You want to read e-books, but your budget is limited. My own preference would be a used or reconditioned PDA with the Pocket PC operating system. Or I might search for a used REB 1100 e-book reader on eBay. I just picked up a spare for $60 and look forward at some point to trying out the GEB eBook Librarian V1.2 program to cope with the format challenges. Too, I can hardly wait until Linux PDAs are more common, especially the used variety, along with a wide choice of e-book reading programs for them.

Meanwhile here are two possiblities from the world of the Palm operating system:

--A reconditioned Visor going for all of $99 with a screen resolution of 160x160. For tips on using it, see The New Joy of Reading, a how-to in good, plain English from a religious publisher. No sermons on the Joy page. Just the technical basics. Lightheart, as my mysterious correspondent calls himself or herself, is keen on the C Spot run program. Remember, the suggestions are Lightheart's, not mine. Further comments from other readers welcomed. Oh, and if you do go the Palm-OS route, don't forget the MemoWare site for free books in appropriate formats.

--The Sony CLIÉ 8MB PDA with a 320x320 Monochrome Screen and a USB port, which is selling for all of $59.99 right now for those on the Computer Geeks email list. Hopefully the store will show a little mercy toward cash-strapped folks not on the list. Screen res is 320 X 320, and this PDA will work with Palm programs, just like the Visor. So you could still benefit from Lightheart's tips.

From afar--remember, I have not checked out these cheapies--the CLIÉ impresses me as the better choice of the units based on the Palm operating system; I'm a sucker for good screen res. Also keep in mind that both devices have small screens compared to many alternatives. If you want a larger screen and can't get a decently priced REB 1100, you might go for an eBookMan even if the contrast is low and it's a real battery hog in the backlight mode.

Just now I saw eBookMans on eBay for $50 without the fuss of an auction. Keep in mind that the eBookMan is more of an e-book reader than PDA.

Finally remember that in a few months you'll have probaby enjoy a slew of choices, from China. David Moynihan of BlackMask did a fascinating review of the $99 EB 660 Portable eBook Reader from over there. It isn't quite good enough for most U.S. readers but in another incarnation should be very soon. What's intriguing is the use of screen technology that is easy on batteries and is only going to be better--so that we may see e-ink-level sharpness, or something close, long before we were expecting it.

Got cheapie recs of your own? Pass 'em on, with the reasons given, and please disclose any possible vendor connections.

Update, 1:10 p.m.: Julius Adams writes that he bought three PDAs for a total of $240 from CompUSAAuctions-- a new "Palm M130, a refurbished like-new M505, and a great Tungsten T. Great deals, with some Visors and M125s going for as little as $40 during some auctions."

Update, Aug. 19: Also see an eBookWeb article on the Sigma Ebook, the single-screen version of which will go for all $150. The negative is that this machine just might come with some truly Draconian DRM. As J. Knight writes, "Let's hope that Matsushita has learned from Gemstar's missteps."
posted by David Rothman at 9:34 AM | permanent link

Stephen Manes, a board member of the Authors Guild, has just written a PC World column titled Copyright Law: Ignore at Your Own Peril. I'd prefer, "Tolerate at Your Own Peril."

The gist of the Manes argument is that cyber thieves are undermining "the foundations" of the commercial culture that allows professional creators to survive. The gist of my argument is different. Record and movie studios, along with the trogs among book publishers, are in certain ways the biggest threat to creators and consumers of culture. It is our duty as citizens not to tolerate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and other goodies that Hollywood-bought politicians have given us. No, I am not telling you to steal music, books or anything else. You should, however, tell Congress members that you'll not stand for the radical changes they have inflicted on the American copyright system.

Let's examine Manes's pro-Washington arguments, which, like the recent laws themselves, just repeat the Hollywood line.

1. The U.S. copyright system has "helped make American creativity the most vibrant, diverse and exportable in the world."

If the system has been so blessedly good, however, then why have the copyright interests felt compelled to bribe Washington with campaign donations to change the rules? One reason our culture has thrived is the existence of fair use. Consumers have long been able to share books and records and videotapes and resell them to each other. What better way for, say, writers and musicians to familiarize themselves with past works and build on the achievements of yore without plagiarizing? Or for the young to acquire a taste for culture? Manes himself acknowledges that you can "borrow a copy from a friend or the library." Exactly. That's what I want to protect, true fair use, as opposed to mass stealing.

But recent copyright laws, bought with millions in campaign donations from Hollywood and the like, say you can't violate the technological protection schemes that content owners cook up, even if they interfere with fair use. What's more, with minimal fuss, copyright owners can now tell your Net provider to zap the Web site to which you may have devoted hundreds or thousands of hours. That is hardly an elixir for creativity.

Nor are copyright term extensions. Walt Disney made no small part of his fortune through adaptations of classics in the public domain. Now the Authors Guild's friends in Congress have lengthened the terms, in time to prevent high school students from downloading free copies of The Great Gatsby from the Internet.

I myself would prefer that the Authors Guild--membership in which I might not renew--choose a more honest name for itself. Let's call it the Authors and Heirs Guild. The Guild does represent the interests of writers' estates, and that is no small conflict of interest in the copyright term debate. Dead writers are not as creative as live ones. Few live authors, moreover, are promising: "I'll try twice as hard now that politicians have said that my copyright will now last 70 rather than 50 years after my death. And in my afterlife I’ll ghost-write The Great American Novel."

In the above context, just how fair and accurate is Manes's reference elsewhere to "Classic content" as "free for the swiping"? Does this mean Walt Disney was a thief for adapting Grimm's Fairy Tales decades after the brothers' deaths? Manes should be fighting for rather than against the public domain. We need to mitigate the damage from the extension act; and Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor, has some very specific solutions in mind.

2. Americans should not succumb to evil temptations in an era when they can "duplicate a 1-hour CD in minutes" and when "Broadband makes downloads almost as snappy."

No debate about the iniquity of mass theft. Regardless of fair use, I think it is at least morally wrong to "borrow" again and again from quasi-friends in the Napster vein. And yes, I believe that the prosecutors and plaintiffs' lawyers should be merciless toward professional thieves, a different species from cash-strapped surfers.

But isn't it time for copyright laws and business models to catch up with reality in the consumer context? Elsewhere in this TeleBlog I've told of a Pew study confirming what we all know--that millions of Americans regard copyright laws as a joke. Regardless of efforts of the record companies and others to crack down, I doubt that this will change. In the end, the real answer isn't Prohibition II, but rather a switch to business models that reflect the realities of the new technology. The idea would not be to cheat writers and musicians and artists--in fact, just the opposite. In our ten-trillion-dollar economy, only a speck is going to the creators of books, records, paintings and the rest. I'd like to see more generosity toward them. TeleRead, a library model based mostly on the number of accesses to books and the rest, would reduce incentives for piracy and at the same time reward creators.

3. "Would-be populists cry that illicit downloading is a way of protesting the pittance many artists receive from the sale of their CDs: by that logic, it is okay to steal cornflakes since the farmer gets such a small cut."

A little inconsistency here? Elsewhere in the column, Manes praises money as a way to foster creativity. He warns that with theft unchecked, "most new stuff will be the product of well-meaning amateurs--songs like the one that drove you out of an oomph bar in Germany, books about your neighbor's cute parakeet, and movies that star the boors you avoid on public-access cable." But in the cornflakes paragraph he unwittingly acknowledges that the blessed copyright system is unfair to the actual creators, the ones enjoying just a "small cut." If there is one single way to improve copyright, it would be to change this, and yet in the column Manes is keener on defending the tainted legal system than he is on improving it to reward authors better.

As a professional writer, I've found the copyright system to be excruciatingly useless in protecting my efforts against theft. In fact, a friend of mine, a retired copyright lawyer, says infringed writers shouldn't take copyright cases to trial unless tens of thousands of dollars are at stake. Copyright lawyers can charge $800 an hour or more, and even the mediocre ones bill at $200. Of course, authors groups could help by reducing the need for lawyers in the first place and taking a tougher stance against predatory agents and publishers and similar threats. The Authors Guild, for example, as I've discovered first hand, apparently won’t enforce ethical standards against literary agents who advertise themselves as Guild members.

4. "Sophists maintain that they wouldn’t have to steal if record companies sold more music online; so if your supermarket does not deliver, you’re presumably free to steal."

But aren't content providers encouraging theft by failing to sell digital versions of their wares? I'm not condoning rip-offs. But I would like to see some practicality here. Why can't young people buy legal copies of Harry Potter in digital form? Some Netfolks have even posted a petition asking for an authorized edition online, and yet so far their pleas have gone ignored. That is unfortunate not just from a consumer perspective but also an industry one. E-book technology has improved in recent years, meaning that more and more Netfolks will be eager to read books on screens, regardless of whether the content is legal or not.

What's to be done about the copyright mess? If you're a consumer, call the office of your representative or Senator via the main congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121, and also think about speaking up at events such as PTA meetings to tell others to join in your protest (the recent copyright laws will jack up the cost of content of schools and libraries). No miracles promised. But as Glenn Reynolds has noted, copyright law just might be a sleeper issue that someday haunts the politicians who let Hollywood buy them out.

If you're a writer or other creator, keep in mind that the copyright outrages will hurt you especially. That is one reason why the National Writers Union has opposed extended copyright terms.

And if you're Stephen Manes, whose writing I've enjoyed over the years regardless of our differences on copyright, then I would suggest a more open mind. Think about lobbying within the Authors Guild for a modern copyright policy and a well-stocked national digital library system with provisions for fair compensation for writers and publishers. In so doing, the Guild would be siding with the public, not against it. Alas, the organization has come across as risible in its campaign to prevent Amazon.com from selling used books on the same Web pages as new ones; but here’s a chance to more than atone. Maybe I'll actually renew my membership if the Guild is less tolerant of Washington’s copyright crimes and more open to 21st-century reforms.
posted by David Rothman at 9:39 AM | permanent link

Quick thoughts for all gubernatorial candidates:

In tech, California is easily State Number One. Shouldn't the pubic schools reflect this? E-books and appropriate learning software would be one way to help address the textbook shortage in certain cases, at least if provisions were made for affordable hardware. In the long run this approach would be far easier on taxpayers' wallets than buying textbooks over and over again.

A Harris poll last year showed that 32 percent of California teachers complained of not enough textbooks for children to take home. What's more, the poll showed that the most underprivileged students are almost twice as likely as others to suffer from lack of adequate textbooks and other learning materials.

"It is unacceptable that there are as many students in California without a textbook as there are people in the cities of Long Beach, Fresno, Sacramento, Oakland and Riverside combined," says Joshua Pechthalt, a Los Angele teacher quoted by Public Advocates.

Needless to say, supplemental reading and recreational reading can help, and TeleRead would be a very cost-effective way to spread the goodies around. From the start TeleRead has advocated small, inexpensive, tablet-style computers that students could take home.

Another feature of the TeleRead vision has been file-sharing, with provisions for fair compensation for content owners. And that's of potential importance to students in California and elsewhere, which could benefit from collaborative and cooperative learning--approaches that many educators consider to be very suitable for the high-tech era. Students need to be able to share material without fear.

Last but hardly least, California's local and state officials have an important role to play in educating their Senators and Representative about the need for balanced copyright law on the Internet. Federal legislation such as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will prove very expensive for California schools and libraries in the long run.

More thoughts: E-books are hardly a panacea for the many challenges facing educators, and like other technology, they come with the need for adequate technical support and training. But they could help. Keep in mind, too, the potential of Net-connected computers in such areas as improved parent-teacher communication. And speaking of parents, TeleRead-style computers would be a great way to encourage families to read and discuss books together.
posted by David Rothman at 6:33 AM | permanent link

In her Slate article on the risks of e-book piracy, Joy Press led with an example of a phony e-book that was "cobbled together" from previous recipes of Jamie Oliver, the "Naked Chief." Also, how about the risks of e-books where facts or opinions would be changed without the knowledge or consent of the author or publisher?

Such dangers exist in various forms; the worst scenario would be a 1984ish one with the government itself as the villain.

That's one reason why I like the idea of national digital library systems, which, though independent, might be monitored from outside in some way to assure their integrity. Too, people would be able to keep copies of e-books on their own machines.

Of course, a more likely problem is that enemies of individual writers, rather than the government itself, might spread altered copies--one good argument for digital authentification schemes.

With all this in mind, you might want to check out What Do We Mean by Authentic? What's the Real McCoy? by H.M. Gladney, in the July/August issue of D-Lib Magazine. He's approaching the issue mainly from semantic and technical perspectives (mentioning such matters as digital-analogue conversion), but his article and the accompanying list of citations might still be of interest from an anti-fraud perspective.

Needless to say, the complexities that Gladney addresses are yet another reason for a truly comprehensive national digital library approach as opposed to a reckless reliance on commercial archives alone. Such matters hopefully wil be covered sufficiently by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program of the Library of Congress.

A helpful link for those interested in long-term archiving: Information Longevity.
posted by David Rothman at 3:45 PM | permanent link

The consumer market for e-book content will reach $2.3 billion dollars in 2005, including $700 million in "replacement sales." That's what Andersen Consulting was guestimating for the Association of American Publishers in 2000, going by "illustrative projections" from industry researchers.

Nice dream, eh? The reality is that net sales of e-books in the U.S. in January 2003 were all of $3.3 million, according to an AAP press release. I ran across the Andersen beaut while looking for a little context to accompany the latest sales figures from AAP, reporting a year-to-date increase of 169.9 percent compared to 2002. Even at a growth rate like this, we're a long way from the projections served up by Enron's favorite consulting firm.

Question: Even if just $100 million of U.S. library money went for electronic books--a tiny fraction of the total library spending for content--wouldn't the e-book industry multiply its revenues? Simply put, electronic publishers would be crazy not to lobby for a TeleRead-style approach--including a national digital library fund, so that cash-strapped local libraries could be involved, not just wealthier library systems.

Current library spending in the States is around $25 per capita for content and more, but a 2002 ALA poll suggests that most Americans would welcome increases, especially as more people turn to libraries to acquire skills to be more competitive in the job market. They like their local libraries and undoubtedly would like them even more with the wider selection of books that the new medium could bring.

Where Andersen was right: The report talks up the need for e-book standards and says publishers should avoid "risk of obsolesence" of software or hardware. Yoo-hoo, OeBF?
posted by David Rothman at 1:45 PM | permanent link

"Gannett has so far favored freebies. Younger readers don't seem interested in daily papers and definitely don't want to pay for content, Newspaper Division President Gary L. Watson told the California Newspaper Publishers Association's annual meeting in June, according to the Associated Press." - Suddenly, Youth Papers Are Hot, in Editor and Publisher.

The TeleRead take: A lesson here for e-book publishers interested in reaching young readers? A TeleRead-style national digital library system could put thousands of modern e-books online for free, with provisions for fair compensation for publishers and writers and efficient use of tax money.

Isn't it time for entertainment conglomerates to devote as much campaign cash to lobbying for e-library funding as they do to buying copyright laws from the targets of their donations?

As regular followers of this blog know, TeleRead also favors private philanthropy to agument public financing and assure maximum freedom of expression in online libraries. What's more, publishers could still sell books online and offline in the customary ways.
posted by David Rothman at 11:47 AM | permanent link

Over at the Shifted Librarian, Jenny Levine has a winner of a proposal to allow blog writers to link reliably to items from library databases. Blog readers could reach the linked articles by typing in their library barcodes. The codes would be clumsy, but perhaps, as Jenny notes, persistent cookies could help. Right now, countless newspaper and magazine articles either never make the Web or else vanish within a few weeks or less. Way to go, Jenny!

The TeleRead take: Needless to say, a well-stocked national digital library system with stable links could be a boon to bloggers. In fact, that was point of the very first item we posted in this TeleBlog. Great to see similar sentiments elsewhere, at least on the need for stable links.

One additional thought: Stable links should be available for use by every blogger, not just the high-profile ones. Think of the blessing for, say, K-12. A child could have a blog for papers done for every class and fill it with links to research sources--everything from scholarly books to an article in the previous week's New York Times.
posted by David Rothman at 10:12 AM | permanent link

Further thoughts from Julius Adams, the music teacher in the Queens:

So how does one get into a position of influence on these things anyway? We have such incredible technology today, yet companies are actually refusing to make plans for it.

And while Palm is giving away T2s to school superintendent and principals in NY State this year (about 1,200 I hear), these people know very little about how to use the technology to its fullest potential.

Yet my 15-year-old used his own ingenuity and a Palm M505 to download his homework into Docs To Go and study, download a teacher's HTML site for review, and buy a review book for one course. To him it just plain made sense.

He studied on the subway that way, and teachers were amazed! How do we get the word out? Would be interested in your take.

The TeleRead take: No magic solutions offered, but the struggle is worth it. Perhaps if your son has time and likes the TeleRead idea--which would do exactly what you've proposed--he can log on an appropriate New York Times forum himself and help spread the word. And if you can do your own postings, then so much the better. Letters to the editor, at the Time and elsewhere, would help, too. The Times in particular should--we're talking theory here, no guarantees--have a special interest in this. After all, it almost surely has the most elaborate education section of any newspaper in the States and could vastly expand its newspapers-in-education efforts if thousands of local students toted PDAs. Not the worst way either to help education or get kids in the newspaper habit. Newsday, which is read in the Queens and has an education section, could similarly benefit.

You might also urge other clueful teachers and librarians to write letters. New York-area libraries aren't exactly overfunded right now. Public-domain books from Project Gutenberg would be a wonderul way to stretch resources, and as Lynn Dimick in California and others of us have been thinking, companies and individuals could donate used PDAs to the cause. In your letters to the editor, you could urge the public and private sectors to team up on this one.

Also, you could write congress members about the need for a well-stocked national digital library system in the TeleRead vein, not just the usefulness of PDAs for e-books and other uses in K-12. TeleRead could get modern books online with provisons for proper payments to publishers and writers, a complexity you don't have with classics. If you speak up locally, along with other teachers and PTA parents, then Congress members willl be more likely to pay attention. Use the money angle--the fact that e-books would be a cost-efficient way to help spread around knowledge. Who knows, maybe we could even convince the politicians to fix some of the damage to the public domain from the Sonny Bono copyright-extension act.

On a related matter: I also read with interest your comments on the Palm program for New York schools. Perhaps the company was hoping that the principals would immediately grasp the potential of the technology. Laudable but not the best move. Palm would have been better off coming up with small demonstration projects after arranging for proper training of the teachers. Hopefully, too, interested children could have worked with their own Palms.

But wait! Turns out that Palm has done exactly that, nationwide. Recently Palm arranged for the Center for Technology In Learning, part of SRI, to evaluate "the uses, experiences, and effectiveness of Palm handhelds in K-12 teaching and learning. The research results have added to the knowledge of 'best practices' for the entire learning community." SRI's findings support your enthusiasm for PDAs in K-12, and you could cite them in your letters to newspapers and public officials at all levels.

Ideally the study could have explored in depth the use of PDAs as e-books, but it does mention them along with a host of other important applications in subjects ranging from environmental science to writing (turns out that with external keyboards, PDAs can work fine for young essayists, especially those with handwriting as rotten as mine is!). And imagine, no need for computer labs. PDAs are infinitely more affordable than desktops and laptops, so it's more likely that the student-gadget ratio can be one to one.

Controvery does go on about whether PDAs are appopriate for young eyes. My belief as an ex-child is that Palms are acceptable to many kids for reading of novels since text can be blown up to adjust for the small screen (even though many other children might prefer tablets since they wouldn't have to scroll through the pages as often). Palms may not be so good for, say, textbooks if page layouts and linking choices haven't been adapted to adjust for the small screen size. But then, maybe interactive instruction would be better than textbooks in many of these situations anyway. Obviously the question of the value of the Palm is settled in your 15-year-old's case: you'd have a fight on your hands if you took away his PDA and e-books. And he's hardly the only teen who'd feel that way.

For an anecdotal article on e-books in action in K-12--specifically, the fourth grade, not high school--see E-Books in Urban Education: Useful Lessons from the South Side of Chicago even though it's about the use of Rocket eBooks rather than Palm-type PDAs.

Hey, Julius, good luck! Let us know what happens. And we'd love to hear from other readers, too, on K-12 matters relating to e-books. Maybe they can also speak up via letters to the editor, and to public officials, in their own cities. Amos Bokros, a veteran TeleRead supporter, wrote an e-book-related article, not just a letter, that the San Diego paper printed.
posted by David Rothman at 10:29 AM | permanent link

From the CNI copyright list--as posted by Jon Noring of the eBook Community list...

A few of us have started a private discussion group (mailing list) to explore the creation of "Project Gramophone."

Project Gramophone (PGr) is envisioned to be a non-profit organization to digitally preserve and freely make available (via one or more online international archives) digitized versions of early sound recordings which have passed into the Public Domain or whose performance copyrights have been donated to the archive. Thus, PGr as presently envisioned will archive sound performances recorded up through the 1920's or 1930's and sometimes more recently, depending on various factors (including what we may be able to arrange, as needed, with song title publishers and even with recording companies.)

In many ways, PGr will be similar to "Project Gutenberg" for public domain books. However, because of fundamental differences between sound recordings and textual content (including transfer and digital restoration), original source material ownership, and the greater complexity of copyright (a sound recording can be covered under two or more copyrights, including the performance, the song title (melody and lyrics), sometimes the arrangement, etc.), there will undoubtedly be dissimilarities between Project Gramophone and Project Gutenberg.

(If Project Gutenberg is interested in associating with this project in any way, it will certainly be seriously considered.)

Undoubtedly, there are several problematic issues which need to be addressed and resolved (and not only copyright). Nevertheless, we believe there is a "formula" to make Project Gramophone a success, to greatly benefit the public, as well as benefit those who take a deep interest in the vintage sounds of yesteryear, including those who collect and archive the original source recordings. We believe that Project Gramophone will expose large numbers of new people to the great sounds of yesteryear (who otherwise would never purchase CDs of this material, and thus never develop an interest in it), and introduce many to the hobby of collecting original vintage sound recordings, discographical research, and so on--which will benefit everyone interested in some aspect of early recorded sound, as well as benefit the public in general by encouraging preservation.

Note that the name "Project Gramophone" is not etched in stone, and certainly one area of discussion will be an appropriate name for the project if the name "Project Gramophone" is deemed unsatisfactory. But we have to start with something to call it.

To subscribe to the Project Gramophone discussion group, you can either subscribe to it directly at Yahoo! Groups (if you have a Yahoo ID):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/project-gramophone/

or simply send a blank email message to:

project-gramophone-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

We look forward to your participation in discussion. There is no implied long-term commitment to this Project for you to participate in discussion and contribute your ideas, thoughts and criticisms. We need your special insights to help us come up with a workable "formula" (if there is one) for Project Gramophone.
posted by David Rothman at 7:45 AM | permanent link