Had to happen. The Authors Guild--yes, the same group that thinks used books on the Amazon site are unAmerican if they're ballyhooed along with new books--is balking at the idea of Amazon's new search engine. Having perped my share of nonfiction books, I can understand the Guild's concern. Ideally, however, the Guild will be reasonable enough to inspire me to renew my membership. Details at Slashdot. P.S. I also might renew if the AG improved that cruddy logo.
posted by David Rothman at 8:12 PM | permanent link

How about a Digital Media Users Association--an in-your-face, take-no-prisoners group in an NRA vein for Internet folks, music and DVD fans, satellite TV buffs, e-book readers and all other digital media users? Such an organization could be a full-powered coalition of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and compatible groups and also enroll millions of people inside and outside the tech industry.

"It would be geared toward the people who use and buy digital media of all kinds," says Jon Noring, originator of the idea. "High-tech hardware companies such as Intel might support the DMUA. So might the American Library Association, the Consumers Union and the American Civil Liberties Union. And maybe even the AARP, since so many older people are now surfing the Net. Fees would be low like the AARP's.

"Needless to say, the DMUA could use the Net to mobilize millions of troops with precisely targeted mailing campaigns based on members' individual interests and priorities. Let this be Jack Valenti's worst nightmare. Ten thousand won't bother him or his successor or the RIAA. But a million or so might do the trick with him and Congress to stop the bullying.

"Perhaps the group's first project would be a 'Digital Media Users Bill of Rights' similar to the IP Justice list--outlining the core values and goals of the organization. But the DMUA could also offer practical consumer-oriented tips, like the AARP, rather than being a pure advocacy group. Perhaps there could be perks for individual members and prospects, such as discounts on e-books, music, and videos--and other benefits, too.

"Let's encourage the beer-bellied guy sitting in his easy chair, watching satellite or cable TV, to join. Help them benefit personally just like AAA or AARP members.

"The group could even spawn international offshoots to work with the main organization. What a way to keep the Eurocrats in check!"

Lest the domain be pre-empted, Jon has just registered dmua.org.

(Illustration via ArtToday.)
posted by David Rothman at 7:16 PM | permanent link

Jack Valenti's people at the Motion Picture Association of America have joined Aussie copyright interests in efforts to bamboozle Australia into lengthening copyright terms.

With trade negotiations in mind, the black hats have commissioned a report from hired hands in Australia.

Our readers Down Under would do well to warn Parliament of the standard tricks that Hollywood will use to have Australia stretch the terms from life+50 to life+70--and eventually far beyond. Don't fall for all the "harmonization" bilge and the other cons. No need to imitate the States in what Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart has aptly described as the creation of a "landed gentry of the information age."

Hart's foe Valenti is a copyright zealot keen on eternal terms, and along the way he'd love to see total DMCAism imposed on Australia. TeleRead by contrast believes that a little balance beteen the public's rights and the elite's, whether in the States or elsewhere, could go a long way. Copyright is good. Copyright extremism of the Valenti variety is not.

So check out a new Slashdot item if you care about Project Gutenberg of Australia and other public-domain amenities of the Net.

And read the report from the hired hands at Allen Consulting favoring extension. Notice? It says of Aussie law: "Copyright does not continue indefinitely." Exactly! Yet the practical effort of repeated extensions--the kind Hollywood will promote around the world--will have that exact effect.

The report also says that "to focus on the trade balance as a cost is incorrect; it is a consequence of the law, but not a cost. If we take this approach we miss the point that trade is about mutual gain. For example, such an approach would assume that we need to have a neutral trade balance with respect to rubber thongs, gold, wheat, professional services, and all other traded goods and services. This is clearly ridiculous." But guess what. Here we're talking about a worsening of the status quo. A loss is a loss.

If you want to make the Hollywood interests even richer at Australia's expense, including the lobbyists who bag six-digit salaries, you'll favor copyright extension. While Australia has its own distinguished film industry--I love My Brilliant Career--Aussies will never be able to match Hollywood's resources for the creation and promotion of on-screen blood and gore. In fact, if Aussies want to see more Brilliant Careers, as opposed to homegrown Terminators, they'll fight harder than ever against extension. Do you really think the creators of future MBCs will think, "Gosh, let's check the copyright-term situation before deciding whether we want to go ahead"? In fact, given the inherently lower costs of character-driven films, as opposed to the action- and special-effects-driven variety, movie-goers' aesthetic souls might suffer along with their wallets if the greedsters win in Australia.

Further thoughts: The Allen report is shameless in its fixation on the economic aspects of copyright, as opposed to quality-of-life-and-culture issues, not to mention the political ones. "There's more to life than just economics," as my friend Jon Noring has noted. "Look at Nazi Germany during the '30s. Hitler did a great job of extricating Germany from the Depression. But did that make Germany a good place in which to live?"

For further arguments aginst the Allen report, see Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig's blog. Among other things, Lessig says that "throughout the report, one is bounced around with arguments that are true for prospective extensions but false for retrospective extensions, and false for prospective extensions, but true for retrospective extensions."

Yes, the greedsters actually want to move some existing public-domain works back into copyrighted status. And at the same time they're talking about incentives for creation of new works? Think of the disruption to, say, film-makers who were counting on the public domain to make possible fresh adapations of supposedly unencumbered novels? This uncertainty, this attack on the very concept of the public domain, is yet another example of the insidiousness of the Allen report and its Valenti-think.

Interesting detail: My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, presumably was in the public domain when it was filmed. Hint, hint, Jack.
posted by David Rothman at 9:24 AM | permanent link

From our regular contributor Lynn Dimick:

Palm Digital Media released version 2.2.9 of its Palm Reader Pro on Friday. The new version fixes the reading problem with Tungsten T3s. The program was not originally designed to work with the Virtual Writing Area, and as a result it would not allow you to see the text correctly with the slider closed.
posted by David Rothman at 2:50 AM | permanent link

A sometimes-droopy-nosed bird called The Concorde went extinct yesterday, at least in the world of commercial aviation, and that just could be a lesson for certain e-book publishers. No, it isn't as if all e-books are doomed like supersonic jetliners, but the two parallels are screamingly clear.

First, the Concorde's death should remind publishers to be wary of an elitist approach. One-way Concorde trips sold for $6,000 or so. They were the airline equivalent of paying $20 to the giants of the book trade for the bits and bytes of an e-book that you can't even share with friends easily. Yes, the e-book biz is growing, not contracting, but in the long run the purveyors of $20 e-books may not be so fortunate. E-books should be paperbacks, not hardbacks. Perhaps if the giants priced the biggest bestsellers in e-format for a mass audience, the e-book industry would enjoy an annual revenue far, far larger than the current $10 million or so a year.

As Lesson Two, publishers should also be careful of unduly expensive technology. Concorde had its share, including, perhaps, that famously adjustable nose. To the end the Concorde required lots and lots of care, not that different from Microsoft-style Digital Rights Management and related forms of waste that beset e-books today. We don't need droopy-nosed e-books, but rather a low-cost nonproprietary approach to formats and DRM.

Last night the TV newscasts showed VIP passengers wallowing in airborne luxury, and I couldn't help but imagine Concorde flights of yore. In my mind's eye, I can see a diamond-necklaced Hollywood star leaning back in her Concorde seat and returning to an overpriced novel on her $800 color Gemstar.
posted by David Rothman at 1:34 AM | permanent link

Here's a modest proposal for us here in the States. Let's pass a law saying that only X percentage of people on Capitol Hill and in the White House can be cash-hungry, technophobic JDs with advanced cases of megalomania. What's more, a certain number of politicians must be genuine techies familiar with the hardware and software that Luddite lawyers are trying to regulate.

Alas, with exceedingly well-bought law school grads setting the tone in Washington, I see a, er, little Catch-22 here. But one can dream, no?

Meanwhile, in the wake of British engineer Nicholas Bentley's thoughts on distributed intellectual property rights, I'm pleased to present a second engineer's ideas on avoiding the Orwellian scenario of the kind that worries Autodesk founder John Walker. The avoidance recs are of a different kind, but the spirit is the same.

* * *

I am convinced of the inevitability of a future predicted by Walker and similar writers. Further, I think that many people, even those who should know better, will be convinced that the benefits--as described by Walker--outweigh the more nebulous costs.  

I am tending more to agree with the idea that DRM is part of the thinner edge of a wedge--and that as the technology becomes more prevalent we'll see a number of irritating usages that are impossible to avoid. The same programs/modules that implement DRM will be responsible for the display of full screen, interactive advertisements with no way to disable them. A DRM module may also perform invasive tracking of purchase information.  

Perhaps the only hope is for a legal mandate, and perhaps, based on your writing skills, you can manage to find some way to get it propagated. Here is the proposed mandate. Any form of "Trusted" system must include a hardware override (only accessible from the console/remote/etc of the device, not through software). If the override is pressed, the system must become wide open with no software-detectable trace.  

This is similar in effect to a proposal from the EFF, although they are only asking vendors to provide this capability. Vendors will never provide anything that they don't have to, to satisfy large customers or the law.

I should note that I speak for myself, not the unnamed American company that employs me.

* * *

The TeleRead take: You can read EFF's Trusted Computing report yourself. It would appear that, just as my correspondent says, the document does not include a call for legislation to require an override. Am I missing a reference elsewhere on the EFF site? If not, perhaps EFF needs to advocate such a law, as opposed to a mere request to vendors. Meanwhile see a related CNET story.
posted by David Rothman at 3:30 AM | permanent link

Nick Bogaty, exec director of the Open eBook Forum, known to TeleBlog readers as the Proprietary Format Promoters' Forum, will be interviewed Nov. 20 from 3-4 p.m. CST on an E-Bookworm audio netcast. We like Nick despite our disagreement with the OeBF's policies and hope he can provide some specifics that OeBF prez Steve Potash didn't--on the touchy matter of a universal consumer format. Congrats to E-Bookworm and moderator Tom Peters on inviting such timely and relevant guests. (Via the Handheld Librarian.)

Memo to Nick: Hey, here's one more quote on the need for a UCF-style solution--wisdom from Robin Raskin, a veteran editor who once ran Family PC: "Bogaty's going to have his hands full as the group implements the interoperability standards and specifications the e-book industry desparately needs. Just like you can read a book anywhere, consumers will want e-books that run on any reader they feel like using and they'll want their e-books to exhibit some e-characteristics." She wrote that in May 2002, not that long after you'd signed on as exec director. And no UCF even now? Not your fault, of course, Nick. That's for others to decide. As I see it, the OeBF under Steve Potash's leadership is just giving Microsoft, Adobe, PalmDigitalMedia and the other proprietary format folks their money's worth by not acting on a UCF. Libraries, smibraries, who cares? The profits of Microsoft and the rest count more than a cost-effective format for libraries, consumers and book publishers, right?
posted by David Rothman at 12:16 AM | permanent link

"Over the past spring and summer, the company created an unrivaled digital archive of more than 120,000 books. The goal is to quickly add most of Amazon's multimillion-title catalog. The entire collection, which went live Oct. 23, is searchable, and every page is viewable." - Wired's December issue.

The TeleRead take: Years ago, we suggested that a national digital library system might want to contract out the archives to the private sector--if proper preservation measures were in place. And a contracting out might well happen. The library side very possibly won't be able to offer equivalent archives, based on the current budget situation. Then again, one wonders if the Amazon collection is using open standards and a nonproprietary approach, ideally XML-based--which is what a real library ought to do. If I were Amazon, I would lobby hard for a universal consumer format based on the standards that Microsoft promised in announcing the Open eBook Forum. Needless to say, I'll be very grouchy if Amazon tries to push a dreckish proprietary standard on the world's library systems.

Meanwhile, in the same Wired article, I read with interest that Brewster Kahle of Archive.org "is happy to sidestep the problem of digitizing commercially successful books. He has no wish to antagonize the publishing industry. What he hates is that the Million Book Project cannot legally digitize countless books that aren't generating money for anybody. US libraries hold about 30 million unique volumes. No one knows how many of those books continue to be protected by copyright or are available from commercial publishers. Still, Kahle says, 'they can't be digitized because the copyrights can't be cleared, and the copyrights can't be cleared because it's too much work to identify the copyright holders. Some people call them abandonware. I call them orphans.'"

Time for copyright reform and TeleRead--complete with Project Gramophone-style goodies?

But back to the news story of the day. If I were netLibrary or the like, I'd be scared--very scared--given the vast resources of Amazon.

(Found via eBookAd.)
posted by David Rothman at 2:20 PM | permanent link

What's this malarkey in The Write News about e-book-publishing being "a major force in the worlds of media and technology"? Huh? With all of $10 million in annual revenue--a speck of a speck of total book-biz sales? Jeeze, post dotcom-bust, doesn't anyone learn?

Sure enough, the piece quotes the Proprietary Format Promoters' Forum. Hmm. Need to check my files. Is this just a repro of an old PR release from the Forum?

Yes, the e-book biz is growing, fast, but the commercial side is shadow of what it could have been with a true universal consumer format, less onerous copy-protection and other displays of commonsense.

Stupid articles like Wrong News's just aggravate the industry's problems by encouraging smugness and deceit among the major players.

Update, 9:16 a.m.: Had to take Carly to work, but I'm back and have now Googled the Proproprietary Format Promoters' Forum site. Yes! Wrong News ("News, features and resources for media and publishing professionals") has more or less just condensed the old PR release--apparently without warning its readers. The two leads are almost identical. Wonder if the PFPF paid for the plug. Yoo-hoo, Caitlyn Rhodes? Care to write up your client or employer in your Media Cynic column?
posted by David Rothman at 8:34 AM | permanent link

A friend has just sent a Howard Dean activist a link to TeleRead's writings on Wesley Clark and Internet copyright issues. The hope is that Dean's competitive juices will start flowing. Either Gov. Blogger stops wimping out on Internet copyright or Netfolks just might shift their sympathy to General Clark in a major way. The General is an unknown on these pesky questions, whereas Dean so far is a pusillanimous known despite his reliance on the Internet as a source of money and supporters.

Below, for the General and his strategists, I'll supply a list of links to encourage them to take a stand and show the character that Dean has lacked up to now:

1. The Digital Imprimatur: How Big Brother and Big Media Could Put the Internet Genie Back in the Bottle, by John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc., and coauthor of AutoCAD.

2. Digital Millennium Dark Ages, by Robin D. Gross, formerly an intellectual property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and now executive director of IP Justice. Read why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act actually will weaken computer security, not to mention the First Amendment. This isn't mere legislation. Valuing corporate control over most everything, even profits in some cases, it is in fact an ideology, DMCAism. The DMCA will actually hurt small business people, not just consumers and political activists. What's more, the consumer-hostile protection technology that it encourages is a major reason why the whole e-book industry will sell just $10 million or so in wares this year--a mere fraction of Tom Clancy's annual income. Main beneficiaries of the DMCA will be Disneyeque conglomerates, overpaid corporate lawyers and power-crazed bureaucrats.

3. Free Speech at Risk, DMCA analysis in plain English by PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak. He writes: "See if your Congressional representative voted for this onerous law and fight to have him or her removed from office with all your might! Seriously. Why are we putting up with these idiots?" Get it, General? Get it, Clark supporters? This is just a preview of the anger that ordinary voters will feel as DMCA-citing thugs threaten them with arrest. Remember, 60 million Americans are swapping files. We've already seen the recording studios sue a 12 year-old honor student living in a public housing project. While we need to protect intellectual property online, it should be done through good encryption technology and incentives not to pirate--for example, a well-stocked national digital library system, especially in the case of e-books. The studios had PR problems enough with a music-loving child; what if she had been arrested for having an illegal book collection? What better illustration of the desirability of the library system, which could start small and actually save schools money through more efficient distribution of content?

4. IP Justice White Paper on the Draft Intellectual Property Rights Chapter in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Treaty--the Super DMCA for the whole bloody Western Hemisphere. This is a Bush production, just as the DMCA was hatched by the Clinton White House. Can the General show a little independence, please? And not just from the usual K Street-bought Washingtonthink on Capitol Hill and at the White House. Also from mediathink. Whether out of cowardice or for selfish reasons, Robin Gross's warnings have been virtually ignored by the so-called mainstream media--actually, the elitestream media.

5. The Eric Eldred Act, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig's remedy for the notorious Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, a copyright grab that will jack up the costs of books and other content in the future for schools and libraries and threaten our cultural heritage. Republican conservative Steve Forbes, hardly a Molotov cocktail thrower, has written: "Only about 2% of copyrighted work between 1923 and 1942 continues to be exploited commercially. Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig has proposed a sensible compromise. Borrowing a page from patent law, wherein holders have to pay a fee every few years to keep their patents current, Lessig would apply that principle to copyrights: After a certain number of years, copyright holders would have to pay a nominal amount of money to maintain protection. If the holder didn't pay the charge for, say, three years, the work would go into the public domain." If Clark won't call for Bono's repeal, will he at least support the Eldred Act--making a fool out of Dean, who has failed to do so despite his guest appearance in Lessig's blog?

6. Copyright and K-12: Who Pays in the Network Era?, my paper commissioned by the Clinton-era Department of Education. I warn how the famous "savage inequalities" will go online, based on disparities in the wealth of school and library districts. My own partial solution would be the well-stocked national digital library system discussed earlier. For some helpful context here, check out a clueful library-oriented article in the Carnegie Reporter as well as my response to it. The article describes TeleRead as "one of the most intriguing alternatives" to present legal and business models. Providing for fair compensation for copyright holders, TeleRead is actually pro-property rights.
posted by David Rothman at 7:10 AM | permanent link

TeleRead tells how to spread the e-books around using the library model. But once people have the material, what can they do with it? We've long advocated a liberal interpretation of fair use, so that, for example, families and close friends could share e-books in the same way they do paper books. Too, writers should be able to quote at length from each other without fear of being sued, especially by political or commercial rivals.

Now, from Nicholas Bentley, a British citizen living in Provence in southern France, comes additional thoughts in the fair use realm, via his Common Rights site advocating "distributed intellectual property rights." I urge you to take a look at both CR and Creative Commons, which, in its own way, explores this territory even if its perspective differs from Bentley's. Like me, Bentley is a creator but not a lawyer. Whether in the States, the U.K. or France, one shudders at the prospect of the intellectual property debate being left to those with a vested interest in expensive complexity.

* * *

I have been reading your columns for a few months now and thank you for consolidating all the news on e-books. You also published my wife's (Margot Milner) comments on her experience with Pocket PC readers a few weeks ago.

My special interest is in the DRM issues because I have been working on the problems of intellectual property in digital from. I have put forward a proposal for a collective rights regime and a Distributed Intellectual Property Rights (DIPR) system for regulating IP in the future.

The DIPR system moves away from managing copies, with all the inherent problems of copyright when digital content is so easily copied, to a rights-based system for regulation and identifying intangible intellectual creations.

Most DRM systems today focus on the copyrights of the author--whereas the 'collective rights' regime grants rights to both authors and consumers

This change of emphasis could have a dramatic effect on how we share and trade intellectual property.
posted by David Rothman at 6:01 AM | permanent link

IP Justice has started a petition drive to keep DMCAism from infesting the whole Western Hemisphere via a Hollywood-influenced trade agreement, the FTAA.

Sign up--no matter where you live in the Western Hemisphere--especially if you're an e-book publisher. Jack-booted measures like the present DMCA in the U.S. encourage software companies to create third-rate protection technology and ignore consumer convenience.

The end result? People feel as if they don't truly own e-books. They can't share them easily with friends. Sales suffer. The DMCA is one of the reasons why e-book sales this year will be a mere $10 million or so.

Outrageously the terms of the proposed Super DMCA are said to be even worse than those of the current one here in the States, particularly in regard to file-sharing. Even without RIAA complaints, thuggish bureaucrats can file criminal charges against you. There is also prejudice in the FTAA proposal against free software and open source development.

Wonder how much our friends at the RIAA and like-minded outfits spent on campaign donations and lobbying to get this beaut written. Please--read the specifics.

* * *

Incidentally the Super DMCA isn't the only item on the RIAA's international agenda. Copyrights on the first recordings of Elvis Presley will be expiring in a couple of years in Canada, the U.K. and at least several other countries--those with the 50-year rule for sound recordings. Similarly, the Beatles' early copyrights will expire in the next decade or so. You can bet that the RIAA will use the FTAA as an excuse to seek to "harmonize" the U.K. and the rest of Europe and the world with much longer terms that the trade agreement calls for--95 years for sound recordings from the date of release.

Will we really encourage the arts that much by extending copyright terms to pay out more millions to Elvis's hardly cash-strapped heirs--or even the remaining members of the Fab Four? If the RIAA really cares about typical musicians and creative incentives, then maybe it's time for legislation restricting how much of a bite the studios can take out of the revenue the artists bring in.
posted by David Rothman at 11:30 AM | permanent link

OverDrive CEO Steve Potash, sure enough, ducked the question of DRM costs when moderator Tom Peters broached the issue during an E-Bookworm interview last week. No dollar figures or percentages given, just a pro-DRM sales pitch ("a liberating technology" to placate piracy-worried publishers). The question couldn't have been clearer: "What does it cost to add DRM to a chunk of content, a novel or something like that?"

Similarly Potash gave a wordy PR pitch about the glories of the Open eBook Forum--of which he's president--rather than genuinely answering a question about the possibility of a standard consumer format. About the closest thing to a responsive excuse was that OeBF is still a new organization. Huh? Five years after Microsoft promised that OeBF would create such a format?

On another topic, Potash at least admitted the accessibility problems that DRM created for library users with special needs.

You can hear the interview in full. Lori Bell, who helped organize the E-Bookworm program, says: "All you need is an Internet connection, sound card and speakers. When you first go into ivocalize, it will ask you to download a small applet and will automatically download on your machine."
posted by David Rothman at 9:47 AM | permanent link

Earlier I suggested standards to optimize e-book fonts on machines used by dyslexics, and I held out Read Regular as an example. Bad idea, replied Brian Witt who has 12 years in the printing business--and a dyslexic wife and son. Below he expands on some earlier observations. Thanks, Brian! You've won me over. I also appreciated your related words, at the end of your font essay, on the usefulness of a universal consumer format for e-books. The essay also includes a recommendation of The Gift of Dyslexia. - David Rothman

What must first be understood is that dyslexia is a catch-all term for conditions whose exact nature elude us. Mental Retardation and Autism were once part of "dyslexia." This means that once we discover the true nature of these conditions, the pool of dyslexics shrinks. What is currently left falls into many different categories.

My wife and son have what is reffered to as "picture thinking." In this type of dyslexia, the mind forms pcitures for words. A dog for instance. Later in school they are intoduced to the word "DOG" and told what it means. The child can then make the connection between the letters D-O-G and their picture of a dog. When they encounter the word "GOD" while reading, a word they do not have a picture for, only then does the mind start to move letters around until the word "DOG" is formed and read. Most dyslexics of this type will not have a problem reading "elephant" (because they have a picture of one), but will have problems reading words like "this, of, for, to, and" (because they have no tangible picture for these words).

Don't get me wrong, typeface can be a huge influence on how easy/difficult words are to read. Typeface needs to be non-distracting, and I've done tests with my wife and son to determine things that do and don't improve reading for them--but these techniques are specific to my wife and son (and I've found differences even between them) and may not be what another dyslexic needs. In my wife's and son's cases, Read Regular will probably be of some help. But type selection is only about 10 percent of the equation. My wife and son need a form of therapy to train their minds to recognize and picture the "trigger words" I mentioned earlier (this, of, for, to, and). My wife, after 30 years of difficulty in reading, is finally reading for pleasure--outreading me as of late--and I couldn't be happier.

My fear is that by this company releasing "Read Regular," many--most notably in our educational systems--will see this a "solution" to the problem. This will only frustrate dyslexics more as the root cause of their condition is not being addressed and this "quick fix" will only do so much.

Personally, I see wide adoption of Read Regular doing more damage than good simply because of this lack of understanding. For a good book regarding picture thinkers, refer to The Gift of Dyslexia.

* * *

Here's an additional thought to what I sent you earlier.

I don't disagree that for a dyslexic, the font can be important. In learning to read (using the DOG example), a severely dyslexic person (it's not an on/off thing, but more of degrees) can need to relearn the word for different font styles (serif, sans serif, vastly different typestyles such as Cooper and Garamond, Helvetica and Gill Sans). For this type of person, standardizing his reading to one font (Read Regular or anything else) can help him learn by not requiring him to relearn words just because they're in a different face. But turning this individual out of the schools where Read Regular isn't going to be used is like turning loose a "dyslexic time bomb."

E-books, in a standard consumer format, would be of great help to this individual. Once out of school, he can then choose to read his local newspaper, national news, workplace documents, and everything else in the font he leaned to read in school. This seems a perfect application for the standard consumer format e-book. I'm still quite skeptical on the dyslexic font as I'm sure this is going to be an attempt by educators to brush their failure to properly deal with dyslexia under the rug.
posted by David Rothman at 2:35 AM | permanent link

Copyright issues do matter to Independents for Clark. Thanks for today's new TeleRead link! While I zeroed in on the DMCA and Bill Clinton's role in it, I was pleased to see IFC vent against the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Term Act named after the late Republican congress member. It will keep many a classic--ranging from various Gershwin compositions to The Great Gatsby--from going on the Net for free for a long time. Not the best news for our cash-strapped schools and libraries which wanted to use the public domain to stretch local tax dollars.

Memo to Clark blogger John Hlinko: Your guy should follow the lead of IFC and make an issue out of the Bono Act. As IFC says, "That was clearly insider special interest [advocacy] just like the changes to media ownership rules that FCC Chair Michael Powell tried to push through." Enlighten all those PTA moms! Check out TeleRead's earlier post on Net copyright issues as a way to help beat Howard Dean. This would be one way for Wesley Clark to live up to his reputation as an independent thinker, rather than being perceived as just Clinton II. Why not test the waters with an anti-Bono item in Generally Speaking: The Official Clark '04 Blog? See how the troops feel. Congress either should repeal the Bono act, if that's legally practical, or pass the Eric Eldred Act, a mitigating measure proposed by Larry Lessig, the very same law professor who made Howard Dean a guest blogger. If Clark shows some guts and advocates corrective action, he'll masterfully reveal Dean to have acted like a net.phony.

And for Dean supporters: I'd love to see some upside surprises from Governor Dean on the copyright issue. I know many of you are extremely clueful. It's your candidate who's the problem. Why does he keep wimping out on Bono, DMCA and the rest after having used the Net for months to reel in supporters and money? I won't buy the excuse that, oh, yes, we'll wait until after the election to see if Dean cares about net.copyright. I want to see some integrity now.

Finally a word to Bush supporters: An Internet-friendly copyright policy from the White House would certainly be in line with the sentiments of Glenn Reynolds, the conservative law professor who has wisely written: "Democrats are left with a choice: side with fatcats, and against consumers and popular artists, or turn on a constituency that has been a major source of campaign funds." I myself think Reynolds is on the button with his depiction of the issues and the potential risks to the Dems. But if Clark and his people are smart, they'll actually condemn Washington's bipartisan copyright giveaways to show the public that their guy isn't just a Generalized Clinton, that Wes Clark won't sell out to Hollywood. And, hey, remember: votes in the end count more than money.
posted by David Rothman at 7:21 PM | permanent link

"Copyright and the Web have mixed as amicably as oil and water. The ease with which authors can put their works online and share knowledge far and wide clashes severely with the rights asserted by publishers." - Geneva Henry, Rice University, writing in the October D-Lib Magazine.

The TeleRead take: True, true, true--with some qualification. Publishers who can't add value will be Webkill. The good ones can through appreciate selection, editing and promotion of material. Such ideas will apply regardless of the content involved--whether author-paid, publisher-paid, directly reader-paid or otherwise. But even the highest value won't work for publishers that insist on maintaining absolute control. Even the dream scenarios of the DMCAists won't save the day in the end. If DMCAism becomes too obnoxious on the Net, the voters may well revolt once they catch on.

(Found via eBookAd. There you go--value added through selection!)
posted by David Rothman at 2:33 PM | permanent link

What would life be without microwave ovens? The traditionalists still hate 'em; but without them, people would spend more time sweating in hot kitchens. Similarly e-books mean more time reading and less time looking for the right titles--beyond other advantages such as the potential of well-stocked national digital libraries for bridging the information gap. I'm pleased, therefore, to see Dorothea Salo's latest salvo against the Luddites: Microwave Ebooks (yes, the metaphor is hers). You also might want to check out her prior e-book postings, by the way, complete with PDF-related rants.

A related Carlyism: The first microwave for use in the home cost $1,200 in 1955 from Tappan, according to a Woman's World article bought to my attention by my wife. Came out the month Carly was born (disclosure permission graciously granted). Now I see $35 specials. A little clue for the Luds who think e-book prices won't decline?

As it is, my REB 1100 e-book reader cost $70 used on eBay--or just twice as much those $35 microwave ovens that I saw in the Sunday paper. My wife's REB 1100 cost just $100 used, and soon new machines will go for that little. Too bad major publishers are still gouging the public with $20 e-books. That's a fifth of the price of the new readers on the way!

Beyond price: Of course, price is just one of the ways in which e-books will improve. We're talking about progress in areas ranging from battery life to sharper screens and possible equivalents such as flexible plastic sheets.

Wrong issue: Confronted with "Computers will never replace the printed book," Dorothea correctly says: "Oh, come on, people, who said they were trying to? (Other than print journos looking for a catchy headline and snake-oil salesmen trying for another sale.) Honestly, the level of hostility toward print imputed to me as an e-text enthusiast by this sentiment verges on the personally offensive. Really it does." Yes! While I suspect that e-books will be the main show two decades from now, it isn't as if printed books are going to vanish instantly and forever--no more than horses or vacuum tube radios. Meanwhile enjoy books in all forms!

(Picture via ArtToday.)
posted by David Rothman at 11:13 AM | permanent link

Check out the mix of a SmartPhone, Mobipocket software and a dictionary--if you hate the idea of strange words in new books baffling you while you're away from home.
posted by David Rothman at 8:35 AM | permanent link

Methinks we've witnessed the birth of a new ideology, DMCAism, the legal framework that helps foster the most obnoxious forms of Digital Rights Management. DMCAism differs from pure capitalism in that it cares just as much about control of consumers as it does about profit--in fact, very likely more. DMCAists needn't overthrow governments. They just bribe them with massive campaign contributions as they go about fomenting international revolution against the masses. The Karl Marx of DMCAism is Bruce Lehman, the sometimes-vindictive copyright lobbyist, who, as intellectual property czar under the Clinton administation, oversaw the writing of the infamous "white paper" that set the tone for Washington's Draconian copyright policy toward the Internet. The white paper is the DMCAist Manifesto.

The Microsoft Connection: None other than Marshall C. Phelps, Jr., corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for intellectual property at Microsoft, sits on the board of the Intellectual Property Institute of which Lehman is president and CEO. Presumably, after funding the Open eBook Forum, a group whose goals appear to be rather in synch with IPI's, Microsoft still has enough left over to help out IPI as well.
posted by David Rothman at 7:34 AM | permanent link

You're a publisher selling e-books--or a librarian evaluating e-book systems. Just how can you best serve readers? Will children go for fonts different from the kind that adults like? Just how important to students is word lookup--or the ability to annotate books? What's best for elderly readers? How about some big fair-use issues for libraries?

Somewhere there's a study addressing one or the other of those questions, and if you want to find it, then buy E-Book Functionality: What Librarians and Their Patrons Want and Expect from Electronic Books, published by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) within ALA.

What a bargain despite the $35 price tag fo 138 large pages! For the price of a book, a library or pubisher evaluating digital books can suddenly gain a trio of three e-book-crazed researchers: Susan Gibbons, Thomas A. Peters (yes, the interviewer on eBookWorm) and Robin Bryan. Any librarian who does e-book system procurement without a look at the research abstracts in E-Book Functionality will be guilty of clear-cut dereliction of duty.

Especially I agree with the authors' brief but essential caution early on about the Tower of eBabel. They say that "until either a ubiquitous e-book format standard is universally adopted or the migration of content among the myriad e-book formats becomes almost effortless, authors and publishers must be cautious and place their content with the industry's most likely survivors." Of course a standard format would be the best solution by far. Yoo-hoo, OeBF? Maybe this book should be assigned reading for all your members if they really want to improve consumers' reading experiences.

Speaking of usability, if I'd had my druthers, E-Book Functionality would have offered an index and a more detailed table of contents, as well as a Web site with regular updates, the latter being consistent with one of the recommendations in the work itself. Still, Web sites are time-vacuums, as I, of all people, know. Maybe the solution is a new e-dition of the book once a year. That also would lower the price of the book for the digital crowd and especially please those outside the States--getting rid of the shipping costs.

Nits or not, based on a first look, I find this an awesomely useful book for publishers and software vendors, not just as librarians. Along the way, I'm pleased to see an abstract of a TeleRead update called E-Books in Urban Education: Useful Lessons from the South Side of Chicago, where some informal observations on young students' e-book preferences jibed with findings elsewhere.

Update, 9:31 a.m., Washington time: In a note to me, Tom Peter says about the lack of an e-book: "We inquired with LITA/ALA early on about that
obvious need, but, with the quick publication deadline, evidently it wasn't in the cards." Next year, hopefully!
posted by David Rothman at 4:18 AM | permanent link