Extra, extra! AP tells of people reading e-books without Kindles
Has the Kindle craze actually reached the point where AP is running a piece on e-book fans who DON’T use the K machine or other dedicated readers? Indeed.
Never mind that people have read Project Gutenberg books off full-sized PCs for decades. Or that the headline uses the Kindle-centric term of “Kindleless.”
Psst! That’s one word. I wonder how many other words the AP copyright cops will let me quote before I’m to pay. At one point the freebie limit was no more than four. Still true?
Mini-briefing for digital natives: “Extra, extra” refers to the extra editions that print newspaper used to put out when hot news broke. Some may still do.
(Via Eoin Purcell.)
August 16th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Just so our readers know, given AP’s unreasonable stand, I have made it a policy that I will never link to or mention AP on this blog. They don’t deserve the publicity. Thus, I wouldn’t have made this post.
August 16th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Well, no party line at the TeleBlog, lol. I myself will link but often kick away at AP when I do so. Our readers want the news. Besides, in this case, as an example of the Kindle fixation, AP was the news or at least part of it.
Thanks,
David
August 16th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Hey David, email me several more words from the AP story. I’ll use them in a comment where I tell AP to go pound sand.
August 16th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Just because PG has been available for decades doesn’t mean many people actually read whole books on a full sized PC. I’m sure a few people do, but reading all of Moby Dick, or other long books, on a desktop might not be that common.
Personally, I have known about PG since the mid or late 90s and have yet to read anything from there on a full-sized PC.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Joseph: Let’s just hope the courts don’t back up AP, which itself could suffer from restrictions on fair use. As for those “several more words”–get ‘em via our link, post ‘em on your own site, and we’ll sympathetically write you up if AP is actually serious and goes after you, lol. AP just might add up the words in the main item and the comment, so I’ll avoid taking up your kind offer for this site
Thanks,
David
August 18th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
The publishing business and in particular the news syndication businesses hate Project gutenberg or any of the books that allows free books to be put in circulation, they know they are going to loose out in that battle.
The kindle is nicely closed, even free sources get a pricetag on the kindle. and it’s nicely tied to one company you can bully around. they like the kindle they think they can make more money off the kindle then the costly pulb based products. where on the web eveyone is margin trading. some are good at it and can provice quality content but almost noone get there without spending almost ever earned dollar getting there.