Authors Guild Board member Steve Manes ("Let's have less of Lessig") and Stanford law professor Larry Lessig ("Sensitive" Manes "feels no hesitation in calling someone a 'moron,' 'idiot,' and 'buffoon'") are at it again in their two-combatant copyright war.

Now there's even a Web forum associated with Forbes--the magazine where Manes let loose on Prof. Lessig--called Who's Right about Copyright?

Is Manes just a mouthpiece for the Authors Guild? Alas, I think that he believes his anti-Lessig ranting in Forbes without the slightest need for prompting. But whatever the reason, his thinking may well jibe with that of the lawyer-friendly Guild. In character, the Guild came out in favor of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, while the National Writers Union had the foresight to oppose it. Bono enriches the heirs of best-selling authors at the expense of other writers--opening up new opportunities for copyright and estate lawyers along the way.

Meanwhile, in the Spring issue of the Authors Guild's Bulletin, Executive Editor Kay Murray comes across as less than fully enthusiastic about the Creative Commons licenses of the kind that Larry Lessig champions. She concludes: "Should you add your works to the Creative Commons? The Guild advises caution. For those who want widespread dissemination of their works, there are other options."

Granted, authors badly need the Guild's protection, as a gothic-scary case history in the same issue of the Bulletin shows--that of a textbook author ripped off in the most blatant way by a publishing conglomerate. Still, mightn't the Guild itself be part of the mess about which Lessig writes in Free Culture?

The emphasis of the lawyer-staffed Guild is on a legalistic approach. Got a problem with an unethical agent or publisher? Typically the Guild will just give you a opinion and refer you to a lawyer. It usually won't intervene. While the Guild's resources are limited, it at least should be promoting a less expensive mediation system for cases it can't take time to investigate. Intellectual property lawyers often charge several hundred a hour--in fact, as high as $800 or more. Not the nicest of deals for a midlist writer.

Perhaps an appropriate foundation needs to shove a little cash in the Guild's direction on the condition that the group focus more on informal intervention and mediation and less on lawyer referral.

Cooperation with Creative Commons might be good, too, and that could be a condition of the grant. Am I dreaming? Maybe. But maybe if the lawyers at the Guild take time to read Lessig's book carefully, they'll actually see the man is pro-copyright and in fact, like me, is even reactionary. We just have this weird notion that America needs to return to the old days when more balance existed between the rights of the copyright elite and the rest of us, including creators who aren't corporations.

Example of the problem: A documentary film-maker couldn't show a scene with a TV set displaying the Simpsons, because permission would have cost $10,000 for 4.5 seconds of exposure. You got that right. Just 4.5 seconds--and just on a little TV set in a corner of a room shown in the documentary! And beyond everything else, the greedsters threatened a lawsuit if word of the outrage got out.

How can anyone with an open mind read of such thuggish avarice and not agree with Lessig's warnings against the Permissions Culture and its threat to creativity? If I can find time this week, I'll review his book in detail, partly in the context of the Lessig-Manes feud, to show who the real idiot is. It isn't Lessig.

Related: 'Free Culture': The Intellectual Imperialists, a mostly favorable New York Times review. Adam Cohen, however, a New York Times editorial writer, criticizes Lessig for not being more detailed in coming up with alternatives to the present mess. I can think of a few.
posted by David Rothman at 1:35 AM | permanent link

The Bush broadband proposal and the cost of the technology are the topic of a Washington Post column by Leslie Walker. Some hope for rural areas: a faster, less costly service next year from Hughes. Walker's conclusion: "All told, things aren't looking so bad for broadband. So okay, maybe the odds of President Bush bringing real broadband to your door are about as great as they were for Al Gore inventing the Internet, but it never hurts to have these guys talking it up."
posted by David Rothman at 11:44 AM | permanent link

I haven't read Poor Richard's Creating eBooks: How Authors, Publishers, and Corporations Can Get into Digital Print, and I'm not sure how durable the success stories in it would be in the wake of the e-book bust. Still, as a piece of ebookica for the nostalgic, this 2001 oldie might be of interest, based on an intriguing sample chapter. And some of the basic ideas might still apply today.

From a description at eBooks.com: "Reasons to publish electronically, how to enter the market, and how to decide upon an e-book format are explained in detail in this guide to producing and marketing electronic books. Questions and concerns about entering the market, formatting content, and marketing, selling, and protecting this content are covered in a discussion about the new e-publishing models and the different ways to produce e-books."

Ah, protecting. I hope the book isn't an ad in disguise for Adobe, the e-format of the $27 electonic edition. Via Amazon.com as of this writing, you can buy a used paper edition for $5.99. Ah, the blessings of DRM.
posted by David Rothman at 10:11 AM | permanent link

How pathetically ironic. In the era of WiFi, some of the rich can enjoy free Net access if they live, work or play near the right hotspot--but the poor in Bloomfield, N.J., must now pay $1 an hour. Edward Bellamy's ghost just might take an interest in this.

TeleRead, as originally proposed back in the early 1990s, did suggest that the government pay if need be for Net connections to help the poorest of the poor go online. In fact, with longer-range variants of WiFi growing cheaper, that might indeed be an option in the near future. Oh, and remember the best place for computers. "Bring the E-Books Home."

Given the steep declines in hardware prices, computer costs themselves could be less and less of a problem, as indeed the connection issue will be in time. The question is when. Wonder how society will address the connection issue when TV goes holographic. Should the poor get free holovision or whatever it's called? Andy Carvin, in his role with the Benton Foundation, once alluded to high-tech costs as a moving target, and he could be right. What if e-books end up having holograpic links? No easy answers here, alas. But that shouldn't discourage us from measures in the here and now, the first of which would be to stop those charges for library connections before it becomes a trend. The ALA correctly has protested.

If ALA really cares about "savage inequalities"...

Now, if only the ALA will have the guts to come out for a well-stocked national digital library system. Remember, content costs money, and library district's like Bloomfield's will won't fare so well if the every-district-for-itself approach prevails. Under TeleRead, districts could still make purchases on theri own. But at least the basic floor would be in place--benefiting from the increased economies of scale. Locally, communities in time would need to spend less money on construction or expansion of library palaces. Net access before concrete, please!

What ad came up in via Google when I sought more info on Bloomfield: RealtyTrac's "Find Foreclosed Homes." Not sure if the particular name of the Jersey city triggered the ad, but it's a reminder that in income distribution America is looking more and more like a banana republic, and with intellectual property mattering so much in education and other wealth-building activities, bought laws like the the DMCA in its present form are just aggravating the trend.
posted by David Rothman at 9:04 AM | permanent link

"A House of Representatives panel has approved a sweeping new copyright bill that would boost penalties for peer-to-peer piracy and increase federal police powers against Internet copyright infringement." - CNET

The TeleRead take: It'll be easier than ever for the feds to demand information from Net providers. Where are we headed? Allow me to trot out the W word. Remember? Watergate. I predict that just as the Nixonians used national security as an excuse to snoop on political foes, a present or future administration will use copyright to do the same.

Could just as easily be a Democratic administration as a Republican, regardless of the fact that Republicans control. along with the rest of Congress, the House intellecutual property subcommittee that passed the bill. In fact, a Democratic president might be even more of a risk. Even more than with the Republicans, Hollywood is the Democrats' sugardaddy; we even have Hilary Rosen on CNBC speaking as an explainer of the Democratic perspective, which, actually, is understandable, since Hollywood is increasingly the Democratic Party and vice versa. In an age where intellectual property matters so much--both access to it and the right to use it--the Democrats are acquiring solid Tory credentials.

When the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA) was being voted on, at least some Dems, to their credit, did speak out, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who said: "I am sure (that its sponsor) does not mean to expand the powers of the FBI. The concern I have is that this is very ambiguous. The language itself could lead an aggressive FBI to a different conclusion." But then fellow Democratic Howard Berman expressed certainty that the FBI wouldn't abuse its power. Guess what. His district is next door to Hollywood. When it comes to Hollywood money vs. civil liberties, we know the winner.
posted by David Rothman at 9:47 PM | permanent link

Small publishers aren't the only ones who may feel grumpy about OverDrive, the besieged distributor and retailer that charges one-book publishers $300 a year in storage fees. Random House's traffic rank for contentlinkinc.com, the domain associated with the ContentLink eBook Store which uses OverDrive-provided DRM and e-commerce-related services, isn't even on Alexa's list of the top 100,000 Web sites. ContentLink's three-month average, as noted by an Alexa link from Blackmask Online, is a pathetic 576,691.

Mind, you OverDrive isn't be the only reason here for the debacle, and, of course, the Random House part of the Bertelsmann conglomerate focuses on its own books rather than using a wider variety with other publishers included. But the DRM-stunted performance is still an utter disgrace compared to, say, Fictionwise, which comes in at 11,305--or eBooks.com at 18,873, Blackmask at 52,432 or eBookAd at 92,519. Ebooks.com appears to sell mostly DRMed titles, Fictionwise and eBooks.com carry a mix of DRMed and nonDRMed books, and Blackmask and eBookAd have none. Of the big distributions, I suspect that none except for OverDrive are really DRM fanatics. This is something pushed on them through the software interests and certain less than fully enlightened publishers. Many other houses know the score and perhaps can get the Open eBook Forum, run by OverDrive founder Steve Potash, to change direction.

Three-month figures: More TeleRead traffic than OverDrive retail traffic--even though our ad and promo budget is $0

OverDrive's own retail operation, Ebookexpress.com, ranks 334,177 even though Yahoo redirected traffic to the OverDrive retail subsidiary after the Y people shut down their e-bookstore. Actually even TeleRead, a highly specialized site with no ad or promo budget and a rank of 299,380, does better than either ContentLink or Ebookexpress in the three-month Alexa rankings.

Yes, I know. To visit a site isn't to buy books there (TeleRead doesn't sell any), and profits count in the end, not just raw revenue--not to mention the fact that distribution activites won't draw as many visitors as retail-oriented ones. But could it be that book buyers can smell the DRM a zillion miles away and choose to keep their distance? Not that DRM is all, as eBooks.com shows. But I suspect that the eBooks.com is doing enough other things right to compensate for the damage from the DRM. If nothing else, the name gives it a wonderful headstart over all rivals.

All book-related Web traffic: Just a speck of N.Y. Times'

Certainly the low traffic numbers for e-book sites are in keeping with the industry's pigmy-sized sales of only $20-$25 million a year. Within newspapers, the New York Time by itself ranked 78. I don't expect bookstores and the like to do as well as the world's leading newspaper--even RandomHouse.com, RH's site playing up p-books, is a mere 8,190--but I think the discrepancies still say something. If Random House and the other biggies know what's good for 'em, they'll stop letting the big software companies, DRM zealots and other proprietary formatters set the tone for the e-book business. A Universal Consumer Format, less fixation on Draconian DRM and more on reader-friendly business models could go a long way toward reviving the sick e-book industry. The endlessly hyped growth figures for e-books are laughable. It's like keeping track of the division of bacteria.

In fairness to OverDrive: The one-week average for OverDrive's retail side was 198,697, an impressive improvement, and I see that ContentLink's weekly rank is now at 332,501. But those two are still miles away from the top 100,000 ranking.

(Big thanks to Blackmask for jogging me to check up on these fun numbers--via David Moynihan's well-done take on OverDrive.)

posted by David Rothman at 6:09 PM | permanent link

"A collection of rare Christian manuscripts—some dating to the fifth and sixth centuries—will soon be accessible to scholars worldwide, thanks to a first-time collaboration between Brigham Young University, the Vatican Library and the Assyrian Church of the East." - BYU News. (Via eBookAd.)

posted by David Rothman at 5:00 PM | permanent link

yBook is a little-known but important program in the e-book world. It lets even nontechies enjoy Project Gutenberg books. Via yBook, you can find, download, read and even print them. What's more, in the spirit of Gutenberg, yBook is free unless you want to make a donation via PayPal. I'll be posting the review by 5 p.m. Washington, DC, time.
posted by David Rothman at 8:15 AM | permanent link

Bill Gates is an odd bird. He's made tens of billions off us because he wants to sock away cash and own everything. Love of ownership is strong. Why else are people so POed about e-books that end up unreadable--because the supposedly trustworthy vendors went kaput?

Now Billg plans to offer some new delights from Microsoft for his friends in the music industry--songs that expire, via clocked DRM, if you don't keep your music subscription current. A brand-new Pocket PC Thoughts article has inspired a flood of anti-Microsoft diatribes from PPCT readers.

Already, of course, the library world has used the clocked DRM approach. It's a necessary evil there if libraries want to avoid the "permanent checkout" model I suggested for library e-books.

But enough's enough. Now Gates and friends seem intent on turning us from a nation of CD owners into mere renters. The plan is for songs to reach you via a subscription and electronically disembowel themselves, even on your portable devices, not just your desktop, if your subscription expires. The best-case scenario for Gates, I suspect, is to have everything rented, books and music alike. William Gates, lord of the manor--presiding over us landless serfs from his $50 million lakeside mansion, where the library books are on paper and won't expire.

It's almost surrealistic when Bill's father talks about the evils of inherited wealth and the need for estate taxes. What's to inherit when Microsoft and the rest have sucked the rest of the world dry with content-rental schemes? Hyperbole, of course. But the clocked DRM is another attack on fair use, which Microsoft and similar outfits all too often seem intent on coding out of existence to serve business partners in Hollywood.

(Thanks to Mike Cane for spotting the PPCT item.)
posted by David Rothman at 11:10 PM | permanent link

E-books could get a boost if an experimental $645 tablet/PDA hybrid from NEC takes off.

The specs as reported in the Japanese-language PC Watch and translated for Tech Japan: the Linux OS, an 8.4-inch 640X480 touchscreen LCD and a CD-ROM.

NEC will make just 4,000 of the Linux tablets the first year, so don't count on seeing one at your local CompUSA, but, as a Slashdot contributor observes, the new machine is a helpful start by a major Japanese company

Meanwhile Sun's Linux will be reaching Wal-Mart via Microtel machines, raising the intriguing possibility that perhaps Sun or partners like Microtel will get into the low-cost tablet business.

E-book benefits

Ramifications for the e-book business, assuming that NEC and the Sun/Microtel /Wal-Mart combo can succeed with tablets? Plenty. Many buyers might find the tablets to be easier to read from than the usual PDAs, especially as screen resolutions improve, and the low-cost systems might be especiallly attractive to school systems as textbook replacements when loaded with e-books.

The result, combined with other trends, might be that a whole generation of young people will grow up accustomed to reading off e-books off the screen.

Also, If Linux fares well on low-cost machines, Microsoft and its Tablet PC partners may have to think twice about the prices they are charging. What's more, with Linux counting for more, Microsoft, Adobe and the like may not be quite as successful at imposing their DRMish visions on the whole planet. All this could be good news for e-books.
posted by David Rothman at 9:57 PM | permanent link

Bill Gates is now predicting "almost free computers" within a decade--and within reason I'd agree.
posted by David Rothman at 2:01 PM | permanent link

A fuel cell powers an experimental PDA from Hitachi, and NEC's in the FC game, too, along with Toshiba. NEC plans to stretch battery life to 40 hours and put its PDA on sale in '05. (Via Slashdot.)
posted by David Rothman at 9:50 AM | permanent link

Info here about the forthcoming audio of Free Culture.
posted by David Rothman at 8:24 AM | permanent link

Government wiretappers, rejoice. Ernie Miller's blog tells of the pleasures ahead for snoops if a current anti-P2P proposal becomes law. Imagine the possibility of federal wiretaps for even alleged downloading. And for civil suits, even?

Hmm. J. Edgar Hoover was an amateur at this privacy invasion business, spying on Martin Luther King and scads of other Americans for the love of it. But the well-bought pols in DC are enthustiatic pros. Give enough campaign money to 'em and they'll turn federal snoops loose on alleged infringers, with the solons enjoying the fruits of the piracy invasions. Just my opinion, but the law in DC is too often: "If they can justify your paranoia, they will."

Hypocrites on the Hill

Meanwhile, the EFF's Donna Wentworth and other foes of Washington thuggery are noting the hypocrisy at work here. On one hand the recording industry greedsters don't want a voluntary mass licensing scheme, lest this be seen as federal intervention in the blessed private sector. And yet under a new RIAA-friendly proposal, we taxpayers would pay millions for Washington to go after sharers.

That's not the only fun. Looks as if Sen. Hatch and other copyright zealots, wittingly or not, would be protecting the copyright holders within the porn industry.
posted by David Rothman at 7:14 AM | permanent link

"'Consumption of music increases dramatically with the introduction of file-sharing, but not everybody who likes to listen to music was a music customer before, so it's very important to separate the two,' said Felix Oberholzer-Gee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the authors of the study. Oberholzer-Gee and his colleague, University of North Carolina's Koleman Strumpf, also said that their 'most pessimistic' statistical model showed that illegal file-sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.' - Washington Post.

The TeleRead take: A lesson for the e-book biz? Not sure. As e-book hardware grows better and better, then unauthorized file-sharing could be more of a problem. But the solutions are pretty obvious. Use viral marketing. Offer e-book files with both protected and unprotected sections, the latter of which could be unlocked with payment by either the the original buyer or the recipient. Subscription models also help. Of course, about one fact, there's not the slightest doubt. Expensive and onerous DRM schemes are costing e-book publishers enough customers to offset any anti-piracy protections.
posted by David Rothman at 6:27 AM | permanent link

I'm enjoying yBook. Got an e-book newbie going with it in five minutes. He almost immediately was downloading a Project Gutenberg book from within yBook. The paperback appearance should be a hit with people like him. I hate reading books hour after hours on a desktop--hey, each to his own!--but this software would be a nice addition to the hard disk of a laptop or tablet. More details on the way later this week. Please note that to be used in Linux, yBook requires Wine emultation (sorry--should have said so earlier).
posted by David Rothman at 6:03 AM | permanent link

"While 18 to 34 year-olds comprise only 24% of the total U.S. population, they account for 38% of the total time spent online and 40% of the total pages viewed. This skew is even more pronounced among men in this age group." - News release from the Online Publishers Association.

The TeleRead take: Full report is online in PDF. If I were a publisher not on the Net now, I'd take these stats as a pretty strong warning. The case for e-books gets stronger and stronger since technology is just going to get better and better, as the Librie shows.

(Found via The Shifted Librarian, which, by the way, also carries an interesting WiFi-related link. The more common WiFi is, the more sense it will make for e-books to carry Web links--including those to sites updating information in them.)
posted by David Rothman at 5:54 AM | permanent link

...it's the proper side for Japan. Amy Roos writes: "Just a reminder: in Japan many books are read 'backwards' from those in English and standard European languages. I presume a version designed for the western market would open in the direction we are used to expecting books to open." Thanks for setting us straight, Amy.
posted by David Rothman at 7:40 PM | permanent link

Info from Mike Cane:

--The Simputer--a low-cost Linux handheld for villagers in India and elsewhere to buy for community use--didn't come in as cheap as expected. Not at $220. See a review in Engadget, as well as an AP story and Slashdotters' take.

--On the Librie: "Dan Jackson will have no problem getting tha new Sony ebook reader. It'll be a near-global launch. That Sony showed it and announced it at CeBIT confirms that. Sony would have quietly launched it only in Japan if they had no plans to be aggressive in the ebook area. I am now thinking they will go after ebooks as hungrily as they went after videogames...Before Sony ever licensed PalmOS, they had a Japan-only PDA called the InfoCarry. Oddly enough, the InfoCarry inspired Jeff Hawkins in his creation of the original Palm Pilot!"

Thanks, Mike. Let's hope you're right about the Librie.
posted by David Rothman at 5:57 PM | permanent link

yBook and CEBook 3.5 are on the review schedule here. Thanks to Susan Glinert for the pointers.

About the free yBook (Windows and--under Wine--Linux) she says: "Very, very smart."

And CEBook (CE and Pocket PC) : "A fantastic reader for Windows CE. Can read double-byte, .prc, .pdb, txt, html files, and Pocket Word, and Note files. Landscape and portrait. Some menus are still in Chinese--whoops!"

I'll welcome other people's possible thoughts to be included with my own impressions.

Correction: Yes, yBook needs Wine emulation to run under Linux. Sorry about the error. My fault.
posted by David Rothman at 12:47 PM | permanent link

You're apparently out of luck if you own an existing Axim X3 or X5 and were hoping to upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. More at Pocket PC Thoughts. (Via Pocket PC eBook Watch.)
posted by David Rothman at 10:23 AM | permanent link

George Bush last week joined the Democrats in calling for universal and affordable broadband, but something is missing. Can any politician say the T Word? Yes--the same one that William F. Buckley Jr. used some years ago in appealing to Newt Gingrich for a TeleRead-style approach.

A well-stocked national digital library system with books, educational software and other items could start small and grow, especially as e-book technology improved. George Bush's wife, a trained librarian, would do well to keep an open mind about the technology, about which so many are ignorant. Even without new tech like the Librie, screens are far more readable than before, and costs keep coming down. Furthermore, research at Ball State University suggests that e-books can work out even for younger children.

More current--and easier on kids' backs, too

Just within the area of school textbooks alone, imagine the possibilities--at a time when, in some texts, man hasn't even walked the moon yet. E-books would be updatable. They would also be much gentler on the backs of schoolchildren.

What's more, the same system could eventually be used for transmitting training videos to help keep the workforce current. The tablet-style machines used for reading could double eventually as a platform for high-definition TV watching. The result? Demand for a new product--not the worst of news for the besieged electronics industry.

Meanwhile, as much as I'd love to see universal broadband, I hope that it won't turn into just a giveaway to giant cable and phone companies. The feds should be encouraging alternatives such as long-range flavors of WiFi--and not interfere with communities interested in providing their own broadband service.

Related: Bush Pushes Broadband Rollout by 2007.

The UCF angle: Needless to say, a TeleRead-style approach would deliver taxpayers more for their money if the expensive format wars ended, and if DRM costs were kept reasonable.
posted by David Rothman at 1:21 AM | permanent link