TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for September, 2003

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At the start the weirdos were the public-spirited. How dare anyone demand that Washington stop calls from brokers and siding sales reps from disrupting families at dinner! The special interests trotted out the standard economic arguments, and the pols fell in line, encouraged undoubtedly by campaign donations.

But guess what? Votes in the end mattered more than money. Even George Bush, hardly the nation’s leading consumerist, has joined the stampede to rein in the telemarketers. A lesson for the RIAA and other zealots in the wake of Brianna vs. the real Sopranos?

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Project Gramophone may have to set up shop outside the U.S. and keep Americans from downloading lush music that is part of our own national identity.

Started by my friend Jon Noring, Gramophone is a focused initiative to preserve old recordings by putting them on the Web the way Project Gutenberg has uploaded thousands of literary classics for rich and poor alike. Gramophone “would archive sound recordings made up through the 1920’s or 1930’s and sometimes more recently, depending on various factors.”

Problem is, it may not be that simple for Jon and rest of us in Gramophone to make the Roaring ’20s and the rest come to life on your Net-connected computer.

Along with others on the Project Gramophone list, Jon has been conscientiously researching the laws. Now he worries that Project Gramophone may not even be able to share its music with people in the United States, his own country. Yes, you read it right. Surfers in, say, Australia or Japan might be able to enjoy Gramophone’s music, but not schoolchildren in Harlem or Anacostia, which is all the more unfortunate, given the importance of minorities on the American music scene.

Simply put, it’s high time that America changed its laws to make the online preservation of early audio recordings less of a legal challenge and give us a true public domain in recorded music. For all practical purposes, one doesn’t exist now–even for recordings made before 1923, which is commonly the dividing line for those determining if books can go on the Net for free.

Remember, we’re talking about decades-old recordings, not illegal swaps of Britney Spears cuts. Worsening the problem are vanity laws at the state level, lovingly crafted by industry lobbyists of yore. Of course, one hopes that recording companies will cooperate with Jon despite their past and present ability to buy vanity legislation from cash-hungry pols at all levels. He is the old MP3 not.

Here’s part of his candid reading of the situation–a list of “requirements for the launch of PrGr” under current law:

1) PrGr must not actively solicit source material nor transfers from anyone in the U.S. It must not accept transfers unless it knows where the transfers were done and where the transfers were sent from–the transfers must not have been done in, nor sent from, the U.S. Those who did the transfers from original master pressings must authorize their release to PrGr.

2) If PrGr does its own transfers (which I believe it should using state-of-the-art equipment), the transfers must be done in the country where PrGr has its base of operations. (PrGr would accept “walks-ins” of course, with no questions asked where the records came from, so long as they were not actively solicited from the U.S.–the key for maximum legal protection is knowing and restricting where the transfers are done and by whom.)

3) For at least the first few years of PrGr’s existence, the material transferred initially should meet a voluntary 70 year “term,” so for PrGr operations in 2003, PrGr would only transfer pre-1933 material (see #4 right below), in 2004 it would be pre-1934 material, in 2005 pre-1935 material, etc. Even if PrGr is legally allowed to transfer a lot of post-pre-WWII recordings, it is best to focus in the first few years on the pre-WWII recordings, especially the rarer pre-Swing recordings.

4) If the country of PrGr operation determines copyright of sound recordings based on release/publication date (and not on when the recording was fixed), then PrGr must base what it transfers (see #3 right above) on when the recording was actually released/published. Unissued alternate takes would not be put online since they are obviously under copyright protection. (Thus, it is important to fully understand the law in the host country regarding the term of the copyright of sound recordings, including on what basis the term is calculated from: when it was fixed or when it was published/released.)

5) The PrGr online web site must make it plain that anyone residing in the U.S. may not download anything from the site, including mentioning that RIAA has threatened to, and may attempt to, determine those on U.S. soil who are trying to access the recordings and file legal action against them. I’d make sure this statement is very boldly presented on the home Web page with no editorial comment whatsoever–here’s no need to make an additional editorial comment since just stating it in big bold letters is an editorial statement all to itself.

While Jon won’t make editorial comments on the proposed home page, I’ll speak up here for myself and not at all for Project Gramophone. The RIAA and friends are to old music what the worst of the U.S. efforts were in Vietnam, with a burn-this-village-to-save it mentality. We’re not just talking about the legal risks to basic preservation through widespread replication on the Net. Just how valuable will the old music be to humanity if it vanishes from the mass consciousness because the big money isn’t it it for profit-minded conglomerates? Thanks to the greed and control-mindedness of the music industry, however, no small part of our audio heritage may be lost or restricted to the elite (including the collectors of the master recordings, who, under the current laws, exercise far more far control than they should). I’d love for the RIAA types, if approached by Jon, to disprove my skepticism.

If industry-created barriers can’t be overcome, Project Gramophone just may have to start up in Canada–assuming that the tentacles of the American recording industry don’t reach far enough into the courts and legislative branch of our neighbors to the north.

If, however, the industry behaved decently toward Project Gramophone, Jon would reciprocate. His goal is to help the public, not torment the recording companies. Jon thinks one good step would be to lessen the mostly theoretical liabilities–from hard-to-find heirs of long-dead musicians–that might result if companies donated recordings to Gramophone-style groups or released them to the public domain. Another step, I suspect, might be to give the corporations new tax breaks.

Memo to Howard Dean and other presidential candidates: Care to take a stand? Or are you too worried about your mother’s milk from Hollywood campaign donors?

Suggestion for Larry Lessig: Why not speak up and energize your troops for Jon Noring? This is a posterboy illustration of the need for more enlightened copyright law and related legislation. Ideally you can encourage Gov. Dean, Gen. Clark and the rest to take a stand.

Reminder to the RIAA and its members: You haven’t exactly scored a major PR coup with your threats against a 12-year-old. Helping Jon would be one way to show a new sensitivity to the commonweal.

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Not sure what to make of these UNESCO stats found at NationMaster.com. Canada, with 227 library books per 1,000 people and a rank of 42, is far below the top five countries of Georgia (15,400), Monaco (9,910), Liechtenstien (5,100), San Marino (3,858) and Iceland (3,007). I’ll delete the reminder of this paragraph since I have more current info.

Librarians: Anyone out there care to add some context? How much do the numbers suggest we’re book-starved, and how much do they suggest we’re simply library book-starved? If we’re to address the famous “savage inequalities” of our schools and libraries, then we don’t want to be starved in either way.

Of course, the sheer numbers of books aren’t enough. Age and relevance can matter, too.

The TeleRead take: If the numbers say what I think, then we in North America may have room for acquisition of many more library books. And e-books could help keep costs down.

Update, 3:45 p.m.: According to a library site in Kanas mentioned by a helpful reader, the number of books per capita in the States in 1996 was just 2.8. That would be equivalent to 2,800 books per 1,000 or, it would appear, better than Canada or Cuba–but far behind Georgia, with 15.4 library books per person. Not a stellar performance, even if you allow for growth since ‘96!

I’m in the middle of work-related deadlines but hope to get more up-to-date info from the Public Library Association.

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Project Gutenberg has has a spiffy new page to let you search or browse by author or title.

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Tablets PCs are like e-books–exotic to the typical consumer, but still an area of growth. And a new Reuters story says sales are improving; and that’s good news for digital publishers. Here are stats from Alan Promisel, an IDC analyst:

Promisel said that his firm predicts that in 2003, a total of 500,000 tablet PCs will be sold around the globe, which represents about 1 percent of the total portable PC market.

But, by 2007, IDC forecasts that the tablet PC could account for well over 20 percent of the portable market.

Remember, those are Tablet PC sales alone. Let’s hope that Linux-related sales can take off, too. Keep in mind all the system overhead on PC machines–not to mention the fact that Linux is a safer, more stable operating system.

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Sci-fi novelist and copyright-holder Orson Scott Card recently expressed his thoughts on the morons at the RIAA:

It only gets stupider the more you think about it. The kids they’re trying to prosecute and punish are in exactly the demographic that advertisers are most eager to target, not because they have the most money–far from it, people my age have all the money–but because they’re “brandable.” They haven’t yet committed themselves to brand loyalty. They’re open to all kinds of possibilities. And advertisers want to get to them and imprint their brands so that they’ll own these consumers as they get older and start earning money.

So just how smart is it to indelibly imprint on their young minds a link between your corporate brand and outrageous punishments for music-sharing?

Book publishers have much to learn from the debacles of the music industry, of course. They shouldn’t be smug just because e-books haven’t caught on due to Luddite stereotypes and other reasons. Sooner or later, millions will want the books, annual sales will be far more than the present $10 million a year, and then the piracy issue will haunt the industry for real

(Found via the Internet Scout Project Web Log.)

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Actually you can annotate Quicksilver and enjoy author Neal Stephenson’s blessing–if you do it via the Metaweb project, which describes itself this way:

The Metaweb is a collaborative structure for learning. In our first phase, we are annotating the ideas and historical period explored in Neal Stephenson’s novel Quicksilver, seeding the Metaweb with an initial base of information. We are currently working on 116 articles, and hope you will expand and relate these and many other entries.

(Found via Boing Boing Bloing and O h n o s e c o n d, the latter of which sensibly notes: “This isn’t out in ebook format. I wish they’d hurry UP.”)

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Adventures in E-Book Shopping, a horror story found at Publishing Central, tells it all:

A recent attempt to purchase an ebook illustrates the danger electronic publishers face if they don’t make it easier to purchase the ebooks they sell.

In her article, Wendy J. Woudstra concludes:

What lessons are there to be learned from this shopping excursion? Ebook retailers and publishers must make it easier to to purchase ebooks in the reader’s preferred format–whatever that format may be. As long as it’s easier to steal an ebook from a file sharing network than it is to buy it from a bookstore, the publishing industry will be in the same hot water as the recording industry has been for the last several years.

Read Ms. Woudstra’s article, and you may be reminded of a common pattern in these stories. Many frustrated shoppers end up using the Palm Digital Media format–often because of prices or greater convenience. It’s a lesson for the rest of the industry. The best solution would be a mix of lower prices, a universal consumer format, more cluefulness on the downside of DRM, and eventually a TeleRead-style library system to make e-books a more serious medium. But there is plenty that e-book companies can do even now in terms of prices and convenience.

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From Web writer to popcorn-sweeper-upper–that’s how Barbara Card Atkinson, an underemployed California mother, tells of her fall in the modern American economy. And, oh, yes, there’s a school library angle, too, in her Salon piece, alas:

In my 8-year-old daughter’s backpack last night was a notice from the school’s volunteer committee asking parents to help teach art this year. The committee is new, formed to bridge the gap left by the extreme budget cuts made by our town this spring. Included in the cuts were art education, both enrichment and remedial instruction, and all counseling services, as well as drastically reduced time spent in the gymnasium, at the computers, and in the library.

Meanwhile the poverty rate here in the States is growing. Time for more efficient ways of spreading the books around? We can’t afford not to use technology to make our schools and libraries more efficient and effective. Moreover, isn’t it time to think of new business models–whether in librarydom or elsewhere? And yet, as shown by the ISO item below, the greedsters are trying to take us backwards.

Yes, there are broader political implications. I won’t get into elections and the like, but I will point you to a perspective that more and more Americans will acquire if our well-bought pols don’t wake up from their comas.

Update, 2:30 p.m., Sept. 27: I’ve just run across some relevant tidbits on page 60 of Forbes’ October 6 issue. The Fed Reserve compared the total personal wealth of Americans with the sum of the wealth of members of the the Forbes 400 list. Results? The 400’s percentage of the total rose from 1.6 percent in 1989 to 2.3 percent in 2001.

So much for all this babble on CNBC about America being a capitalistic democracy with a fair chance for all. I’m still a capitalist, remarkably, but it’s no small challenge–given all the thievery that Washington permitted and probably still does.

Companies such as AOL Time Warner did a great job of playing Robin Hood in reverse, and even now Steve Case is doing quite well, thank you, with $610 million to his name and a rank of 393 on the list, despite all the questionable happenings at the company among his former subordinates, none likely to see the inside of a jail soon.

During The Boom, Mr. Case was selling stock to “diversify” and assuring us that it was all routine. I’d love to know if Ms. Atkinson and spouse entrusted the AOL crowd with retirement money.

(Salon piece spotted via J.D. Lasica.)

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You already know what havoc has been inflicted on the e-book industry by the builders of the Tower of eBabel–with all those warrning formats that drive consumers beserk. If any industry cries out for nonproprietary standards, it’s ours. But guess what. A new proposal would actually weaken the existing standards movement in a variety of industries. Talk about a conspiracy against the commonweal! From an IT newsletter quoted on the list of the Union for the Public Domain:

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is debating a proposal that calls for royalties on three commonly used standards: the ISO codes for countries, currencies, and languages. IT industry groups, such as the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) have voiced opposition to the proposal and expressed concern that, if the proposal is passed, it will erode the firmly established standards for these ISO codes. In an industry where standards are difficult to establish and are frequently bent and broken, the ISO standards for country, currency, and language, as well as other ISO standards–for example, date formats–have gained widespread acceptance.

But if royalties are required for every product that uses ISO standards, software vendors may abandon the standards. Such a move by the ISO could also have a negative effect on overall standards adherence because developers may feel more confident using their own codes rather than those stablished by a third-party organization. Just imagine the havoc that would result if the United States Postal Service charged royalties for the use of standardized state abbreviations or zip codes.

For more, see a CNet article as well as a protest letter from W3C.

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This is progress not. The King County Library System in the Seattle area has killed off its Real World semiannual book sale of 80,000 unwanted books–and replaced it with an online sale by Amazon.com. Talk about stupidity. The Seattle Times says:

Such traditions as people camped out at the doors at 6 a.m. in Kirkland, the bags of books for a few bucks and the orgy of book buying are giving way to the World Wide Web and the lure of the virtual marketplace….

Library officials say they will raise more money with less effort but acknowledge it will make the books more expensive and the shopping experience a little less memorable.

“Whereas we loved the book sale, it has become a difficult thing to sustain because of the sheer volume of books and the amount of time it took to hold the sales,” said library spokeswoman Marsha Iverson.

The Kirkland sale, usually held in October, is the first to be canceled. The final sale was held last spring in Kent. The cancellation does not affect local sales of donated books put on by supporters of individual libraries.

From another city, a Friends of the Library booster writes:

I think it’s a serious mistake–but perhaps the branches will now profit by holding their own book sales.  For us, in our community, the book sale is the engine that drives Friends membership, Friends activities, Friends publicity, and Friends leadership recruitment. I expect the system-wide Friends will falter as a result, but perhaps the smaller more local groups will have a chance to flourish.
 
Reading the quotes, it becomes clear that they should have been recruiting volunteer workers and leadership long before this …  (Easier said than done, but essential.)
 
I agree with you.  It’s a shame.

In a TeleRead context, a question arises: “Well, what happens when e-books arrive–will people still get together in local local libraries to hold sales?” The answer is a decided yes.

First, paper books aren’t going away immediately.

Second, how about library supporters getting together to sell used e-book reading hardware (or collections of books on memory chips, at least if licensing arrangements allow)?

What’s more, library groups could redirect their efforts toward organizing book clubs and authors’ reading and other local events, with interested library users receiving notification via targeted e-mailings based on their interests.

One way or another, however, local library events matter, and one hopes that the King County system will learn from the richly deserved negative PR.

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In Massachusetts, a battle is raging over the weight of student backpacks with books in them, and one state representative has proposed lmits–while yet another warns that the more important issue is something else: getting enough books for the kids. E-books, of course, could address both questions. A Boston Globe story passes on a child’s perspective among others:

Danielle Dickerman, a Sharon Middle School seventh-grader, is one of those still struggling to lighten her load. She estimates that she carries three to four books and binders home daily.

“Every once in a while, my back and my shoulders hurt. It’s kind of a sharp pain,” said Danielle, 12, who is 4-foot-11 and weighs 90 pounds. “When I am waiting for the bus in the morning, I get really tired holding it.”

The Globe says: “The American Chiropractic Association and the American Occupational Therapy Association suggest that students should carry no more than 10 percent of their body weight: For a child who weighs 100 pounds, for example, that’s less than 10 pounds.”