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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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."

Again and again we've harped against the idea of e-books as islands. They need to be linked together and accessible via powerful full-text searching. And a truly comprehensive library approach like TeleRead would help. Today's commercial e-book libraries are rather limited in scope, but if you want something better, you might as well have one universal library. Without this happening, the e-book industry will grow--but not as fast, considering the potential of the medium for research.

Meanwhile, Forbes has carried a fascinating adaptation from The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor (Harvard Business School Press, 2003). I myself think that the e-book industry will hardly vanish no matter what happens. But Christensen and Raynor absolutely have a point in discussing the need for a mass aggregation of knowledge--even if they can't think outside the box and instead are advocating Easycram.com, rather than a more inclusive TeleRead-style collection. I'd hope--yes, this is naive--that students would actually read the books rather than cram. But even if you think in cramware terms, it would be difficult for one company to come up economically with the aggregated information to support a good Cramware-style utility. Here's part of the excerpt in Forbes.

Consider the hundreds of millions that have been spent to apply new technologies--the Internet and e-book displays, specifically--to reshape the college textbook industry. Innovators have attempted to develop and sell tablets that can display downloaded e-books. And with many textbooks you can click on a Web address to obtain far more information about the topic than could possibly be included within the limits of a book. Would we expect these investments to generate significant growth? Our guess is that they will not. Although we would like to believe that all undergraduate students are rigorous seekers of knowledge, the job that many college students are really trying to get done, from our observation, is to pass their courses without having to read the textbook at all.

These companies have spent a lot of money helping students to do more easily something that they have been trying to not do. It would probably take far less money to create from the same technology a service called "Easycram.com"--a utility that would make it easier and cheaper for students to cram more effectively for their exams. This would likely work because cramming is something that students already are trying to do, but with marginal efficacy. There are a lot of textbook-avoiders on campuses--a huge market of nonconsumption.

Not in many places, at least if you go by today's New York Times. Yes, lawsuits may be filed. But because of a patchwork of laws and already-established consumer habits--and less suit-happy cultures--the recording studios could be in for a tough fight outside the States. Here's the Times' lead:

BRUSSELS, Sept. 25--Hang around any schoolyard in Germany or college campus in Indonesia and it becomes clear that the recording industry's problems with the illegal online distribution of music in the United States pale beside the rampant piracy that goes on overseas.

From factories in Taiwan and Eastern Europe that churn out counterfeit CD's to teenagers in Scandinavia and Singapore who download songs from the Internet and "burn" them on to blank discs, the line between legitimate and pirated music has all but vanished in many countries.

As best I can determine online, the public library system in Alexandria, VA, won't warn me by email of books about to be overdue. For a good role model, Alexandria can look across the Potomac River to the George Washington University library, which has posted the following on the Web:

As a courtesy, the Library will email you a reminder notice 5 to 7 days before the due date and an overdue notice the business day after the due date. Please remember these messages are courtesy reminders.

As a San Diego Union-Tribune story makes clear, e-bookdom is growing, but meanwhile I keep hearing from readers annoyed by the complexities of DRM and the rest. Just imagine how fast the industry could take off if it conducted business more rationally.

The story below is from Margot Milner--in rural France--who luckily is still upbeat about reading books on her "cozy little" PDA despite the software-related horrors she encountered earlier:

I, too, wanted to experiment with e-books. Thought I wouldn't like reading that way, but I love it. Cozy little thing in my hand. The cozy little thing I bought was a used, outdated HP Jornada. I got it for $85 on eBay and then got a car charger, also on eBay. I also had Elizabeth Liddell's experience with Adobe e-books (or maybe Microsoft e-book) from Amazon. In fact, it was worse when I bought; you could only download one copy. Amazon have a policy of no refunds on e-books, but I complained long and loudly and at last got my money back. Now I buy my e-books from PalmDigitalMedia.com.

They have everything and the books are priced as they should be: less than p-books. I also listen to books and talk shows from Audible.com on my Pocket PC. When you're lost in the wilds of rural France, these sites are a real blessing.

eBooks.com now does full-text searching--beating Amazon.com to the punch in a limited but helpful way. The word "Iraq" brought up 381 listings of titles ranging from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict to The Asianisation of Australia?: Some Facts About the Myths.

Right now, unlike the proposed Amazon approach, this one won't display the actual references and simply ranks the titles by the most relevant (The Idiot's Guide in this case). But it's better than nothing and presumably just a first step. It takes advantage of th e-medium (why hasn't this been done before by a large retailer?), is a neat way around copyright problems and will probably go over well with publishers. Meanwhile you at least can see the standard sample material such as a first chapter.

From a press release:

In a retail first, digital book company eBooks.com announced today that it has indexed its entire collection, enabling fast, relevant searches across every word in every title in its database.

eBooks.com is one of the oldest retailers of commercial ebooks on the web, offering 25,000 titles across all subject categories.

"This feature changes the face of the ebook industry. Full text search means that now our customers are much more likely to find the information they're looking for. If you want to know about "mushrooms" or "Agamemnon", you'll find it at eBooks.com--whether or not those terms occur in a book's title or description. Naturally, results are ranked intelligently, so that the most relevant book is likely to come up first. No other online bookstore does this," said Stephen Cole, CEO of eBooks.com.

"Our new search engine delivers fast, relevant search results to our customers, which translates into increased sales for those publishers whose titles are hosted at eBooks.com."

Arthur Clarke said prophets might get into more trouble in the long run by underestimating the progress of tech.

While Luddites still can't even conceive of viewable e-books, we 21st-century types may soon be able to read colorful books on our shirt sleeves--complete with moving images. From Reuters:

Even before the electronic ink has dried on the e-page, a new generation of electronic paper may soon be able to bring a moving image to a foldable screen near you, according to scientists in the Netherlands.

Hot on the heels of the invention of a wafer-thin foldable screen that can display static type and may one day replace newspapers as it can be overwritten each day, scientists at Philips Research in Eindhoven have found a way to display high-definition moving pictures as well.

Using a process called electrowetting, the scientists claim to be able to manipulate colored oils in the pixels on the page with such speed and accuracy as to be able to generate clear and accurate video displays.

"You could see this leading to displays everywhere, the sides of trucks with live displays on them - like Times Square but moving," Robert Wisnieff, senior manager of IBM Corp.'s Advanced Display Technology Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. "Imagine the traffic accidents."

The electronic paper is not really paper at all, but electronics embedded in a flexible piece of plastic as thin as a sheet of paper. It would have to be connected to a power source, such as a cellphone or a handheld organizer.

The paper's display surface is four times brighter than reflective liquid-crystal displays, such as those seen on mobile phones and personal digital assistants [according to Robert A. Hayes, a scientist at Philips Research Laboratories].

But before the movies can begin, Hayes said researchers need to devise a system to control each dot's rapid changes.

He said the first products are three or four years away, and would probably have only one color at first.

Some years ago, John Perry Barlow wondered if it actually might be better in some ways if public domain books were free to schools and libraries but copyrighted books were not. After all, how many modern authors are the equal of the ancient Greeks and Romans? Barlow liked the TeleRead idea but offered his important caveat.

Actually the best approach would be a mix of good modern and public domain works, and if you still think that public domain alone is enough, then consider some thoughts from our regular correspondent Lynn Dimick. His wife, a special-ed teacher in Westminister, California, went to the local B&N for books at different reading levels. Lynn goes on:

Her slower readers have really started to enjoy reading now. Part of the reason is that the books were chosen to be fairly timely--i.e., current or recent events. Imagine the shame if the only books they could afford were PD and the newest current event was the invention of the Model T assembly line. Maybe in high school they'll be able to study WW I as a current event.

We've already told how China may well pull ahead of the U.S. in e-books. But the Japanese haven't been staying still either. From TechWeb:

While retailer Barnes & Noble Inc. ceased electronic-book sales in the United States earlier this month, a consortium of about 200 companies is just taking shape in Japan to promote the development of e-book terminals and content. The Electronic Book Business Consortium believes it holds some cultural and technical advantages over U.S. efforts, including an ability to display images as well as text. It is also considering making e-books available on cell phone platforms.

"The consortium's mission will be not only to discuss how to make Japanese-language e-books, but also to invite participation internationally," said Yuusuke Suzuki, president and chief executive officer of eBook Initiative Japan Co. Ltd. In a demonstration, Suzuki showed how texts in various languages can be easily converted to e-books. His company, a distributor of e-book content, is one of the four primary proposers of the consortium.

Reagan alone didn't do in the Soviet Union. So did the copying machine. The top Soviets were so hyperdefensive about their political religion that they didn't care if their economy suffered due to restrictions on use of this dangerous technology. Here in America we have another religion. It's called capitalism, and it looks as if the sue-thy-neighborhor side of it is more and more becoming a threat to the existence of the system as a whole. Check out the following excerpt from a press release from EFF Finland:

Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox ask for strict limitations to software patents in their letter to the members of the European Parliament. The vote on the Directive will be on Wednesday and it is expected to be a very close one.

Linus Torvalds comments: "The experiences from the USA demonstrate that software patents don't benefit anyone but perhaps the patent lawyers. They will just weaken the market and increase spending on patents and litigation, at the expense of technological innovation and research. He continues: "We hope that the members of European Parliament see these negative sides and don't push the same chaos to the old continent."

Alan Cox notes: "Currently, the companies are moving programming jobs offshore. The huge move away from the USA is not entirely driven by pricing but also by patent litigation and risk. Companies create a US holding company for the intellectual property rights which licenses it to a non US body to write the software overseas and import it, so as to reduce risk." He stresses: "Adopting the same kind of patents in the EU will drive thousands of EU programming jobs overseas, too."

Advertising in e-books could eliminate the need for DRM, says Roy Lewis of the Northeast Texas Library System. He writes:

I have long been an advocate of the "Free Market" taking over the pricing and control of e-books. 

Let me explain:

If publishers would realize that they could market their titles to advertisers just as newspapers do, that would reduce costs. They could provide e-books for a low price that would not need DRM. For example, if the newspapers did not accept advertising, they would cost much much more than the 50 cents or $1.00 that they do today. The same process could be applied to e-books.

If, for example, the newspaper publishers were the ones publishing the e-books, they would include advertising that was timely to provide links and discount codes to the companies that were placing the advertising. Then every time someone downloaded an e-book, they would get new timely offers on the front of the book, and after the last page, that would make them want to visit the store and/or go back out and get the next volume of the book. 

Publishers do some of this now, but are too lazy to do the leg work of getting the advertisers.

If this process were used, then the latest best seller would sell for $5 and the publisher would make much more money and would not have the overhead of printing and warehousing costs.

There would/could be some competition for the quality of advertising and placement. People would find publishers that provided better quality and placement to prevent turn-off for how the book read.

So what happens if the attorney general of Texas goes to jail for tax evasion and mail fraud? Will the kids have to read about him in outdated history books without this little detail? No sir. But in far worse ways, Texas textbooks are obsolete. While Texas in the past has been a leader in consideration of e-books for the classroom, it appears the state could do much better at using tech to keep students current.

An AP story reports in the Dallas Morning News of September 14:

Despite pleas from the state Board of Education, the Legislature cut textbook funding by $182 million this year. As the school year begins, some books are 14 years old, and gaffes in accuracy are inevitable.

For example: the Food and Drug Administration now recommends two to three servings of dairy a day, but outdated health books still recommend four daily dairy servings.

Jim Hutchinson, a high school health teacher in Bastrop, said recent strides in research and health care have turned numerous truths into fallacies.

"In the AIDS and HIV chapter, treatments were so limited at the time the book was written, there were just three possible treatments. Now there are probably hundreds," Mr. Hutchinson said. "Also, it's so limited with symptoms simply because of the time it was published."

Health books used in all grade levels were published in 1989 and were implemented in the 1990-91 school year.

Education officials weren't planning to replace those books until the 2005-06 school year anyway, largely because priorities were placed on other subjects after a 1995 curriculum overhaul, according to Robert Leos, director of textbook administration for the Texas Education Agency.