TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for March, 2003

By a TeleBlog Contributor

Computer users know of the contempt of many software companies for consumers. “Blame the end user” is the mantra of many a tech support staff. It’s great to see consumer protection bills introduced in Congress to warn the public of copy-cop schemes that could interfere with the usability of various kinds of products. Be interesting to see how this concept could affect, say, e-books in the future. Lest one doubt the need for precautions, consider a wonderful article by Lee Dembart in the International Herald Tribune, Companies fine-tune the art of fending off complaints. The first part:

PARIS–Years ago, the story goes, when people still traveled in Pullman sleeping cars, a passenger found a bedbug in his berth. He immediately wrote a letter to George M. Pullman, president of the Pullman’s Palace Car Company, informing him of this unhappy fact, and in reply he received a very apologetic letter from Pullman himself.

The company had never heard of such a thing, Pullman wrote, and as a result of the passenger’s experience, all of the sleeping cars were being pulled off the line and fumigated. The Pullman’s Palace Car Company was committed to providing its customers with the highest level of service, Pullman went on, and it would spare no expense in meeting that goal. Thank you for writing, he said, and if you ever have a similar problem–or any problem–do not hesitate to write again.

Enclosed with this letter, by accident, was the passenger’s original letter to Pullman, across the bottom of which the president had written, “Send this S.O.B. the bedbug letter.”

The Tribune article goes on to raise the rather reasonable question that Microsoft may take XP-related complaints about as seriously as AOL take spam reports. So would this apply to e-books–beyond problems with Microsoft Reader and variants thereof? Well, imagine 100 years from now when you’re trying to read an old format. Heck, for all we know, Microsoft might not even be around to play down end user complaints. Just about all the orignal members of the Dow index are gone. Simpy put, if we want e-books to be both readable and reliably preserved a century from now and beyond, we need a well-stocked national digital library system that would address these issues in a systematic way.

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Schools are tossing out perfectly good textbooks because publishers force them to do this. So says D. June Fredman, a tutor, in a letter to the Washington Post. K-12 needs, of course, are a big reason why TeleRead advocates a well-stocked national digital library system–full of appropriate books for all of us, but especially for schoolchildren. Let the online collection suit their interests and learning styles.

Meanwhile, in her much-needed letter in today’s Post, Ms. Fredman, a resident of Gresham, Oregon, writes:

I tutor a few youngsters from a district that cannot afford texts. My students bring single sheets of copied material by way of assignments, often with instructions to refer to a manual or text that isn’t available. By contrast, in more well-heeled districts, schools routinely throw away used texts, some in pristine condition. My inquiry revealed that textbook publishers require their customers to sign a contract promising not to give away their purchased books.

Not only is this an unconscionable waste, it also punishes kids from low-income areas. I have been a student, I have been the mother of students, and I have taught. I know the value of having books from which to study at home at one’s own pace, to use for review and reinforcement of information gleaned orally. This practice should be stopped.

All good points! Let’s stop the mandatory toss-outs of used books. In subjects like science, geography and modern history, however, up-to-date books can help. Via TeleRead, students wouldn’t just have textbooks, period–they could benefit from the very freshest ones, thanks to the Net and e-book technology. What’s more, with a National Digital Library Fund, gaps would be narrower between the resources of rich and poor school districts.

Reminder: Textbooks are hardly the only K-12 issue that TeleRead could address. In Indiana, Dr. Jack Humphrey, director of the Middle Grades Reading Network, has written of the relationship between academic quality and a healthy focus on reading–including the availability of enough library books.

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Texas and Massachusetts are among the potential culprits. More via The Yale LawMeme. That’s not all, alas, according to Edward Felten. Um, would you believe that firewalls would be theoretically illegal? Oh, and outrages in the same vein are said to be under consideration in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Tennessee and Colorado. Have we really reached the point where an understanding of the Net is a disqualification for running for office at any level of government?

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The mobster Meyer Lansky supposedly said once: “We’re bigger than General Motors.” Perhaps that parallel might come to mind for the clueless record industry, which has been so late to embrace the concept of file sharing. Here’s an item from SFGate.com via The Shifted Librarian:

“Free peer-to-peer music file-sharing has become larger than the multibillion dollar recording industry with a growth trend that has become ‘fundamentally unstoppable,’ a media analyst told a state Senate committee exploring Internet piracy on Thursday.

The free downloading habit among 61 million Americans and millions more worldwide is “cemented,” with only 9 percent of U.S. downloaders believing they are doing anything wrong, said Eric Garland, founder of Beverly Hills-based Big Champagne, which analyzes Internet trends.

“We see only one trend,” said Garland. “More people are downloading more copyrighted material.”

Instead of fighting the trend, which he called a losing battle, Garland said the entertainment industry should embrace digital distribution rather than file lawsuits that only make more people aware of free downloads.

But industry representatives largely rejected the advice, instead promoting legal challenges and education, including a new anti-file-sharing movie clip that will appear soon in movie theaters….

“The record business, in the digital revolution, has been a day late and a dollar short,” said Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin.

The TeleRead take: A lesson for book publishers–even if the analyst could be engaging in hyperbole? In cases where fair use didn’t apply, TeleRead could address the sharing issue by providing for a nonintrusive, privacy-protected tracking system to allow publishers to be paid out of a National Digital Library Fund in the case of covered book and directly from consumers in the case of others. The more pass-alongs, the bigger the payment. So the interests of publishers and readers would be closer together.

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TeleRead backed the creation of the Microsoft-inspired Open eBook organization, but still can’t understand the group’s inability to come up with a good e-book standard at the consumer level. Just what might happen if OEB actually showed some spunk and didn’t let Microsoft and the other ususal suspects get in the way? Well, one hint might be in the CNet news item below, which is dated March 25:

Microsoft breaks with standards effort

By Martin LaMonica
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 25, 2003, 4:00 AM PT

In a sign of growing discord over Web services guidelines, Microsoft has pulled out of a key Web services standards working group.

Over the past month, IBM and Microsoft have been at odds with other companies around standards submissions, including a high-profile effort within the Web’s leading standards organization, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Now Microsoft has upped the rancor by dropping out of a W3C working group focused on establishing rules for how businesses will send and receive data to one another via Web services.

The company withdrew from the W3C’s so-called choreography group because it determined that the scope of the group did not align well with the work of two Microsoft researchers who attended the initial meeting, said Steven VanRoekel, director of Web services marketing for Microsoft.

VanRoekel described the Microsoft research on “contract language,” which deals with ways two pieces of software communicate, as only partially related to the notion of automated business processes through Web services. He added that the W3C “is not the only vehicle in which to impact and evaluate a set of technologies.”

Earlier Microsoft participated in and backed an e-book conference at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. But that stopped. When you’re the biggest boy on the block and you don’t like the way the marble game is going, you can always take away your share of the marbles.

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“…enthusiasts…continue to use the Apple Newton, a handheld that was abandoned by its manufacturer just more than five years ago.” – San Jose Mercury News.

The TeleRead take: I’m especially impressed by one Newtonian’s observation that the size is right–bigger than a PDA but smaller than a Tablet PC. Anyone out there using a Newton for e-books? Sure enough, as mentioned on the Newton Reference site. Also see a Wired article and the Apple Newton Research Page.

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What’s next–the recording industry sending grandmas to jail? The AARP is advertising on Kazaa, reports the New York Times.

The TeleRead take: E-books right now appeal more to younger than older people, but this could rapidly change. Significantly, TeleRead would make file-swapping a snap–with due payments to providers of content still under copyright.

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Microsoft Reader has its flaws, but it is among the more popular standards for e-books, and if you want to use that format for your own efforts, then check out Pocket PC Thoughts. (Via Pocket PC eBooks Watch.)

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“…not everything is answerable. And occasionally Answers will refuse to even try. We asked for the personal worth of Google founders Sergai Brin and Larry Page. A message came back saying that the question breached the conditions of use and had been removed.” – The Age, discussing Google Answers.

The TeleRead take: Oh, come on, guys. Who do you think you are, Microsoft?

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“Software, music and movies that employ copy-protection schemes must be prominently labeled with consumer warnings, according to a bill introduced in Congress this week” – CNet.

The TeleRead take: Sen. Ron Wyden’s bill is a tougher version of one from Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia.

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Get this. A new proposal from Hollywood, whoops, Mexico, would not just extend copyright terms from the-author’s-life-and-70 years to life-and-100. Afterwards, the Mexican government could collect royalties. So much for the concept for public domain, eh? Just nationalize it away to finance bureaucracy.

Meantime, as U.S. copyright expert Lawrence Lessig has pointed out, while copyrights were in effect, Hollywood could make out like a bandit at the expense of the preservation of Mexican culture. How splendid a distillation of the obnoxious sides of both Mexican and U.S. politics!

Imagine–a give-away to Yankee entertainment tycoons and Mexican government bureaucracy at the same time! What’s disturbing is that here in the States, the Democrats, who have favored both oppressive copyright law in recent years and big government for the most part, just might look South someday for inspiration.

The TeleRead site may have more commentary on this later. Meanwhile you can read comments directly from Mexican copyright experts.

April 1 isn’t that far off, and I just keep hoping this is an April Fool’s Day joke.

Item spotted via The Shifted Librarian.

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Before the e-book-readers and PDAs came the laptops. Before the laptops came the luggables, and before the luggables came the dreams and temerity of techno-entrepreneurs like Adam Osborne, who introduced the pioneering 23-pound computer he named for himself. He was a major advocate of low-cost programs and even called one of his companies “Paperback Software.” Last Tuesday, in a village in southern India, where his sister had been caring for him, he did something totally out of character and died peacefully in his sleep. RIP.