TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for June, 2003

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Here’s a new term for you–stogware, which blights DVD movie technology now and could hurt e-books in the future, when multimedia counts more.

This neologism, which I’ll define in a moment, came to mind when I was trying to play the DVD of Boiler Room, a film about stock-market crooks. Hollywood itself committed a crime against me. The DVD refused to run on on my Dell Optiplex unless I installed a program called PCFriendly. Orwell Land here. This “Friendly” program wasted half an hour of my time, perhaps because I preferred for my firewall to block the software’s path to and from the Net. Also, once I installed PCFriendly, my computer couldn’t load DVDs as quickly. Drat. My Dell had already come with a good DVD player. But thanks to proprietary encryption schemes, apparently, Hollywood wanted me to waste my hard disk space with a second program. Worse, to be able to play another DVD, I’d already installed InterActual Player, the successor to PCFriendly.

I uninstalled PCHostile and somehow managed to see Boiler Room with the RealOne player, at least after I’d selectively disabled the firewall; but the bad taste lingered. No telling what the greedsters–an apt term, considering that an AOL Time Warner offshoot released the film–had in mind for the innards of my machine. A little stealth here? Privacy-invading programs? At the same time, PCFriendly was taking up 10 megs on my drive if I recall correctly. Combine “stealthy” with “hoggish” and you come up with the term “stogware.” That’s, ugh, PCFriendly.

Meanwhile, aided by Silicon Valley, the assault on users’ present and future machines continues. A Safer System for Home PC’s Feels Like Jail to Some Critics is the New York Times’ headline over John Markoff’s piece on the sleazy “trusted computing initiative.” You might think of secure computing as a form of slogware. It’ll gobble up computing resources, cripple our machines and along the way be damn stealthy.

The irony is that our jailers, America’s stogware promoters, are far from squeaky-clean. Check out the Washington Post’s review of When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent Into Power and Influence, by Connie Bruck. Reviewer John Anderson, Newsday’s chief film critic, says that the late Wasserman “laid waste to a promising infant medium (television) and ensnared politicians of both parties in the film industry web (his legacy includes TV reruns, a performer’s participation in profits and arch-lobbyist Jack Valenti). Sidney Korshak, the Man Who Was Al Capone’s Lawyer, hardly needs much more of an introduction. Suffice to say, he did a lot of the dirty work, albeit without getting his own hands dirty.” The sleaze, as exemplifed by the massive campaign contributions that gave us the DMCA and resulted in Hollywood’s increased ability to bully Silicon Valley, continues–setting the stage for DC-blessed stogware.

One of the best antidotes for stogware threat, of course, besides a less buyable Congress, would open, nonproprietary standards for books and movies alike.

By David Rothman

If any group is pro-librarian, it’s TeleRead–promoting well-stocked national digital library systems that professionals would run in the States and elsewhere. At the same time we love grassroots efforts such as Project Gutenberg. Why? Careerism on occasion can triumph over common sense. And professional librarians and the usual media suspects mustn’t be the only ones controlling access to information.

The latest example of the need for alternative librarians is the shameful refusal of the American Library Association to go on record against the imprisonment of 14 Cubans who have run libraries not sponsored by the Fidel Castro’s totalitarian government. As reported in today’s New York Times:

Robert Kent, a New York librarian and in 1999 (a year after the independent libraries began) a co-founder of an informal group of librarians and others called Friends of Cuban Libraries, has been pushing the association to speak out on the harassment of the librarians. “For at least four years, the A.L.A. has ignored, covered up or lied about the persecution of people in Cuba whose only crime is to have opened libraries,” he said.

After the latest events, Mr. Kent and his supporters asked the association to hold a separate debate on Cuban restrictions that would have included five Cuban librarians–all working for government libraries–who went to the Toronto meeting. They also asked the 64,000-member A.L.A. to pass a formal resolution denouncing censorship in Cuba and demanding the release of the 14 jailed librarians.

In the end, the association allowed an “open mike” discussion with the Cuban librarians after they gave presentations, but deferred a resolution about Cuba to its next meeting in January, saying its members needed more information.

Another ALA excuse? Lack of standard credentials among the operators of lending libraries.

“If you have 100 books in your home and you make them available to friends, are you a librarian?” asked Edward Erazo, the outgoing chairman of the association’s Latin American subcommittee and coordinator of library instruction at Broward Community College in Davie, Fla. “It’s political. It has nothing to do with the fact that they operate independent libraries.”

Oh, come on, Mr. Erazo. The private Cuban collections include books on a number of topics beyond politics, according to Friends, and are far from mere collections of pamphlets. Censorship is censorship. Even though Robert Kent has received financing from anti-Castro groups, this is still a black mark on the ALA’s record, just as Kent said. It’s rather reminiscent of the apathy that former ALA President Mitch Freedman showed toward the plight of David Faucheux, a bright blind librarian who can’t find a job within his chosen profession. Keep in mind that the ALA officials have hardly been shy in censorship battles. But, here, careerism and political correctness triumphed.

What a contrast to journalism in one recent situation. When a freelance writer was jailed in Texas because a thuggish judge said she didn’t qualify for constitutional protections in connection with her investigation of a murder case, many elite members of the press rallied to her aid. Will the ALA do the same for the jailed librarians without Castro-safe institutional ties? Meanwhile an old quote from George Bernard Shaw comes to mind: “All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”

Under TeleRead, yes, as noted, professionals would run the formal library systems. At the same time, however, private and long-range public funding could support Gutenberg-style groups. The most dedicated library pros would understand and in fact applaud. Once again a journalistic analogy comes to mind. If a city has an aggressive underground newspaper, then the smarter mainstream journalists will rejoice–since coverups become harder for power-fixated politicians, well-placed crooks and other greedsters to pull off. Time for librarians to think in similar tems?

Luckily, as shown by resistance to traditional Comstocks, eager to see us all treated like eight year olds, U.S. librarians have stuck up for “the freedom to read.” Too bad the ALA can’t show a similar ‘tude toward Cuba.

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Think readers were Gemstar’s biggest victims? That honor may belong to certain small publishers–now the targets of obnoxious legal efforts from Gemstar. Here’s an e-mail I received today from Scott Schmidt, publisher of Salvo Press:

Enjoyed your article on Gemstar. Salvo Press signed with the old Nuvomedia (Rocket) and saw a constant decline ever since Gemstar took over. I liken Gemstar to millipedes. They shot themselves in the foot far too much for mere bipods. Anyway, the kicker this week was they sent us a letter first by fax and later by certified mail wanting us to sign a contract release because we did not continue to convert all of our titles to the various Gemstar formats. (Conversion to Gemstar was the most difficult of all eBook formats, and our contract did not require us to give them all of our titles.) BTW, this contract release would be retroactive to December 31, 2002. They must have thought I was brain-dead enough to sign it. That’s typical Gemstar. I only hope other small publishers did not sign.

Salvo continues to produce eBooks in Adobe PDF, Microsoft Reader, Palm, and Hiebook.

The nerve of Gemstar! Yes, it would be nice for as many titles as possible to be out in all formats–but not at the expense of small publishers’ solvency!

This is a good example of why I’m so gung ho on a standardized e-book format at the consumer level. Publishers should get into their arm-twisting mode and tell the Open eBook Forum: “Live up to your promises of five years ago, or we’re outta here.” We already know how fondly the AAP’s top lawyer-lobbyist views the proprietary-format mess. The OeBF had better decide: Is it around to promote the prosperity of the e-book business in general, or just that of Microsoft, Adobe, OverDrive, Palm and the like? At the very least, OeBF needs to do a practical consumer-level format that could be a fallback like .rtf.

(Salvo letter reproduced with permission. I welcome similar correspondence from other publishers. Please tell me if it’s OK to quote you.)

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In the p-book era I’ve racked up enough library fines to build a headquarters, not just a branch. Hey, it could be worse. I think of the fines as donations to my favorite library system in a near-by county (alas, my own city’s library is too understocked for my needs). The issue is one of time. I’m self-employed, and in effect it costs me money when I must fight traffic. Simply put, I’ve got the most selfish of reasons to be keen on Project Gutenberg, whose public domain classics can remain on my computer forever. I love to skip around from title to title after I download them for keeps. Just finished At the Earth’s Core and have King Coal and several others going right now.

But what about books still under copyright? I’m grouchy about OverDrive-style “solutions.” I don’t want books to vanish from my PDA or otherwise be disabled after such-and-such number of days. Might not always be able to renew ‘em.

So what to do? Well, for years, the TeleRead plan has advocated perennial checkouts–the ability to keep even copyrighted library books on your machine forever. If it takes the inclusion of Digital Rights Mangement to sell the industry on this concept–well, if need be, I’ll stomach it. Jon Noring has told how the industry could at least make DRM less obnoxious through use of nonproprietary approaches.

But how would perennial checkouts work to allow publishers to make money, given the possibility of file-sharing? Well, suppose Reader A couldn’t successfully pass on a book to Reader B unless Fair Use or one of two other situations existed. First of the two others: B lived in the same library-service area and could check out the books wiht the same provisions for payment to copyright holders as in A’s case. The payment process could begin automatically, triggered by the file-sharing. In the second situation, A or B (or B’s own library system) could pay the content-provider directly.

Result? Library users could keep library books on their systems as long as they wanted, while also being able to share. I think it would show foresight on the part of the Open eBook Forum experts to develop such a capability. Then libraries would have yet another lending model available for copyrighted content.

My own hunch is that libraries right now will want to experiment with different models, but the TeleRead-style one is my favorite since it would allow users to build custom libraries on their own machines without worrying about zapping of overdue items. And at the same time, as you’ll notice, creators would receive compensation. Ideally this could happen someday through a national digital library fund–to reduce the famous savage inequalities of our schools and libraries.

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Chris Pirillo, the master Gnome at LockerGnome, publishes e-book tutorials on topics ranging from Linux to publicity for small businesspeople. And right now he’s looking for new writers. But don’t expect your work to appear with Digital Rights Management. An FAQ tells why:

We take the “WinZip” approach to marketing. The company has done virtually nothing to curb the rampant piracy of their software. Do they lose money? Yeah, sure–but they’ve got the top position as far as Windows compression software is concerned. When someone thinks “ZIP file,” they think of WinZip. And yes, registrations are healthy enough for them not to worry about those who cheat the system…

Even if someone pirates a GnomeTome, they’re going to find a URL splashed all over it. Some people think five dollars is too much. Will they look to see what else we have available? Hopefully. Will they subscribe to our free newsletters? Possibly. Now, if you have other irons in the fire, think about how a GnomeTome could help increase the chances of someone discovering them. It’s branding, though the thieves don’t realize it. When you’re hot enough to steal, you’re hot.

Via an email to me, Chris adds:

The larger the corporation, the more they believe control is essential for success. While I agree that certain parameters should be in place, people have to be realistic. How much did it cost me to produce the content? It’s still worth a set amount, but there are less fixed costs to contend with electronic distribution. Is it worth my time to pursue people who can’t afford to spend $10 on a title? Hardly.

The last thing I want to do is offend my paying audience.

A lesson for major book publishers–and music and movie tycoons, too?

By David Rothman

Illegal copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, latest in the Potter series, are showing up on Usenet.

But some e-bookers want to do the right thing. Byron Collins, moderator of of the pda-ebook list, has just posted a petition suggesting that authorized versions of the books be sold in the popular PalmReader format, which Pocket PCs can also read.

I’d rather that the petition allude to other formats, too, of course, but it’s better than no petition at all–so sign it. I did even though I’m not a fan of Harry Potter (early 20th-century fiction would be more my speed these days). It’s the principle that counts.

Talk about Harry Potter books and morality! Right now the forces of darkness have the online incarnation of Potter–well, the Order of the Phoenix book, anyway–to themselves.

If the Potter publishers respond to honest fans, however, they’ll send a powerful message that they respect their customers more than the music industry does.

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Sick of having your kid lug around heavy, back-straining textbooks? Here’s an uppity thought. The feds or the states might think about requiring use of e-books in local school districts.

We’re talking about children’s brains and backs alike. And it isn’t as if the technology is as expensive as it used to be, especially compared to textbook replacement costs. Besides, as I can verify first-hand, from reading e-books hour after hour, the screen technology is much better these days. Perhaps schools could have a lenient deadline to make the transition without busting budgets. Legislators could respect the usual textbook replacement cycles and allow time for the gadgetry to improve even more.

Besides, with so much material about to be made available in e-formats for blind students, why not think about the same for others?

No need to be doctrinaire. The very youngest kids could still start out with paper books. And as I’ve noted earlier, schools could let the students use PDAs, tablets or other machines, depending on their needs.

Meanwhile, TeleRead CTO James Linden has posted a variant of the article below to Geek.com–following an earlier rant by “a Disgruntled high school student.” – David Rothman.

A textbook case for technology
By James Linden

I’ve been a complete geek since I was old enough to even say the word. I would have loved to have PDA and eBook technology available when I was in high school.

When making digital formats available, publishers can actually increase their profit margin. Because of reduction of production costs (paper, ink, etc.), electronic formats could be cheaper than textbooks, but in the bigger picture, provide the better profit margin. Distribution is wholly online, or cheap-to-ship CDs, and not thousands of pounds of paper books. This significantly cuts down on distribution costs as well.

Futher savings can be made on the publishing end when new editions are needed, as they can quite easily issue addendums and/or partial replacements (depending on the file format), instead of incurring a whole new round of production and distribution costs. This would make it much more economical to keep the textbooks up to date – which is a serious problem in schools. I often had arguments with my teachers because new facts contradicted the science books.

The matter of backups for electronic media is quite simple to take care of. While initially, it might be costly to setup, having a couple of kiosks in school hallways or offices would make it quite simple for a student to reload their particular etextbooks if they upgraded their personal PDA, or the file became corrupted, etc. Backups on the school level are even less complex.

The simple facts are:

A) CDs are cheaper and more efficient to create, store, distribute, and replace.

B) PDA technology (Hiebook, eBookMan, Palm, PocketPC based) is getting cheaper and cheaper.

C) File management for archives, along with appropriate DRM standards are not that complex to work out.

D) In a work world which is almost completely immersed in technology in almost every field, the use of such technology in high schools would surely better prepare our students for the “real world.” No, students should not learn to completely rely on calculators and spell-checkers, but face it, everyone else does.

E) A custom eTextbook device could be engineered to meet the specific needs of such a system. The sheer market size for such a device would make it very cheap when purchased in large quantities (at a school system, county, or state level).

F) Most of the software infrastructure for such a system (eTextbook device included) is, or can be made, available via open source licenses.

Really, the only things keeping such a large technology advancement out of our schools are greedy companies and timid politicians.

Additional comments from David Rothman: Actually, I suspect, some of the better publishers would welcome the legislation I’ve mentioned. And the others? Ignorance can be as much if not more of a problem than greed. I can remember the time when publishers found it hard to envision e-books being displayed on a machine other than a desktop.

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Book publishers like some new legisation in Congress aimed at creating format standards for material used by blind students. See details via eBookAd, picking up a press release from the Association of American Publishers. Oh, to have some kind of standardization for the rest of us, not just the blind. Please note that we have not seen the proposed legislation–and may have further comments. From the AAP release:

Among its key provisions, the legislation would (1) require all states to use the same standardized national electronic file format for the conversion of textbooks and other core instructional materials into accessible formats; (2) mandate that publishers provide such print instructional materials in the form of a properly-formatted electronic file to a central repository for their timely and convenient distribution to authorized entities for conversion into accessible formats; and (3) establish and authorize funding for a National Instructional Materials Access Center which would be responsible for cataloging, storing and distributing the electronic files provided by publishers.

Perhaps there are some loopholes, but this idea sounds as if it might be good for the public and industry alike. We already know how an important AAP official feels about the need for standards for the whole e-book industry. Of course if the book industry gets them without federal intervention, then so much the better.

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“U.S. Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) and John Doolittle (R-Rocklin) today introduced the Public Domain Enhancement Act, legislation that will ensure that abandoned works pass into the public domain so that others can preserve, archive, and build upon them.” – Press release from a site promoting the Act.

The TeleRead take: As noted earlier, the Act is not without its risks; I’d hate for the possible legal ramifications to harm Australia as a public-domain haven. Still, we badly need to try this approach. Sign the related petition and contact your Senators or representative. The main Congressional switchboard, by the way, is at 202-224-3121. What a great chance to see if your pols are pro-public or pro-greedster.

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That’s not exactly what Allan Adler, a lawyer-lobbyist for the Association of American Publishers, said. But in a Cnet article on e-piracy–tied to the latest Harry Potter book–his observations were going off in that direction. Here’s some context from the article:

So is the trade in bootleg books the next Napster?

Not until people become more accustomed to reading books on PCs, say traders and industry associations.

“With published books, most are released in hardcopy print first,” noted Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs for the AAP. “File sharing requires conversion through scanning, and just as consumers have not indicated that they are wildly accepting of e-readers, it’s not clear that most readers would find unauthorized scanned works downloaded online to be a preferable form for them.”

Adler pointed out that e-books have yet to become popular with consumers because of issues such as incompatible formats, short battery life and hard-to-read screens. Given these obstacles, Adler said, “it’s not clear we’re going to have the same kinds of problems” that the recording and software publishers have experienced.

Notice? Incompatible formats happened to be among the issues mentioned. Meanwhile I congratulate Adler, one of the most clueful people at AAP, for not panicking over the piracy. It just isn’t that big a revenue-loser now.

But piracy could well be a major threat in the very near future if the industry does not act sensibly. E-book technology has gotten much better in recent years, just like scanning. I actually would rather read books on my Dell Axim than on paper. With a combination of ClearType and TinyReader, even ASCII text looks great, and you can control just about everything from type size to the space between lines and paragraphs. Plus, the battery lasts more than a dozen hours. For me, the future has already come.

So is it time for oppressive Digital Rights Management schemes? No! Proprietary formats tend to use proprietary DRM, and the combination can be a disaster to the industry. Novelist Kate Saundby, confirming a hunch in an earlier TeleBlog post, emailed me yesterday:

I don’t use Secure MsReader…because Microsoft decided not to support the upgrade, which would have enabled me to do, for my Jornada 540 which it chose to term an “older Pocket PC.”

Since I’d had my Jornada 540 for slightly over six months at the time of this announcement, I began wondering what Microsoft calls “younger.”

Suffice it to say, MsReader became an instant dirty word with me and I’ve been happily using, and touting, the much more customer-savvy MobiPocket ever since.

Problem is, Kate Saundby can’t find all the books she wants in MobiPocket format. A little Catch-22 here.

The best solutions to the potential piracy threat? Fair prices and convenient shopping. And, ideally, TeleRead-style national digital libraries in the States and abroad. They could reduce the incentives for piracy by putting many copyrighted books on line for free (while compensating copyright holders).

And if the industry wants DRM? Then at least use a nonproprietary flavor–in a standard consumer-level format, as suggested by Jon Noring.

One hopes that the AAP will catch on and not allow software vendors and conversion houses to call the shots. Surely there are better ways of coping with e-piracy than letting the format mess hobble the industry.

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Gemstar bragged and bragged about the e-book unit’s closed distribution (Rip-Off City for readers) and the deals with major publishers. Still, at Simon & Schuster, Keith Titan appears less than pleased with Gemstar’s philosophy–or at least its execution. From Publishers Weekly:

“Gemstar customers are very dedicated ebook readers. Hopefully they’ll migrate to other formats,” says S&S’s Keith Titan, who says the publisher has been seeing growth in all three other formats.” Titan added that it wasn’t the idea of a dedicated device but Gemstar’s execution, which involved a closed-distribution system, that was the issue. “We still think that with things like the right timing and the right price, a dedicated device can work.”

By the way, despite my past skepticism toward dedicated devices, I’d be delighted if someone could come up with a Gemstar equivalent at under $100. My wife and I have been tinkering this week with an REB 1100, a $96 open-box special that I found on eBay. I’m more angry than ever at the old Gemstar management. I could weep at the mess that Henry Yuen made out of the old Rocket eBook and SoftBook. No, not the hardware, but the sleazy business practices that led to a shut-down of the production lines (Thomson made the machines sold under the RCA label).

Granted, the REB 1100’s screen is primitive compared to the sharp, high-contrast screen on my Dell Axim. But it’s still good enough for hour after hour of reading. Won’t someone please resurrect the hardware at a fair price and avoid Gemstar’s stupid business model? I wonder how much it would cost for someone to snap up the design rights and set up a production line.

Meanwhile I’m thinking about buying Hillary Clinton’s overpriced e-book via Gemstar, just to see the choice-hostile distribution system in action for the last time before it fades away. You might view this as the virtual equivalent of a visit to the old Berlin Wall. The greedster Yuen was about as respectful of readers as the Soviets and friends were of the German people.

Luckily marketplace pressures tore down Yuen’s wall–the one that arose when he disabled the ability of Gemstar to read nonproprietary formats.

That ability is back, or at least is present in our unit, even after a just-made firmware update. Carly and I are using RocketLibrarian software (converting ASCII or HTML to the Gemstar format) and the eBookLibrarian (for transfer from desktop to laptop). No need for us, anyway, to use the Gemstar conversion server. Oh, and in case you’re curious, the RocketLibrarian works fine with XP on the desktop in spite of a message saying the program isn’t Bill-blessed.

Just loaded into our Gemstar: Mansfield Park, At the Earth’s Core and Sara Crewe; or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s. All public domain. Our RocketLibrarian seems especially fond of HTML from the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia.

A reminder: You can also use the software to pick up HTML from small publishers. Try to be partial to the ones without oppressive Digitial Rights Management. Perhaps someday that wall will also come down.

Meanwhile, if nothing else, the Gemstar debacle means that distributors can release books in Gemstar format without worrying about some contractual interference that arose at times from Yuen and friends. And of course I’m enjoying my own good luck. If Yuen’s business model had been more sensible, Gemstar machines wouldn’t be such bargains.

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Here’s what writer-publisher Ed Howdershelt, at Abintra Press, wrote recently about e-book-related hardware:

Well, there’s [a] rub. I never bought either a Nuvo Rocket or a Rocket eBook and probably won’t mess with a e-reading hardware until one shows up that:

–Has a hard drive like the new Ipod.

–Can display HTML, PDF, or text files without conversions to some proprietary format.

–Can be loaded from a CD.

–Can run 24 hours on a charge OR use “AA” batteries.

–Has a screen at least 4 inches wide.

–Can play MP3 files through earphones, whether while reading or not.

…and sells for about $100.

In case you’re curious, iPods start at $299 and include at least 10G of drive space–which, on an e-book machine, would be just the ticket for being able to hear a lot of music while you read.