"If countries agree to pass DMCA-like laws as part of a treaty," U.S. "negotiators may offer better terms for exchanging other goods and services." - CNET story on the acquittal of a Norwegian programmer acquitted of a DVD-related charge.

The TeleRead take: So here's the big question. Just what trade protections for nonHollywood types are U.S. officials bargaining away in the name of DMCAism? Won't anyone from the media investigate? Hollywood brags about the money it brings in from overseas, but, in the future, how much of that will be at the expense of other industries? And has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis? Generally I like free trade, but with so many U.S. jobs lost due to it, and with politicians not able to come up with solutions to the jobs-drain, those are not minor issues. Is it Hollywood vs. mill workers in North Carolina or Boeing hands in Seattle?

Related: Meanwhile the outflow of some U.S. programming jobs and other white-collar work goes on--and on. See White-Collar Anger.
posted by David Rothman at 7:59 AM | permanent link

Amos Bokros, the author of the touching story below, lives in Bradenton, Florida, and has been a TeleRead supporter for years. You can reach him at amos.bokros@verizon.net.

They're called the VE kids, short for "Very Exceptional Students"--with a hodgepodge of learning disabilities and emotional problems. Some must take powerful drugs to control their rage, or have threatened to bring guns to school.

Not the kids you'd expect to love electronic books. But I know better as a substitute teacher in Sarasota County, Florida.

In fact, I myself am a VE child grown up, and e-books and related technology have already changed my life. I scan the books with special software and then simultaneously hear them and read them--with the computer highlighting the words. Even better, as a disabled person, I can legally download best-sellers from Bookshare.org and skip the scanning process, saving me hours and hours. Same for Project Gutenberg books--free to everyone, disabled or not. I've even turned into a bit of a speed demon as a reader, cruising along at up to 450 words per minute. You can think of the technology as like eyeglasses. I'd rather be able to do without it, but with it I can actually read faster than many people without my combination of attention deficit disorder, dyslexia and other challenges.

Now I take my laptop into the classroom and, at every chance, share the technology with my students.

I've had the joy of watching students who would rather die than have to read, being captivated by a story of Greek mythology. The students are amazed that they can read a story by themselves 20 or 30 pages long without taking a break. These same students could not or would not read a paragraph by themselves. The students are amazed that they enjoyed and comprehended what they read. I have been particularly happy that many of the most pugnacious students have found this technology a breakthrough--a way to develop both their minds and their self-esteem.

One young African American girl worried at first that her father would tell her that the technology was for "dumb people."

"What's dumb," I said, "is not taking advantage of technology or anything that can help us to learn."

Let me tell you about an incident that happened recently. I was called one morning to go to a school for students kicked out of other schools or even in trouble with the law. Another teacher and I were to teach a class of three students, and I asked if they would give me any problems.

"No," she said. "They'll most likely be sleeping. As long as you don't wake the students up, they won't bother you."

Sure enough, when I got to the class, two of the three students were sleeping. I spoke with the other teacher in the class, and basically she explained the game we played in this school where kids come to this school because they have to and are just waiting till their 18th birthday and no longer need to be legally in school. She reassured me that we were in no danger because the really bad kids had recently been sent off to prison.

I tried talking to the one student who was awake. He apparently tried to shock me with his extracurricular stories which were not appropriate for school. I quickly gave up trying to talk with him. About a half hour later, one of the hall monitors who looked like a bouncer in a rough bar woke the students up and told them it was time to go to gym class. We walked to gym class and the two students who slept in the class room proceeded to continue to sleep during gym. There were other students from other classes in the gym. A few of them started talking with me. After a few minutes it became clear they were all also trying to shock me with all sorts of inappropriate drug and sex talk. I realized that this was going to be a wasted day, but at least I was going to be paid for it.

During a break, I went to my car and got my laptop. When I returned, I set up my laptop with my ear phones and proceeded to do some work.

One student woke up and began staring at me.

"Are you OK?" I asked.

"Yes."

I kept tapping away on my laptop while the student watched. He started to talk with me, and we discovered we shared the same birthday and were both from Pennsylvania originally. I was happy that at least the conversation wasn't about drugs or sex.

He looked at me and said, "I don't like computers."

"Why not?" I asked.

His reply was, "Well, for one thing, I can't read good."

I looked at him and said, "Would you like to try something?"

He said, "I guess so."

I got up and asked him to sit in my chair, and I placed the headphones attached to my laptop on his head. I then switched text on my laptop and went to a section of short stories. I explained to him that this was a digital reading program, and that he was about to have a computer read a story to him and highlight the words as it did so. I adjusted the speed of the story and told him I could make the computer read faster or slower if he desired. I also explained that he could stop the program at any time, then resume where he'd left off. He could also have varied the pitch.

He read the story and asked, "Can I read it again?"

"Yes," I said, and he proceeded to do so--before going on to another story.

I had him reading for about an hour.

He told me that usually when he is confronted by reading he becomes blinded by looking at a sea of words. But here he was able to concentrate on the story and able to read words which were ordinarily difficult for him to comprehend. Another student joined us as we were talking. I talked about my own problems with reading and how I suffered terrible humiliation in school because of my learning disability. He asked me how I was able to go to college if I had a reading disability. I explained that it was difficult and I had to work very hard.

I also explained until recently this type of technology was unavailable--but, had it been available when I was his age, my life might have been substantially different. I'd have spent years and years as a teacher by now rather than having to work in nursing homes and at Wal-Mart. Now scanned books had opened up a world of possibilities.

"Look," I told both kids, "school basically sucks, but reading can be a lot of fun if you are willing to try."

He looked at me skeptically, and frankly I wondered if I had helped him. I wrote down for him the names of Bookshare (as a source of electronic books) and TeleRead (which for years has advocated e-books for people in general--but especially for those with learning disabilities).

The school day was coming to a close and I said goodbye to my student and wished him well in his endeavors. He told me he would think about what I had introduced him to. As I left the school that day and went home, I wondered how much effect I had on any students. I hoped that may be I had made a difference in at least one student's life. But one thing for sure: I've never had a more satisfying day of teaching.

I just hope that our schools can catch on to the potential of this technology and others related to electronic books. During World War II the initials "VE" stood for "Victory in Europe." But maybe, with the right hardware and software available, they can take on another meaning for many special kids: "Victory in the Classroom."

* * *

The TeleRead take: Needless to say, experiences like Amos's are exactly why I'm so gung ho on the creation of a Universal Consumer Format that works well with assistive technology. How much better e-books are in many cases than the alternatives! Amos, at least, finds that books on tape require much more of his time than does a mix of synthesized speech and highlighted words. What's more, in his opinion, books on tape don't encourage as strong a relationship between written text and cognitive thinking.

Amos also notes the treadmill effect--the speech pulls the students along. Does this mean that read-as-you-see-highlighted-words should replace other forms of reading instruction for special students, including those in the early grades? Of course not. Some educators might even argue that synthesized speech could confuse the children without the proper inflections and other nuances. Still, what do you do when other methods have failed? If nothing else, although reading is the single most important skill in school, do we really want to condemn future Amoses to menial jobs? Better to make assistive technology available--so they can pick up knowledge in subjects ranging from history to science--or maybe even advanced calculus or networking protocols.

And who knows, maybe even people without his disabilities could experiment. The synthesis-highlight combo might even be a standard option in the future with e-book reading software and PDAs.

In case you're curious, Amos uses Wynn Wizard to scan and read books, as well as read material from the Net. Two other possibilities are Open Book and Kurzweil 1000. Also check out some background from Benetech, the Silicon Valley nonprofit behind Bookshare.-- David Rothman
posted by David Rothman at 8:40 PM | permanent link

Amos Bokros, a teacher in Bradenton, Florida, is an e-book booster who, though bright, must cope with serious learning disabilities. I'm going to let Amos tell his story in a post that should be up by late tonight and maybe before then. No holiday angles exist here but the most important of all: Amos's eagerness to share his enthusiasm with the children who could most benefit from it. The already-previewed "OeBF Christmas Carol" will appear later this week. Meanwhile, happiest of holidays to all our readers!

Housekeeping: I've made a number of tweaks to Post-OeBF: Two replacement groups to drive up e-book sales--and help the world along the way. If you missed it because of the holidays, check it out.
posted by David Rothman at 11:07 AM | permanent link

U.S. schools are crying out for up-to-date textbooks, and the kids are relying more and more on the Internet as a research tool. Yet a well-stocked national digital library system is but a dream right now. Meanwhile in India, in Latin America, in Africa, university students line up for scarce copies of paper library books. Oh, and don't forget another little detail: E-book sales are a disgraceful $10-$12 million a year, a fraction of Tom Clancy's typical annual income. Ten million is just speck of a speck of the tens of billions of the yearly revenue from p-books. Can't someone connect the dots and truly look ahead to the future?

Despite a very real need for the wares of the e-book industry, the Open eBook Forum has blown the job badly because of its focus on the immediate needs of Microsoft, Adobe, Palm Digital Media and OverDrive, its main sponsors. In fact, the Forum can't even serve them well. The message isn't getting through. For example: E-books are actually rather readable now, on affordable PDAs with ClearType-style technology and good reader programs. And better e-book hardware is on the way. But tell that to the techies posting on Slashdot. Even some of them seem to think that you must read e-books on a desktop or make do with reader-hostile dreck in the Adobe vein. Whoops. Bad example--since Adobe is an OeBF Gold Sponsor, not just a mere member. Can one spell c-o-n-f-l-i-c-t o-f i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t, especially when OeBF president Steve Potash runs a format-conversion operation as one of his business activities as OverDrive boss and won't dare raze the Tower of eBabel?

As the Caveat Lector blog of a former OverDrive employee has wittingly or unwittingly suggested, Potash sabotaged the "open" standards efforts of his supposed "standards" organization--by aggressively neglecting a key committee.

"Shortly after I started work at OverDrive, I heard Steve speak at an OEBF plenary," writes Dorothea Salo. "His attitude toward the OEBPS was that the OEBF had already done the standards thing, wrung what there was to wring from it—and it was time to Move On to more fun and exciting things. Public relations, mostly. And trade-org stuff, whatever it is that trade orgs do (I’ve never been sure). Hardly coincidence that PubStruct withered inside the next year." Actually, living in Alexandria, VA, one of the trade association capitals of the cosmos, I'm rather certain what competent trade associations and PR outfits do. Evaluated as either, the OeBF is now about on par with Potash as an ethicist--an observation I'll document below. Simply put, then, a formerly valuable group is now awesomely worthless for the most part if you judge it by its own description as the "International Trade and Standards Organization for the eBook Industry." Like Nuvomedia and Softbook, the once-promising young companies that ex-Gemstar CEO Henry Yuen bought up and compromised to promote an overly proprietary approach that ultimately killed the Gemstar e-book readers, the OeBF has suffered--to the point where it is beyond fixing and deserves to be put out of its misery. An impossible dream? Not necessarily, as I'll show later on with an analysis of the makeup of the OeBF's board.

So here is a proposal to replace the failed OeBF with two groups to get e-books on the right track: the International eBook Association and the related eBook Standards Organization. I'll at least pay OeBF the compliment of saying the effectiveness of an e-book trade association--ideally a replacement group or groups!--is worth worrying about. Not everyone would agree. That's how cynical the OeBF has made e-bookers at the expense of the industry's future.

The just-mentioned IEA would do e-book-related promotion, lobbying and training, among other activities. It would be the larger organization by far and would represent the interests of true book people such as publishers, librarians and e-bookstores. The book business, not a software oligarchy, would be the most influential sources of cash. In return, book people would get an organization far more respectful of their needs than the present OeBF--dominated by companies keen on pushing their pet formats and operating systems. ESO, the standards group, would receive long-term funding from IEA and tap the brains of those of the present OeBF techies who believed in a standard consumer-level format. It would not be a salesy organization. But the effect would be the same. E-books will fare better when a Universal Consumer Format is in place.

I know. People will worry that the book business won't cough up. No guarantees here! But individual publishing conglomerates can each spend many millions to promote just one season's crop of best-sellers. Outfits like the Association of American Publishers might show some new generosity if e-book boosters were more effective and picked up lessons from the AAP itself. Too, if properly educated, the American Library Association might kick in eventually. Even some of the OeBF's present sponsors from the software industry might be more willing to be generous if they knew that a different approach would help move e-books better than the present organization has. But I'd rather see their contributions capped to prevent more bullying. We already know what happens when Microsoft and Adobe and the others call the shots. Even Jon Noring, the eBook Community List moderator who says the OeBF's present leadership is "fine," admits that the group should learn to live with sources of "untainted" revenue. "The current system," he wrote on Wednesday with rather apparent understatement, "is still skewed a little too heavily toward the full members."

The trade association side: Why we should replace the OeBF with IEA

Instead of a short-sighted approach focused so much on a small gang of Gold Sponsors, how about a real trade association to help e-book publishers as a whole? That's what IEA would be. As a promoter of e-books, the present OeBF is inept to the point of risibility. Visited the home page lately? The damn thing is a parody of itself. You don’t see little kids curled up with a PDA or Tablet PC and reading e-books. Instead you see this obnoxious graphic at the top of the page, flashing out the logos of the four main sponsors (actually I'll share the treat via the reproduction within this paragraph). You also see a PRish series of links where the OeBF often boasts about such-and-such companies joining. Some of that within bounds is fine, but OeBF overdoes it. This is greed-is-good territory. Who cares what e-books can do for the world? Who cares about the industry? Gotta focus on the people forking over the money!

Compare the OeBF's site to that of the Association of American Publishers. As I write this, the AAP site is announcing a campaign to boost library funding, and there's a great link to a site called Get Caught Reading, which AAP and the Magazine Publishers Association sponsor. GCR, in turn, features posters of Whoopi Goldberg and other celebrities reading, as well as information on literacy and the importance of reading aloud to kids. Yes, the AAP's Web efforts could be still better, and, yes, I'd disagree with the AAP people on issues like copyright-term-extension and whatever; but give 'em credit--they're looking beyond the immediate needs of the organization and suggesting that books can make a difference on Planet Earth.

But what about the people of OeBF compared to those of the AAP? I like Nick Bogaty, the OeBF executive director, who means well, but, based on our conversations, he strikes me as more of a bean-counter than a people person or passionate e-book person. At the urging of a mysterious stranger, Nick did contact me out of the blue some months ago because I was reputed to know something about e-books. No problem! But then Nick promptly warned me that I would learn much less about the efforts of the OeBF unless I agreed to go off record, an option I declined. Huh? The Open eBook Forum. What was next? A blood oath? Was the OeBF really an extension of the Mafia or a law firm?

Well, actually, yes in a sense. Steve Potash, the OeBF president and boss man at OverDrive, is a lawyer by background, and that approach seems to suffuse and suffocate OeBF's relations with the rest of the world. Nick himself is far too eager to play attorney as shown by his obvious eagerness to co-opt me with dialogue in the vein of, "Nice to meet you. Care to give me an oral NDA so I can bore you with stupid details that no one will really care about anyway?"

By contrast, if Nick had been a recruiter from the AAP, he might very well have rattled off a list of the association's projects in the Real World and asked if TeleRead might fit into one. Suppose the OeBF or a nonprofit spin-off eligible for foundation money had an e-book demo project in an urban or rural school? Or a well-done project with a university to investigate and improve the usability of e-books? Or one to see why so many librarians felt uncomfortable about e-books--and to do something about it? Or, gasp, eventually a project to lobby for a well-stocked national digital library system with fair compensation for publishers, writers and other content-providers--and provisions for smoothly integrating e-books into schools and libraries? Or maybe a project to show how well e-books could go together with students' blogging (just the ticket for sharing book reports to demonstrate an understanding of the material)? Not too bad for market development, especially the promotion of books among Net-mindd kids, eh?

Do-gooder activities like those wouldn't just excite me. They also might help draw money from the book industry. In fact, IEA and the AAP might even work together with the ALA and educational groups in these areas, with the emphasis on the kids' welfare, as opposed to OeBF-style huckstery. But, of course, the present OeBF isn't dynamic or imaginative enough to attract the money or interest from the right people, and somehow I just can't see Nick getting that fired up about e-books for fifth graders. I wonder if he even reads them himself (I don't know).

Compare Nick to the AAP's executive director, Pat Schroeder, who has authored at least two paper books and evinces constant enthusiasm about the medium. Similarly Ms. Schroeder is out there meetin' and greetin' and lobbyin'. I assume Nick does the trade association act and at meetings shakes his quota of hands. But the fervor just isn’t there. Why isn't a booster like Glenn "eBookWeb" Sanders or Kelly "KnowBetter.com" Ford in charge of OeBF rather than Nick--a cautious, Prufrockian type in a business context?

This Prufrockian mindset came through abundantly after Margot Milner, an ardent e-book supporter in France, contacted Nick on her own about certain taxes that favored p-books over e-books. You'd think Nick would have rejoiced at this chance to start up a grassroots campaign with people like Margot pitching in for free. No huge amount of vision needed from Nick or from Steve Potash. Instead, however, Nick cranked out an e-mail to Margot saying that the OeBF doesn't lobby as a matter of policy. Any lack-of-resources excuse just won't cut it. Long term, OeBF could set up a lobbying subsidiary and encourage Margo-type folks to do grassroots-style efforts on the cheap. Short term, if nothing else, Nick could have investigated the matter further and done a press release, which would have cost next to nothing. Rather Nick merely suggested that Margot write the AAP. He apparently didn't act further even though bad taxes could cost the e-book business billions over the years. And this is the outfit that's supposed to promote the industry? Far from blaming Nick alone, I detect the hand of Steve Potash, ever the lawyer, in the group's non-lobbying policy.

Oh, but the matter didn't end there. After the TeleRead Web Log published the bland letter Margot received, Nick called me up to complain. Huh? All the letter did was to say that as a matter of policy, the OeBF wouldn't lobby. No inner secrets revealed. But apparently even the OeBF's lobbying policy or nonlobbying policy is not fit for openness. Nick was horrified that Margot had contacted him without mentioning her interest in TeleRead. He demanded a list of regular contributors to the TeleRead site so he could guard against such disturbing disclosures. Intimidation? Maybe, but in my mind the operative word was, "Pathetic." Poor Nick. Margot had contacted him on her own, and beyond that, why should anyone have to resort to stealth to find out about policy? But at the OeBF, paranoia won out.

By contrast Ed McCoyd, an OeBF board member who's the AAP's director of digital policy, couldn't have been more helpful to Margo and me. He sent Margot a quick reply promising to look into the tax issue, and later followed through with us by e-mailing a link to material from a UK publishers association. Best of all, when I contacted him, he expressed interest in working with us on a grassroots campaign against discriminatory taxes on e-books. That was wholly consistent with the AAP's efforts to encourage a grassroots interest in library funding. Ed saw us as potential allies on the tax issue rather than as menaces (even if we might disagree with him on other matters). Perhaps someday Ed and I will be campaigning together for meaningful federal funding for e-books in libraries.

Besides lobbying, a grownup trade association could also be active in areas ranging from technical awards (with independent judges), professional development (including related areas such as e-books within library and information science) and general enlightenment of members and the population at large. The present OeBF is anti-enlightenment. It's gone along with Draconian DRM even though a survey from KnowBetter.com and eBook Web has amply documented the downside. Instead of pandering to the prejudices of certain uninformed publishers, the way OeBF has done under Steve Potash, the IEA could encourage the use DRM Lite (or in some cases no DRM).

I could go on with other specifics, but I think the point is clear. The AAP is a positive example among trade associations; the OeBF, a negative one. Best to start all over in this trade-assocation area and hire an AAP-style executive director who'll evangelize and mean it. The OeBF staff is essentially just the executive director, as far as I know. I suspect Nick doesn't even have a full-fledged office operation and is running the group from home. So we're really not talking about that much to preserve here.

The big area where Nick seems to be comfortable is numbers. True, the statistics are sketchy and the related press releases are rather awkward, given the pathetic numbers of the industry. I'm not even sure if there's a list of best-selling titles, which at least would give Nick's efforts a little more flair than they have now. Still, Nick and the OeBF have made at least some contributions here, and perhaps this could continue with Nick and his statistical efforts farmed out either to the AAP, the Book Industry Study Group, or another organization. I'd also love to see him treated well with a generous check if OeBF does fold and somehow he can't be placed. I think he can. He may be a great stats guy, but eve with Steve pulling Nick's strings, this guy just would not be the best choice as OeBF's director. Remember the real goal of a trade association, not to come up with the best collection of revenue stats but rather to grow those numbers.

While e-books have won new popularity in recent months--partly because the tech is better and publishers are more sensible about prices--the growth rate is far, far below what it could be with an effective trade association.

One final detail about IEA: Because e-books are such creatures of the Net and because the Net does not respect geography very well, I believe that IEA should be an international group from the start--with participation not just from the AAP but also similar groups outside the United States. That also would broaden the revenue base. Too, keep mind that as much as we need e-books in the States, there's infinitely more need outside the U.S., especially in developing countries. The real issue for people in Somaliland or Bangladesh isn't, "Oh, how many dots per square inch will screens display?" Instead it's: "What books can you get us that we could never see on paper?" Here's to global market development! The cost of the hardware and software and Net connections will be coming down dramatically, and it's important for the book industry to prepare. Otherwise count on young Somalis and Bangladeshis growing up accustomed to playing videogames and visting Web sites, but not to reading books, especially those in text, the best for cultivating sustained thought.

The standards side: The eBook Standards Organization

I'm not going to devote as much space to the standards issue because I've written so much about it earlier. I'll start with the most obvious matter:

Let's all pity the OeBF standards people. They worry about a Catch 22. They've got Microsoft, Adobe, Palm Digital Media and OverDrive breathing down their necks not to get too serious about standards, at least not consumer-level standards. Meanwhile, as a HarperCollins executive and countless others have observed, the format war is driving away potential customers for e-books. What to do? My answer is simple. If the big software boys won't let the standards people do their jobs, then so be it. Shut down the OeBF, which I'd like to see happen anyway since it sucks resources from superior alternatives. Then let the real brains behind the standards pick up their toys and move on to a new group or set up their own standards organization. I myself would prefer that they work with the IEA to establish the eBook Standards Organization. If the big software companies don't want to participate--no ESP powers claimed here, I can only guess--then so be it. Remember the real customers for standards: the publishers, distributors, librarians and other book people.

Speaking of various interests, my own preference would be for the standards-setters to have no current corporate ties within the industry, but that might not be possible, given the intense specialization. Besides, they could be augmented with more people from other stakeholders--the library community, for example. Also, for specialists to participate in actual creation of standards, as opposed to simply offering advice from the sidelines, they would have to advocate or at least tolerate the existence of meaningful consumer-level format standards. Otherwise what's the point?

Meanwhile here are some other thoughts about ESO's membership and the rest:

--Members. You can count on the standards community, mostly techies, to have a different mentality from people active on the trade association side, who'll care far more about people-ish issues. That's the built-in problem with the OeBF. Even with Steve Potash playing down the standards work, it's been one more distraction from the classic trade association activities that the OeBF handles so badly. Hence the usefulness of two different groups--one for e-book promo and one for standards.

--Boards. Let's have some overlap, though only the right amount. ESO needs to be responsive to the long-term needs of IEA members, but not be a wimpy slave to their daily concerns.

--Money. The IEA can fund the ESO. Given the OeBF's debacles so far in the areas of standards and trade-association activities alike, I myself might be tight with the purse strings right now if I were the book industry. Why spend too much on a group more concerned with the needs of big software vendors? As with the board composition, a balance should be struck to assure long-term responsiveness without forcing the IEA to pander to short-term interests. If nothing else, since the most influential funders would come from the book community, not the software one, there would not be the standards-corrupting conflicts that have afflicted the OeBF. Well, maybe some would remain. But the intensity would not be as great. Last I knew, Random House did not have an operating system to preserve and protect.

--Pay for ESO standards-setters. Needed! We're talking bottom line here. Let's get a well-done Universal Consumer Format out ASAP. Compensation would be a token of the value of e-books sales lost because of the Tower of eBabel. As I've said, a HarperCollins executive has been most explicit in blaming the format zoo for disrupting e-book sales. Make the connection between paying the standards setters and getting the standards out promptly, and the money may well materialize. Perhaps I'm ahead of my time. But for what it's worth, I'll keep plugging this Better Way.

--General morality compared to the OeBF. I agree with Dorothea Salo that no standards creations process can be absolutely pure (see Parts I, II and III of her comments on the OeBF and my uppity opinions). But really, Dorothea, the approach I've described would be so much better than letting the big software companies bully the other stakeholders. OeBF's conflicts of interest have been rather over the top--given the stark contrast between the group's originally announced purpose (with a standard consumer format high on the list) and its performance under Steve Potash and his allies. No accusations of broken laws, including Gemstar-style SEC questions! But a corruption of the OeBF's original mission? You betcha! I'm pleased to see Dorothea admit that the present OeBF isn't the best place for e-book standards--her Part III suggests other places. I myself believe that some connections between a trade association and a standards body would be fine--but not in the tacky way that the OeBF has addressed this issue. Simply put, Steve Potash owes e-bookers a big apology for retooling the OeBF as a PR agency for him and his corporate friends (as the horrid blinking logos at the top of the group's home page makes clear). Meanwhile, mindful that Dorothea has been kicking around Potash, her ex-employer, for years, I owe her an apology for encroaching on her territory. Sorry, Dorothea. It will happen again. Seriously, I look forward to Dorothea's further ideas on the e-book group issue--with many of which I may actually agree.

--'Tude toward DRM. Nonproprietary! ESO members should ignore the malarkey from Palm Digital Media and others with a selfish interest in the matter. Indeed, within the encryption area, an important part of DRM, top experts say that a nonproprietary approach could be safer since the tires can be kicked by a number of different people and companies. Let me also add that with publishers and librarians teaming up in IEA to magnifying their lobbying power, there's more chance of decent funding in the future for digital libraries. That in turn would not end but would reduce the need for DRM. I myself can envision DRM Lite--convenient for users but strong enough to keep honest people from slipping--in such contexts as file sharing.

--Last-but-not-least stuff. The ESA, along with the ESO, should cooperate closely with advocates for the disabled, especially the Daisy Consortium's George Kerscher, the present chair of the OeBF, who, alas, does not run it day to day. I totally agree with a wise observation from Dorothea: "On the book side, there’s the accessibility people, and the nice state legislators who are starting to require that textbook publishers use e-text and electronic production methods to make their wares accessible for the visually-impaired. I don’t have the whole story here—but it sure does bear watching. If we can get textbooks, which are some of the hardest book-production jobs known to man, made into markup, we can bloody well do anything." Some months ago, I myself commented on the hope we might find in the feds' accessibility-related efforts--a possible path, as I and others saw it, to a Universal Consumer Format. Meanwhile, speaking of accessibility, I just wish that the Adobe and Microsoft readers were not so often DRMed to the point where speech synthesizers didn't work. Far from advocating the weakening of the influence of George Kerscher in the reborn organizations, I'd like to see it strenghtened.

Some of the items on the list above may shock denizens of the cozy little world of standard-setters within e-bookdom; but it is time to do things differently. The same applies to the trade association functions of the OeBF.

Perhaps with all the deservedly negative publicity, Steve Potash will suddenly seem to humor the standards-setters, as part of his tacky PR, but I'll remain very skeptical about his intentions. Dorothea Salo's blog has summed up the matter nicely in the standards area: "The question becomes, then, whether the OEBF is a suitable venue for continuing development of electronic-book specifications. Frankly? No."

What's neat is that the OeBF's board members just might be able to do their mercy killing very quickly or at least might be able to do it, period. Just look at the composition of the board of directors. You'll see certain people whose interests Potash has harmed, but who've given him the benefit of the doubt up to now because of the money from him and his big software buddies. The seven members are George Kerscher of the Daisy Consortium (a pro-access group that loves open standards); Amanda Kimmel of Random House (not sure if she's pro- or anti-open standards at the consumer level); Edward McCoyd of the Association of American Publishers (I suspect he'd be in favor of a universal consumer format, and if nothing else, his group has been far more enlightened than Potash on the DRM issue, if a joint AAP-ALA study is any indication); Steve Potash himself (pro-closed!); Tom Prehn, either now or formerly with Adobe Systems (pro-closed!); Mike Seagroves, who I suspect isn't with a Palm-related company (though I'll assume that slot is pro-closed); and Rick Weingarten of the American Library Association (pro-open!). Count 'em. I don't know what the OeBF's rules say; but suppose a majority vote would be enough to close down shop. Well, then, if the four publishing-related members side with Kerscher and the ALA, the OeBF can obligingly fade away to make room for a trade association and related standards group to serve true book people--and along the way undo the cynicism that the OeBF has created within and about the e-book business. The same four people can form the core of the board of the IEA and work toward the rapid establishment of the ESA, picking up those techies from the OeBF who genuinely support open standards. Bottom line? Continuity and a chance to rid fhe e-book world of a powerful stench.

Update, 3:30 a.m., Dec. 26: Have done many tweaks to pick up the Salo tidbits and other fun stuff. Also, in the first paragraph, I've included a link to a Pew report on students' Net usage. Just remember, the report is several years old and if anything the numbers are higher.
posted by David Rothman at 1:03 PM | permanent link

KnowBetter.com has compiled a handy list for last-minute shoppers. Hey, suits the medium! Remember, too, the public domain possibilities available free via Project Gutenberg, 10,000 eBooks and the Black Mask e-store. Some suggestions from KnowBetter: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, On The Twelfth Day Of Hanukkah, My Muses Gave To Me by Steven David Horwich, and The e Before Christmas by Matthew Beaumont.
posted by David Rothman at 11:13 AM | permanent link

"One of the first experiments I tried with my Rocket eBook was laying it face-down on the platen of my scanner and making a scan. It came out perfectly." - Daniel P. B. Smith, on the eBook Community List.

The TeleRead take: Perhaps e-book protection has improved since then. Just the same, Smith's crack is one more argument against building the whole industry around tech-related measures--rather than coming up with a business and legal model to reduce the incentive for piracy. Remember all those dangerous paper books out there--almost crying out to pirates: "Scan me, scan me!"

DMCA or not, I can't wait to try a Smith-style experment when Tablet PCs are affordable and the screens are larger--offering better fodder for scanners. Perhaps vendors will try to protect the images. But what happens if the crackers come up with countermeasures against that? Looks as if the protection battle will have to be waged on a number of fronts if you go for the Fort Knox approach.

The best one, of course, would be a DRM Lite option, where interested publishers coudl use the keep-honest-people-honest tack. Other publishers just may find that no DRM is the best solution.
posted by David Rothman at 2:57 PM | permanent link

The e-book industry was as dead as a door-nail. How did it happen? With apologies to Charles Dickens and offense meant toward no faith, we revisit the sad story of Scrooge and the publishers. If only Dickens were around to write about software-pushers, the Tower of eBabel and format converters! Coming later this week in the TeleBlog.
posted by David Rothman at 6:19 AM | permanent link

Book people--whether editors, writers, publishers or librarians--hate it when bean-counters and politicians tell them how to run their business. So how about Microsoft, Adobe, Palm Digital Media and OverDrive? Do we really want them to intrude on book people--and balkanize our readerships by e-book formats? The format war is no small reason, according to a HarperCollins executive, why e-books sales of perhaps $10-$12 million a year are still a speck of the industry total.

So let's start 2004 right and encourage publishers and librarians to kill or at least boycott the misleadingly named Open eBook Forum that has become a mere PR tool for Microsoft and other software vendors and friends, especially OverDrive, another profiteer in the format wars.

Warped priorities

The Forum under earlier leadership came up with valuable production-level standards. But the work has slowed down considerably. Today the Open eBook Forum after more than five years is bumbling even at its own game; would you believe, annual e-book sales are just $10-$12 million, a fraction of Tom Clancy's income in a typical year? The OeBF bozos won't even fight European tariffs that tax e-books but not the paper variety. That's how warped the group's priorities are.

Instead we need an honest trade association that cares about publishers, librarians, editors, writers and other book people more than about techies, even if the latter would be welcome to serve as advisors. Separately an independent standards group, also run by and for real book people, could give us the standardized, consumer-level format that the OeBF supposedly started working on more than five years ago. Here again the techies could advise, but only from the sidelines.

A debacle--no ifs or buts

If you doubt that OeBF in its present form is a debacle, just check out the following:

--Our just-posted overview of the fomat issue: If p-books were like e-books--and the eBabel King called the shots.

--Close the book on the 'Open' eBook Forum.

--The forum's now-discredited ballyhoo about avoiding a VHS-vs.-Beta-style format war.

--Beware, librarians: eBabel King has conflict of interest.

--Puzzled what this eBabel defender means? Just read his Palm and count your money.

--HarperCollins exec: Format war hurts e-books.

--OeBPS: The Universal Consumer eBook Format, by Jon Noring.

--A summary of OeBF President Steve Potash's session with librarians during the eBookworm show where he tried to duck questions on such pesky issues as the cost of Digital Rights Management and when the OeBF would give us a standard consumer format. A charmingly disingenous excuse for no consumer format was Steve's claim that OeBF is still a new organization. Um, Steve, care to check the date on the ballyhoo mentioned earlier--the news release promising to avoid a VHS-vs.-Beta war. Yep: "8 October 1998."

I'm hardly the only one who views the present OeBF as little more a tacky PR initiative. On the eBook Community list, a member has just posted similar sentiments. Alas, however, he goes on to say that the OeBF is not worth worrying about, and I disagree since it drains money and time away from legitimate alternatives that the e-book business urgently needs.

Even small publisher, in fact especially small publishers, should be able to benefit from some sense of where the standards are headed. Similarly software vendors of all sizes could make money off an expanded market for new e-book software--knowing they would not have the format wars as a diversion. As I've noted, outfits like Palm Digital Media, perhaps the most stalwart of the format warriors, could do very well with truly Open Standards approach to format if they used more imagination than they've shown so far.

Above all, however, publishers and librarians would come out ahead with the OeBF dead and with the creation of an honest trade association and related standards group for both format and Digital Rights Management.

Techies vs. the best of traditional publishing

Techies thrive in some ways on the wrong kind of instability; and, to tell you the truth, quite a few of them don't care that much if traditional books lose out to video-games-like products. I do. Let a reborn trade association fight for e-books--both traditional and innovative--while respecting the need for for knowledge and culture to pass from generation to generation. That won't happen either with an oligarchic OeBF approach or an anarchistic one.

Interesting thought: Know who'd would especially benefit from the end of the OeBF? The linux community. No more Windows/e-format limits on human readers' choices of books! Regardless of the platform, of course, Microsoft would be very welcome to compete on the merits of its reader using the common format. Please note, too, that Linus T has said he'll tolerate DRM if that's what users--a category that clearly includes content-providers--want. But please: DRM Lite! No Maginot-style efforts, or even relatively honest users will grow frustrated and use cracking programs to try to roll through Belgium. Needless to say, a good business model to discourage piracy and promote legitimate file sharing could also help.

Update, Dec. 24: Also see Post-OeBF: Two replacement groups to drive up e-book sales--and help the world along the way.
posted by David Rothman at 11:21 AM | permanent link