jim Romenesko's MediaNews. The TeleRead take: We'll side with understandably outraged newspaper people. According to the Courant, the librarians even discarded "negatives of photographs of John F. Kennedy making a campaign stop in Hartford in 1960 and President Lyndon Johnson visiting Hartford in 1964." The Courant found the negatives in a "public works dumpster." The librarians said that, oh, they were tossing only items without local interest. Yeah, sure. Under TeleRead, digital archives would store photos and other items without the space constraints of paper archives. Keep in mind that in an era of digital photography, photos and most everything else could or would be in digital format anyway. Not all papers have gone digital. But by far, it's already happened at the important ones and will at the others in the future. An aside: Eons ago the Times published my reporting on Abraham Ribicoff's fondness for making business investments with one of the government's largest landlords. The company's partnerships dealt with the General Services Administration, which Abe helped oversee as chair of the Government Operations Committee in the Senate. And somehow his name was not among those of the partners on the GSA lease for a CIA-occuped building in Arlington, VA. Wonder if my clips reached the dumper and, if so, whether they were rescued in time.
Wal-Mart offering Lindows-powered PCs Nice implications for PC and eventually handheld prices if Lindows catches on. Hey, remember all this talk about TeleReader-style machines eventually selling for $50 at Wal-Mart. We're on the way.
Print-on-demand books: Will they be more than 50 percent of books sold by 2010? Publishing maven Jason Epson says yes, while Vint Cert says no. - LongBets via LibraryPlanet.com. The TeleRead take: A tricky one to call, but Vint Cerf is more likely correct--given the younger generation's comfort with reading text off screens.
Wi-Fi for NYC schools: A progress report IBM will be "unwiring" New York City schools. Big implications for libraries there and elsewhere. It isn't just a question of economics. Younger people are far, far more open to cell phones and other forms of mobile tech in both personal and business lives. Libraries, take note. That means more demand for MP3 audio books and text e-books that are usable outside library buildings. Check out a recent Internetnews.com article for the latest on the NYC project. Here in Alexandria, VA, the local library system took pride in the laptop ports that it included in the big new headquarters building. Oh, but this can get tricky. Libraries are supposed to be planned for decades, and yet already Wi-Fi is becoming the rage or at least is on the cusp of it. So much for thinking too heavily in terms of wires and plugs. Bricks and local networks aren't going away tomorrow, but as the New York situation shows, libraries need to look beyond the here and now.
ZDnet zaps the Hard Edge archive: A lesson here My mention of John Dvorak reminded me of the plight of Alice Hill and Bill O'Brien, who write the sprightly Hard Edge column for Computer Shopper. ZDnet, one of John D.'s homes on the Web, used to archive old Hill-O'Brien columns. Not now. That might sound trival, but the ZDnet's handy archive of the Hill-O'Brien columns could have provided a goldmine for writers on the history of technology. Hill and O'Brien have been at it for a decade. Perhaps you can still see some of the Hard Edge columns at AliceHill.com. In part, I say "perhaps" because the site did not come up when I tried it just now. The TeleRead take: Pretty obvious. Time for a well-stocked national digital library system without vanishing articles. I thought Alice H. and Bill O. were pretty restrained in their announcement that ZDnet was killing the Hard Edge archive--they noted that the preservation didn't make business sense as ZDnet saw it. Exactly! Corporate needs of the moment are not the same as long-range societal needs. For all I know, maybe The Hard Edge is reachable through some special, overpriced commercial database apart from ZD, but that's no substitute for the easy access that ZDnet previously allowed. To address the obvious questions, a TeleRead-style library could provide for easy ways for the Hill-O'Brien duo, ZDnet or both to collect compensation, either through subscribtion payments to the monthly column or one-shot charges for individual articles. Or, even better, perhaps there could be compensation arrangements from a National Digital Library Fund so that access was free. Whatever the case, TeleRead makes more sense than ever in an era of news aggregators when readers want access on their terms. TeleRead is a way to reconcile infograzing with a pesky little detail--the need to pay content-providers fairly (a different concept, of course, from RIAA-style lawsuits and gouging).
Another look at Creative Commons If you're still having problems understanding the laudable Creative Commons project, check out a June 12 article in the Seattle Times. Via Techdirt.
Beware of proprietary e-book formats - John Dvorak PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak, writing in the July issue of Computer Shopper, warns against proprietary formats and delivery mechanisms for e-books and raises other important questions. He says an e-book-style medium "will have a niche as a temporary way to distribute information. E-book readers would be an excellent way to distribute short-lived content such as magazines or newsletters, but their usefulness can't compare with the user-friendly nature of a printed magazine: portable, lightweight, easy-to-use, high-resolution, and, above all, analogue in every way. And if you decide to keep it, it will still be just as usable 50 years from now." Elsewhere in the column, Dvorak says that "although digital data itself can be moved from medium to medium, even the data is often dependent on specific computer configurations and operating systems that die off. Let's look at e-books. Because they're copy-protected, you can't trust that any of them will be readable in a decade. These books are ripe for data attribution. Digital data is temporary by its very nature." The TeleRead take: Dvorak is, of course, saying exactly what preservation experts have been warning for years. The significance here is that he is an influence in the consumer and business markets and reflects the opinions of many. How to react? One way would be through the development of durable standards for easily convertable content and for encryption--goals that would be far, far more achievable with a TeleRead-style library model. TeleRead would not just promote plain, unadorned, Gutenberg-style text, the most durable medium. Working with XML, which is really just tagged ASCII, it would also provide safe and stable housing for link-rich text and multimedia and perhaps eventually even for games (what if the latter do evolve into literature?). Content-creators could confidently reference other works without worrying that commercial considerations would cause the linked material to vanish. Meanwhile do not, repeat, do not, trust the private sector alone. Whether it's early recordings or motion pictures or pioneering TV programs, the commercial side has a dismal record. No iniquity here. Point is, conglomerates like AOL Time Warner are legally answerable to today's shareholders, not tomorrow's library users. The only way to look out for library users is for librarians to be responsible for archiving. What's more, librarians should not overinvest in products such as Adobe's overpriced serverware. Buy them only in moderation, as learning tools. The proprietary approach just can't be trusted. As for improving the ease and convenience of reading e-text, Dvorak needs hang in there. Remedies are on the way.
Thursday, June 13, 2002
"Web guide to e-books for libraries"--and some neat Web-site wrinkles, including "My Library"
A useful, to-the-point guide on e-books for libraries comes from the Worthington, Ohio, library. Great starting point for newbies. What's more, the home page dazzles with some ingenious twists in the Flash version. It could be still better with more meat-and-potatoes items about new books, community topics and doings at the branches. Perhaps that'll happen as the site matures. Also check out the My Library page, whose philosophy obviously overlaps with this TeleBlog's. Readers can choose to stay updated via email on topics in areas ranging from juvenile titles to business and, yes, community news. Now if only the customization can extend to the home page. Perhaps it will in time. Briefly touring the Worthington site, by the way, we happily noticed that in the cutback department, Ohio isn't Arkansas.
Screening out huckstery on seach engines Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most honest search company of them all? PC World's July issue rates popular search engines in terms of their clarity in separating paid-for items from the rest. Not surprisingly, Google comes out "Excellent." PC World says it "Does a great job all around. Clear Sponsored Link labels, bold fonts, and the page design all help to distinguish between paid and unpaid links." Yahoo, too, is "Excellent." The loser? MetaCrawler. "Features Search Results label on paid links is quite confusing; 'MetaCrawler suggests' ad contained within the search results lists often delivers unrelated paid links." Sorry, but as best we could determine, the article isn't online yet.
Another Yahoo critic Tara Calishain in Research Buzz News, June 12, is also somewhat disappointed with the new beta home page.
True costs of PDAs Libraries should keep in mind that the price of actual PDA hardware is just one issue. At least at corporations, the costs per unit can exceed thouands per year for a wireless unit, according to an Internet.com report. The TeleRead take: I suspect that libraries are thriftier than companies. Still, costs are something to keep in mind. Via technical standards and the encouragment of mass adoption, TeleRead would greatly reduce libraries' costs. Keep in mind that most TeleReaders would be owned by individuals rather than libraries--handheld prices are declining and are likely to continue falling, even without help from TeleRead What's more, consider the economic and professional benefits of PDAs for libraries and schools. My sister recently left teaching in part because of the paperwork burden. Perhaps with TeleRead around, she would have spent more time in the classroom. For tips on PDA management, check out Lori Bell's wonderful, practical blog, The Handheld Librarian, which, of course, contains links to other library- and PDA-related sites.
A great argument for Wi-Fi "New pricing plans for broadband use could make downloading pirated music and movies a prohibitively costly habit." - BusinessWeek Online, June 12, discussing plans for cable companies to penalize zealous file sharers. The TeleRead take: The jury's still out on this one. Just what will the limits be? I can see penalties for truly massive uploading and downloading that strains a cable system's resources. My fear, however, is that companies will overdo the the limits and try to herd customers into high-priced plans. Several years ago when broadband hit Alexandria, VA, I was paying maybe $35 a month for cable-modem service. Now the fee, with a rented modem included, is $45 a month and still higher if you aren't a cable TV customer. And that's typical across the country. Let's hope that Wi-Fi eventually will be a big hit at the popular level and keep the cable barons in their place. "We're bandwidth junkies, and I can't imagine a world in which people don't have broadband," the New York Times quoted John Furrier said, one of the inventors of a breakthrough Wi-Fi system that can transmit data for 20 miles. "That's our mission." Good.
Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Adobe's Mercedes-priced serverware for library e-books
"Adobe Systems released Content Server 3.0, software that lets libraries loan and distribute eBooks written in the company's Portable Document Format. Content Server lets administrators offer subscriptions, set expiration dates that disable the eBook on the borrower's computer, and provides packaging and encryption options for Internet delivery." - ZDnet, June 12. The TeleRead take: Libraries must pay $5K for this serverware to power a site housing 250 books, and every 500 more titles will cost $1,000 extra. Perhaps time for the efficiencies of a well-stocked and well-integrated national digital library system? Be interesting to see how much product Adobe moves in rich libary districts vs. poor ones. Community libraries in Arkansas, of course, can just stick with ratty old paperbacks. Oh, well, maybe Adobe can sell to the forthcoming $160-million Clinton library in Little Rock, which would be fitting, considering all the influence that the copyright lobby had on White House under Bill. Update: More detailed account from Internet.com. Also see the ballyhoo from Adoble. Additional thought: Obvioiusly the problem isn't just the cost of the serverware but the very idea of so zealously metering knowledge. Under TeleRead, individual paymenets per book would be lower, but publishers and wirters would actually do better because they would be reaching larger audiences than under a library-system-by-library-system approach.
Palm introducing $100 models "Palm hopes to improve its fortunes by introducing three new handhelds this fall, including one designed to sell for $100, interim Chief Executive Eric Benhamou said Tuesday." - ZDnet, June 12. The TeleRead take: Not to confuse Palms with TeleReaders. Still, the day will indeed come when TeleReader-style machines with readable screens and wireless connections will sell for $50 at Wal-Mart.
EarthLink going Wi-Fi for those who can afford it EarthLink-style Wi-Fi is too expensive, but is paving the way for low-cost access. Cable monopolies, beware. Libraries, rejoice.
The Carnegie spirit in Oregon "Before placing the levy on the ballot again for the November election, library backers should consider an alternative: user fees... According to an analysis sponsored by the Oregon Progress Board in 1994, 'Most Oregonians with a low level of education reported that they did not use the public library.' In a similar vein, 'Nearly half of adults below the poverty level did not use the public library.'" - John Charles, writing in the Oregonian, June 6, via Library Stuff. The TeleRead take: And of course libraries have no business making themselves enticing to the poor so low-income people will be more likely to improve themselves? Perhaps poverty programs should impose fees, too. Apparently John Charles feels that a certain 19th-century robber baron was still too progressive for him. What's more, Steven Cohen of Library Stuff notes: "The outdated 1994 report cited in this commentary that states that those of low income do not utilize the public library (a reminder to the author that in 1994, libraries did not have public Internet access terminals; I would like to see an updated report), should not be an indication that public libraries should shut out this part of our citizenry. It should be a call to arms to understand why this is so and to get those that truly need library services back into our nations libraries." The miserliness down in Arkansas also serves to remind us of the need for a well-stocked national digital library system. While TeleRead would not put all books online for free, it could use a combination of private and public funding to help thousands of books be included in the free collection. Not to mention public domain classics in the Gutenberg vein.
Still cheap down in Arkansas "The Arkansas Board of Education gave state aid to libraries somewhat of a reprieve on Monday in its finalized budget for fiscal 2003, though funds won't exactly be plentiful. Starting July 1, county libraries throughout the state will receive $500,000 in state aid. That's one quarter of the $2 million county libraries received in fiscal 2002, and one eighth of the $4 million libraries had grown accustomed to getting in fiscal 2001 and several years previous." - Cabin.net, June 11, via LibraryNotes. The TeleRead take: If only young Razorbacks could pack up on their own and move to less miserly states. Same for others in need of affordable knowledge. Not too practical a scenario, though. Time, then, for a TeleReaderish approach of a well-stocked national digital library system? Meanwhile see our earlier item on Arkansas.
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
Thumbs down
My sympathy to Yahoo's info-mavens, to whom I've been grateful over the years for all the links they've given me. I suspect that they hate the Yahoo beta home page as much as I do. Much less meaty than the existing page. (Found via Library Stuff.)
'Shifty' Librarian-Newsie Jenny Levine, aka The Shifted Librarian, has a new monicker, the Tech Goddess, her name on GoUpstate.com, which is picking up tech-related wisdom from her blog. GoUpstate is associated with a South Carolina daily. Turns out that in another incarnation Jenny studied radio journalism, but just the same, this is another indication of the growing convergence of blogging with conventional journalism. Congrats to Jenny. I don't know her, but I'll keep mentioning her blog, because, like Steve Cohen of Library Stuff, she is constantly surprising me in the right ways.
Blog pioneer vs. the media's wandering links Angered by broken links, programmer Dave Winer last week attacked Knight-Ridder, especially San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor, whom Winer described as a friend of his. Media critic Steve Outing wrote up the controversy, and a debate broke out within a Poynter.org forum. The TeleRead take: Winer criticized Gillmor for not publicly bemoaning the massive link kills by Knight-Ridder, which herded its papers into little pink houses on RealCities. But I myself do not see Gillmor as a corporate lapdog. He is actually one of the more gung-ho populists covering tech and frequently has ranted at the expense of the standard media suspects even if he usually and prudently does not mention Knight-Ridder in particular. Turns out that as early as February 8, about the time when K-R perped the mayhem, Gillmor was apologizing for the killed links to his pieces. Having heard from dozens of journalists, Winer has now written a more reflective essay on the motives of the pros, and if nothing else, the tiff may have spurred the New York Times to run or speed up the publication of yet another blogging article--great exposure for the trend. No real harm done, then. Most important of all, it isn't as if Winer, a blog pioneer and a guardian of the medium, was all wet in going after the broken-link issue in general. Just the opposite. This pesky issue caught my attention eons ago. Back in the late '90s I was running some bloggish items on Fallows Central, the now-dead site housing Jim Fallows' writings on the media and other topics. And for some weeks I did a regularly updated page called The Missing Links of the Washington Post which I've reproduced without all the links working. Alas, then, link kills are old news to me. Painful old news. One of the Post's missing links led to my father's obituary. In 1997 in a Wired News article mentioning my 'tude about the Post's AWOL links, Brooke Shelby Briggs ignored or at least downplayed an important fact. She failed to explicitly distinguish permanent links from free content, as if stable gateway pages couldn't exist to lead people to articles for which news archives charged. The Post recognizes this nowadays and, to its credit, has constructed its Web site accordingly. Nothing against Brooke, however; look, she at least raised the issue and made many excellent points. And here's a delightful irony. Notice that after five years, the Wired News link still works? That's a great example for news organizations in an era where blogging could increase the appeal of stable links for newspapers wanting to reach the most readers. Among one of the advocates of not just fixed links but free archives in the Wired vein? Dan Gilmoore (see bottom of a Library Journal piece). Under TeleRead, a national digital library system could store books, articles and other items without their survival at specific addresses being quite so vulnerable to the whims of profit-crazed corporate executives, whose immediate business needs may often conflict with the long-term needs of bloggers and the rest of Netdom, especially students and local library users. There could be provisions for newspapers collecting fees either from a national digital library fund, readers, or advertisers, depending on the time frame involved and the wishes of the individual content-providers. Participation in the archive would be voluntary on material still under copyright, but because of the scale of TeleRead, it would make business sense for newspapers to take part. If nothing else, a TeleReadish approach would be one answer to the questions that Steve Outing raised about the business conflicts between libraries and newspapers. And now a return to the links controversy--a little aside. I hope that Dave Winer extends his wrath to certain Internet providers, not merely newspaperdom. In case he's curious, Fallows Central died not just because of Jim's time constraints but also because the greedsters at NTT/Verio killed off the old clark.net domain, thereby murdering thousands of links leading to my sites. As vexed as I am by newspapers' frequent indifference to the need for stable links, at least Knight-Ridder vaporized old links on its own sites, not mine. Verio similarly victimized other customers. It messed up e-mail, too, even if, perhaps because I yelled so much, my own forward is still working. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' freelance piece in the Post noted the vanishing e-mail addresses but never zeroed in on the equally important issue of the broken and not-very-easily replicated links. To this day, Verio has not offered a satisfactory explanation of why an EarthLink deal required that it kill off customers' Web sites, or at least their existences at years-old addresses; what could Verio be doing with clark.net that required the mass zapping? Winer's problem with Knight-Ridder is a picnic compared to mine with Verio. I hope that both he and Dan Gillmor will follow up. Who says the newspaper business is the only villain here? Unlike the Post, Verio didn't merely kill a link to a newspaper obituary about my father. It actually erased the Web site housing my remembrances of him. Which offense is worse?
Monday, June 10, 2002
U.S. movies pirated from Iran
"An Internet company that lets viewers watch pirated hits like 'Harry Potter' and 'The Mummy Returns' for $1.50 or less has set up shop in a place that might be out of the film industry's long reach -- Iran." - San Francisco Chronicle, June 6. The TeleRead take: Not to worry. The film industry will try to channel massive campaign donations to Iranian officials. If that doesn't work, Jack Valenti will confer with George Bush about the possibility of war with Iran. (Satire alert.) Update: Via pressure on the offending site's web hosting service in Europe, it has now been shut down, at least for the moment.
Wi-Fi threat to cable and phone monopolies grows -- Good news for libraries Comcast and Verizon, beware! Wi-Fi keeps making strives. Today's New York Times tells of a Wi-Fi hookup that "can transmit Internet data up to 20 miles at high speeds--enough to blanket entire urban regions and make cable or DSL connections obsolete." TeleRead take: This is great news for libraries, consumers and content creators. Here's to the public's being able to spend less money on infrastructure! Could mean somewhat fewer opportunities for gouges by cable companies and other toll-collectors. Of course, this is no assurance that the standard suspects won't seek to crush Wi-Fi just as they've fought to limit the public domain.
1984: A hit in Cuba's INDEPENDENT Libraries Perhaps that's one reason why the Castro regime may be cracking down (Newsday, via Library Stuff). The TeleRead take: TeleRead assumes that politicians are eager to censor controversial works. The U.S. isn't Cuba, but the censorship threat is one reason why for years TeleRead has called for a mix of both public and private funding. Of course, thanks to the well-financed copyright lobby, the U.S. government is now restricting Americans' access to 1984 in a different way.
Crumbs for local Arkansas libraries, $160M planned for Clinton Library Arkansas, already ranked 50th in librarian pay, may stop state aid to county libraries entirely. The TeleRead take: Hey, Bill and Hillary, care to speak out on this one? How ironic that the state with the planned $160-million Clinton Library, is fiscally a national follower in librarydom. What a Dogpatchish situation. Yes, we know the Clinton library isn't really a direct competitor to funds for county libraries in Arkansas. Still, the symbolism can't escape us. On to the real perps--the politicians running the state now. Republican Governor Mike Huckabee, whose Web site brags about his "priority in making meaningful contributions to the lives of families and children in the state of Arkansas," should work with the legislature to straighten out this mess, pronto. We know times are tough, but Arkansas will aggravate the famous "savage inequalities" if the proposed cuts come about. Here's another illustration for the need for a well-stocked national digital library system that would expand the range of books available to rich and poor. Keep in mind that books by themselves are not enough, that we need librarians to acquire and organize books and other items and guide users through collections, not to mention all the community-oriented services that libraries provide. Still, whatever the reasons in the inefficient paper world, the typical library system is able to spend just a fraction of its budget on books, and TeleRead could help, especially with cash-strapped libraries such as Arkansas's. The more material available from a national collection, the wider the range of items--and the more money left over for local services. What's more, TeleRead would be a godsend in the important area of family literacy. Remember the slogan: Bring the books home. With thousands of books online for free, parents would be more likely to serve as positive role models for children, especially if local libraries could localize and otherwise customize links to the national collection. Time to take a stand, Hillary? One other way for both the Clinton and Bush families to aid the causes of literacy and knowledge--yes, we vaguely recall Laura Bush's occupation and related charities--would be to call for a reversal of the giveaways that Washington has made to the Hollywood interests via anti-child copyright legislation that in the end will jack up costs not only to families directly but also to libraries and schools as institutions. Meanwhile we'll hope that the Supreme Court can mitigate some of the damage. Don't think that copyright-extension controversy and the library funding crisis are two entirely separate issues. In the future, as e-book technology improves and distance education grows in importance, the overlap will be even more visible.
David Bowie on copyright "The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing." - David Bowie in the June 9 New York Times, via LibraryPlanet. The TeleRead take: Of course Hollywood may well be spending up, er, speeding up, the process via campaign donations--to encourage Washington to adapt unrealistic copyright laws that defy the natures of humans and technology alike. TeleRead, while pro-copyright, would overhaul it by increasing the importance of the library model and helping to reduce the incentive for bootlegging. It would provide for fair compensation--from a national digital library fund, supported by a mix of public and private money--for content creators. Although TeleRead could focus on books, similar concepts could be applied to music. Meanwhile, surprise of surprise, today's New York Times carries a report that software piracy is on the rise.
Virginia e-text center partners up with New Zealand University "New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington has become the latest institution of higher learning to benefit from a campaign by the University of Virginia to establish electronic-text centers abroad. The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre was officially opened last month at a ceremony in Wellington, the national capital, attended by David M. Seaman, the director of UVa's Electronic Text Center, which works with the university's libraries to create digital copies of scholarly and literary books." - Chronicle of Higher Education, June 5, via Library Planet. The TeleRead take: A good deal for all involved and for readers, too. But keep in mind we're talking public domain works here--and just a fraction of the world's e-text collections.
Sunday, June 09, 2002
Why can't JOHNNY read?
"I think schools and parents sometimes handicap their efforts to get boys reading by not offering boys the books that will inspire them to want to read. So many required reading lists and favored books in schools reflect women's reading tastes. That's not to say that Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte's Web and The Color Purple are bad books, that they should be read only by girls or that some boys might not love them, too. But imagine how motivated you would be to read as an adult if you were told that before you could read anything else that appealed to you, you first had to read the books your spouse likes." - Why Johnny Won't Read: Boys will be boys--and with the right books and role models, they'll be readers, too, by Jon Scieszka, writing in the June 2 Washington Post. The TeleRead take: What insightful observations. One of the glories of a well-stocked national digital library would be the ability of students everywhere--male and female--to find books reflecting their exact interests.
If only DC worried about spam as much as it did about pleasing Hollywood Great piece in the Washington Post today on the spam crisis. Correctly the Post observes that even with a national anti-spam law, we'd still have a spam problem from overseas. Then again, what if the U.S. Congress cared as much about international spam control as about the enactment of Draconian copyright laws in every country on earth? What if an international spam control agency existed, with members imposing trade sanctions against holdouts? Imagine the possibilities here. Ditto if politicians in the States and elsewhere fixated as much on spam as on anti-porn efforts. In fact, they're related. Much of the spam is to advertise hardcore porn. Whatever the reason for the spam, we're talking about a loss of billions in time, resources and missed connections. One anti-spam firm, Brightmail, says the number of spam attacks exploded from 700,000 in April 2001 to 4.3 million in April this year. According to the Jupiter Media Matrix, individuals on the average will suffer 1,800 spams in 2002. The problem has reached the point where some Net providers won't even accept email from parts of the world known for spam. Also hurt by the filtering are legitimate, opt-in email lists, reader-requested advertising and other business activities whose models reduce the need for collection of fees from users. Meanwhile we can all do our part at the individual level. Don't buy products promoted with spam. And if you have a moment, why not make as much trouble for spammers as you can under the existing laws? That's certainly true if a spam uses your own email address. Just yesterday, some moron spoofed one of my addresses in a spam from his AOL account. A Net provider in Missouri sent me a notice because the message was infected with a virus, and I in turn forwarded the matter to AOL Operations Security, which has promised to follow up. AOL and I are both in Virginia, a state with tough laws against address spoofs. And I intend to do whatever I can do strip the spammer of every penny, with any damages I collect going to charity. Meanwhile here's some praise to AOL for so far taking the matter seriously.
Saturday, June 08, 2002
Yahoo about to be dumbed down for advertisers?
"The changes in Yahoo's home page will be noticeable but not drastic, according to one source familiar with the redesign. The site will retain much of the current flavor, color and style but will include fewer links and clutter." - Yahoo to give home page a makeover, CNet, June 7, found via Library Stuff The TeleRead take: Um, this could well be the start of the AOLization of Yahoo--or at least the speed-up of a process already started. No free lunches expected: the advertisers must get something for their money. But frankly I go to Yahoo because of the link clutter. I love Yahoo just the way it is, thank you. While, yes, the home page has link overlaps, I don't think they are that horrible. I worry far more about Yahoo's increasing number of high-bandwidth ads, which are a real bother even with a cable modem. Could the greed of the advertising community be one reason why Net use isn't growing as fast as before? If Yahoo and Google and the like eventually succumb totally to excessive commercialization, that will be bad news for the world at large, but good news for librarians and their own net-guide-style sites such as the Librarians' Index to the Index. Their hit counts will pick up dramatically. Needless to say, under a TeleRead-style approach, librarians could have far, far more resources to keep up with and evaluate sites on the Net.
Copyright blog on the way from Berkeley "Students will create a weblog devoted to copyright issues, from 'deep-linking' to online music trading. They'll also debate whether blogs are 'a sensible medium for doing journalism, and what does that mean?'" - Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of, Wired News, June 6, discussing plans for a blogging class at Berkeley's graduate school of journalism next fall. The TeleRead take: The growth of blogging is yet another illustration of the need for well-stocked national digital systems in the TeleRead vein with stable links--through which the Web logs could send readers directly to books that the logs discussed. Oh, and it's good to see Berkeley and certain others in the media establishment catching up. Some blog-style media commentary appeared on the now-defunct Fallows Central site that Jim Fallows and I started back in 1996--check out a sample via the Internet Archive's wonderful Wayback Machine. At the time, at least one media type was depicting Jim's personal Web site as an exercise in vanity, and I suspect that the bloggish items probably offended the critic the most. Nowadays, as Wired News notes, even MSNBC has a blog area.
A parallel with e-books? "A national policy on broadband would honor the First Amendment. It would tell industry that the builders of the pipes can't own or control the content. And if the potential builders refused to compete under those conditions, something I don't take for granted, then a sane nation would build the connections itself. That's why I still think the best approach is a national program to lay fiber to every home and business, an analogue to the Interstate highway system the nation built after World War II. The Interstates wouldn't have happened without the federal taxpayers." - Dan Gillmor's June 2 column in the San Jose Mercurcy News. The TeleRead take: So what about a well-thought policy and decent funding for a national digital library system with a well-stocked e-book collection and accompanying multimedia? Aren't books as important as movies and other drivers of broadband? Come to think of it, broadband would be good for books, too. An always-on approach, especially when combined with wireless tech within the home, would make e-books more convenient to use than ever on TabletPC-type machines. But we also need a well-integrated national digital library library system--for many reasons, not just reliable linking but also the format issue. Needless to say, TeleRead could be funded both privately and publicly to assure freedom of expression.
Obsolete formats: The Sony lesson "I have not been able to find any software that I could load on a current Windows computer to view 1991 Sony Electronic Book mini discs. I can view the disc contents in my Sony CD-ROM drive but I am unable to open the files (which don't appear to have any file name extensions). I have contacted Sony Technical support many times but with predictable 'buck passing' results." - Usenet posting. The TeleRead take: What better argument for a digital library system like TeleRead? One format won't necessarily do for every kind of book. But TeleRead could at least handle the more popular formats and arrange for conversions.
Thursday, June 06, 2002
On the death of Lew Wasserman, copyright tycoon
"From Johnson to Clinton, his cause was making sure that the film industry had a pipeline to a Democratic White House. In his equation of politics with business, in his understanding that money buys access, Wasserman was no different than the conservative Texas oilmen who bankrolled the rise of LBJ." - Water Shapiro, writing in Slate's June 6 issue on The man who ruined movies. TeleRead take: Check out Wasserman at opensecrets.org, and you'll see that to the end he was a massive giver--with, it appears, plenty of help from other members of his family. You can bet that the big campaign donations will go on.
Local libraries, national content, local context Far from eliminating local libraries, a TeleRead-style approach would empower them. Via link collections and customized search engines, a truly well-stocked national digital library system would allow librarians to draw on a rich assortment of additional resources to serve the needs of local citizens. Even now, though, librarians can do some of this. It'll help, of course, if they and local newspapers can make peace on archive-related issues. But much can be done even without stable links to individual articles in local publications. Check out how the Jackson-George Regional Library System in Mississippi is treating the topic of homeland security. Staffers haven't just assembled a list of links to the Terrorism Research Center and various national publications. They've also provided links to and contact information for local government offices. Now, imagine if TeleRead were around. Jackson-George could link directly to security-related books for citizens to be able to read at the library or from home rather than just reading an online bibliography, however well put together. The number of choices, needless to say, would be far, far greater than from the paper collection of a regional rural library system. * * * An integrated, TeleRead-style system, of course, could not only encourage librarians to localize intelligently but also help arrange for Amazon-type home pages that truly reflected library users' individual interests. Privacy issues, needless to say, would have to be addressed. One solution, far from perfect but better than nothing, might be to offer individualization while warning users of the possible privacy tradeoffs. See item below.
URLs vs. books on shelves--and other issues of interoperable libraries "Librarians would never consider telling a user that to find the book they're seeking they must go to the third tier of the stacks, in the 8th row, the 5th bookcase, the 3rd shelf, and grab the 7th book from the left; they know that once someone removes the 3rd book from the left, the entire system of locating will break down. Yet, this is the type of system that URLs are based upon." - Howard Besser, writing in the June 3 issue of First Monday on The Next Stage: Moving from Isolated Digital Collections to Interoperable Digital Libraries. The TeleRead take: This is just one of many details the Besser article covers in laying out both the advantages and the challenges of getting libraries online as a smoothly blended system rather than a confusing collection of parts. He tells how libraries are addressing the URL issue. But many other issues will remain as librarydom moves "from isolated digital collections to interoperable digital libraries" with friendlier, more standardized interfaces for users. Given all the post-9/11 pressures on librarians to be cops, I and others in TeleRead would especially appreciate Besser's reminder "that libraries are not merely collections of works. They have both services and ethical traditions and values that are a critical part of their functions. Libraries interoperate with each other to serve the information needs of a variety of different user groups today, and expect to sustain themselves and their collections so that they can serve users 100 years from now. They defend their users' rights to access content, and to do so with some degree of privacy or anonymity. The digital collections we build will not truly be digital libraries until they incorporate a significant number of these services and ethical traditions." Such a 'tude has been part of TeleRead from the start.
Wednesday, June 05, 2002
"Not Ready for Prime Time" Story #1345025
"We had this blip where people got really excited. Now people are back in reality." - Kate Tentler, publisher of Simon & Schuster Online, as quoted about e-books, via Newsweek, June 10. The TeleRead take: Actually the story is a little more optimistic than the "Not Ready for Prime Time" headline would suggest. Newsweek reports that S&S's online division and a digital arm of HarperCollins enjoyed double-digit growth in '01. Still, the unit sales are a far cry from what many in the the book business hoped they would be in the wake of Stephen King's success at drawing 400,000 orders for Riding the Bullet. The solution? TeleRead-style business models, which are more reader-friendly. Better technology should help, too.
Tuesday, June 04, 2002
MP3 books in the audio sense
Although Brewster Kahle and others have been using "MP3" to refer to a more progressive copyright approach rather than to audio books, the term obviously brings the latter to mind as well. In fact, Lori Bell of The Handheld Librarian has just offered some helpful information on audio books--reproduced below. - DR Regarding MP3 books, several of us in Illinois are trying to get the infamous Saul Amdursky from the Kalamazoo Public Library, the first public library in the U.S. to circulate MP3 books from Audible, to Illinois, to share his experiences with us! I do think audio books in this format will take off in the next year or so, and Saul has said he will come! We just need to find a date and location! Is anyone else out there circulating audio ebooks? There is also a program in Ohio called Listen Ohio with Nolanet Regional Library system where they are working as a group of libraries to do this.
eMP3: The next Wi-Fi? "While most of the tech industry gripes about how hard it is to provide high-speed Internet access, seemingly out of nowhere a technology has emerged to do just that, at low cost or even for free. And without those nasty wires!" - Newsweek, June 10, on Wi-Fi. The TeleRead take: The mighty AOL Time Warner and other large corporations have failed to popularize their own e-books in a big way. Meanwhile Netfolks are doing zillions of downloads of free books from Project Gutenberg and other sources. Now what if the proposed MP3 for e-books gets off the ground and can stay more nimble than the big boys? Just like the small-fry using Wi-Fi tech. Librarians would do well to pay attention to the idea from Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, and, in fact, some already have started discussing eMP3--for example, Library Stuff's Steve Cohen. The Shifted Librarian blog from Jenny Levine calls the concept "very interesting" and "doable." Molded by techie brainstorms and genuine user demands rather than simply by marketers' needs, eMP3 may bring e-books the popularity they deserve. eMP3 could come at a good time. Within librarydom the old fossils like Jim Billiington will eventually be retiring, and meanwhile the younger librarians are exploring such technologies as RSS and hand-helds in a library context. Ahead? Don't be surprised if eventually we see large-scale eMP3-WiFi connections. Just as telecom companies would do well to involve themselves with WiFi, so the giants of publishing should keep a close eye on eMP3, especially since Kahle and friends seem open to suggestions to include contemporary books under legal models that Creative Commons could help develop. Isn't it possible that with more flexible licensing terms for consumers and lower prices, even the giants of the book trade would come out ahead with an eMP3 approach as opposed to $10-a-copy eprints of Hemingway? Yes, eMP3 might weaken their hold on consumers. But it just might help the big boys where it counts, the bottom line. Clarification: While eMP3 might encompass .MP3 format books among other kinds, I'm not talking just about books in audio format. In fact, most of the books would be the traditional "printed" variety. The use of "MP3" is intended to suggest looser coyright controls. Still, I'm all for audio books, especially on hand-helds!
Monday, June 03, 2002
An MP3 for e-books? TeleReadish thoughts from public domain advocates
Since around 1992, the much-updated TeleRead plan has advocated a structured, libraryish approach to carry out a Vannevar Bush-type vision--rather than simply a reliance on the usual Net search engines. Now some sensible thoughts in the same direction are coming from Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. In addition, he is providing another twist--asking people to sift through library catalogues and other listings in search of out-of-print books and then arrange for them to be scanned. What's more, he advocates an "MP3 of online books" with provision for various technical standards. That's closer and closer to TeleRead even if he is focused right now on public domain items and apparently not so much on others. A natural question emerges. How long until this MP3 might take on books still under copyright? Already there's talk of using Creative Commons for copyright clearance, but mightn't the MP3 also include books whose very-much-still-alive writers who agreed to more flexible copyright terms? That would be in line with the existing vision for the Commons. Needless to say, eMP3 or ebookMP3 could include full-text searching and zillions of other good things, not just searches by titles and authors Too, how about the issue of guidance for libraries and schools buying the appropriate e-book-friendly hardware or recommending it to students? Isn't it possible that eMP3 could work with libraries and vendors so we could have a truly integrated approach? Needless to say, if the MP3ish scenario can unfold with contemporary works included, too, not just the public domain ones, this could mean somewhat of a power shift away from mega-sized distributors and more bargaining power for consumers, librarians and educators. In turn, that raises another question. How long until the 'crats and pols in DC try to make the e-book MP3 or Creative Commons illegal? Yet another point: I'd hope that even with libraries increasingly involved, there could still be provisions for formal, adequate and sustainable funding of Project Gutenberg. As a heavily volunteer-driven organization, it's a potential source of material that libraries could overlook even if they systematically identified their public-domain works and began massive scanning efforts. Think of all the Moby Dicks neglected for years by academics and librarians. We need a balanced approach.
Stupid censor tricks Isaac Singer's writing were just a little too Jewish. Kofi Annan should have been praising only California's seafood, not its wine. So 'crats took corrective steps in those cases and others. In a story called "Barrio Boy," a "gringo lady" became an "American lady." The above were just some of the stupid censor tricks pulled on the literary excepts in the NY State Regents exam. The TeleRead take: As noted, a well-stocked national digital library system like TeleRead could protect freedom of expression in a number of ways. Librarians would be in many cities, public funding could be long term, and there could be major private funding--not to mention the fact that people could still obtain e-books and the rest in other ways. Library Stuff's take, from Steve Cohen: "If I was caught misquoting on a research paper, I would have had points taken off. Can we give the makers of these Regents exams an 'F'?"
Saturday, June 01, 2002
NYC libraries stung by budget threat
"There are plenty of things to dislike about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed budget cuts, but few of them are more unsettling than the likely hit to the Queens Borough Public Library system and the city's other libraries... The worst-case scenario could mean reducing service at many of Queens' 63 library buildings to four days a week. At best, $6 million in proposed cuts would force the borough to eliminate most of its morning and evening hours at about 50 branches." - Newsday, May 31, found via Library Stuff. And from the New York Times of May 23: "One reason that 60 percent of New York City public-school children read below grade level is that many elementary schools don't have libraries. Lonni Tanner, director of special projects for the Robin Hood Foundation, which seeks to eliminate poverty in New York City, visited 200 elementary schools three years ago. 'None had a complete library, none had a certified librarian, and if there were books, they were books that hadn't been touched,' she said. So the foundation, the Board of Education and the mayor's office created the Library Initiative. It will bring libraries to 10 schools by the end of the summer and to 30 by 2003." Yeah, but what about those public library cutbacks that could very well be ahead? K-12 libraries are a must, but cannot match the public systems in the number of items and certainly not in the range of ages served. The TeleRead take: Looks as if DC isn't alone. More than ever, we need a well-stocked national digital library system to empower schools and local branches and bring the books home, 24/7, in an economical way.
When terrorists visited my favorite library branch If anyone is keen on stopping terrorists--well, you're reading him. I live in Northern Virginia within a few miles of the Pentagon. Explode anything other than the smallest nuke there, and the blast may not get me, but the fallout just might. My brother-in-law actually works for Defense in a near-by office building, and one of my nieces lives in an apartment complex just up the river from the Pentagon. What's more, I have a little distinction that most other library users don't share. Suspected terrorists appear to have visited the Sherwood Hall Regional Branch within the Fairfax Count, VA, system, one of the places I go because the Alexandria system is so rotten compared to Fairfax. Communicating with terrorists elsewhere, they may even have used one of the same computers I did. I welcome appropriate anti-terrorism measures such as increasing the flow of information between domestic law enforcement people and the CIA. Still, I'm more than a little grouchy about the new powers that law enforcement officials have to check up on people's reading and Internet habits even when the FBI and the rest are not looking into specifics. I don't just think of the suspected terrorists at my local library. I also remember the Nixon administration's great fondness for invading its enemies' privacy. Not to mention LBJ. What's more, even in the Carter administration, bureaucrats outside law enforcement would at times investigate the private lives of critics. Kudoos to the civil liberities groups for speaking out against the most recent privacy threats. What's ahead, now that the feds can look at library records for the fun of it? I wouldn't want to be an Arab-American novelist researching a military novel and leaving a paper or cyber trail behind at Sherwood. Furthermore, as civil libertarians have pointed out, law enforcers will use their new powers in situations that haven't anything to do with terrorism. "Apparently, Attorney General Ashcroft wants to get the FBI back in the business of spying on religious and political organizations," the Associated Press quotes Margaret Ratner, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights. "That alone would be unconstitutional, but history suggests the FBI won't stop at passive information gathering." The TeleRead take: Yes, the existence of a well-stocked national digital library systems means that we would have guard with special care against privacy threats. But as numerous librarians can testify, this is already an issue in an era when local branches keep detailed computerized records. Furthermore, Phil Zimmermann, the man behind PGP encryption, has told me in the past that yes the technological means could exist to protect users' privacy in a TeleRead-style system. If nothing else, TeleRead could operate with technology similar to the kind envisioned for anonymous digital money. Keep in mind, too, that just as now, people could buy books through means other than TeleRead. Up with free or at least affordable knowledge. Down with Big Brother.
The library-filter decision--and the TeleRead take "A federal court panel struck down a law requiring libraries to filter the Internet for material harmful to minors yesterday, saying that the technology blocks so much unobjectionable material that it would violate the First Amendment rights of library patrons." - New York Times article dated June 1. TeleRead take: The court acted rightly. It isn't just a case of the filtering technology being less than perfect. We're talking art rather than science. One family's child-protection mechanisms may be another family's Big Brotherish censor. TeleRead would let parents either avoid filters on their children's reading material or choose the filters that mom and dad wanted. And of course the filters would affect individual TeleReader machines, not library machines. What's more, the filters could be from nongovernment sources--for example, church groups. Uncle should not be in the censorship business. For more on the decision, see the comments of Carrie The Rogue Librarian, who also speaks out sensibly on the greater powers that the FBI now has to monitor Americans' reading habits.
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