Historian Stephen Ambrose's reflections, George Orwell's 1984, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets--those are among the October topics of the Meting of the Minds Online Book Discussion Group and other chatcasts for booklovers. Below are events and details, from Meting moderator Tom Peters. The discussions use audio chatcast software, which downloads automatically and does not contain spyware. You'll need Internet Explorer, an audio card and loudspeakers or headphones, nothing more--except for a mike, if you want to ask questions by voice rather than typing them. While the discussions are organized for the blind and other print-challenged people, anyone can participate.

--Wednesday, October 13, 2004 beginning at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 7:00 Central, 6:00 Mountain, and 5:00 Pacific: The Meting group will be discussing the book To America: Personal Reflections of An Historian by Stephen Ambrose. In this 2002 bestseller Ambrose intersperses his personal story with reflections on American history. His topics include the transcontinental railroad, World War II, Native Americans, Vietnam, civil rights, and women's rights. Also describes well-known persons such as Washington, Lincoln, Lewis and Clark, Nixon, and Eisenhower.RC 55747, 2 cassettes, read by John Polk.

--Tuesday, October 19, beginning at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 1:00 Central, noon Mountain, and 11:00 a.m. Pacific: T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets". Join the a poetry group for a casual poetry discussion and readings from Four Quartets. This program is part of the LBPH Cyber-Dialogue Series sponsored and conducted by the Cleveland Public Library's Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Note: This program will last approximately two hours.

--Wednesday, October 20, beginning at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 1:00 Central, noon Mountain, and 11:00 a.m. Pacific: Sounds of LC. Leaves are rustling, ghosties and goblins are about, speeches are being made, and music is always in the air! Join Library of Congress tour guides for a sampling of the rich audio collections on the web site. Note: This program requires RealMedia and Windows Media Player.

--Thursday, October 21, beginning at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 10:00 Central, 9:00 Mountain, and 8:00 Pacific: George Orwell's "1984". Join LBPH for an online book discussion of George Orwell's "1984." Retired John Carroll University Professor and "futurist" Dr. Mary K. Howard will provide an introduction to kick-off the discussion. For those Ohio residents needing a copy of the book, contact LBPH at 216-623-2911 or 1-800-362-1262. This program is part of the LBPH Cyber-Dialogue Series sponsored and conducted by the Cleveland Public Library's Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Note: This program will last approximately two hours.

A more detailed schedule of online events for October and beyond can be found at http://www.opal-online.org/programs.htm.

posted by David Rothman at 1:35 PM | permanent link

The e-book industry is getting yet another lesson from the music industry about the evils of stupid DRM.

Sony, home of the obnoxiously hobbled Librie e-book reader, will be abolishing copy controls on CDs from Sony Entertainment.

The official line is that users are more aware of copyright rules, and there is also a legal need to conform to specs for CD audio format. Well, perhaps.

But something else could matter as well--mainly, excessive control of consumers' rights to make backups and otherwise act under fair use. Excessive DRM is a sales killer.

(Via Slashdot.)

posted by David Rothman at 10:12 AM | permanent link

From Donna Wentworth in Copyfight:

Could the tide be turning?

Or is this just a way to take the debate behind closed doors?

posted by David Rothman at 2:32 AM | permanent link

From an 3 Myths About the Recording Industry Debunked by Alec Hanley Bemis in the LA Weekly:

MYTH NO. 1: The prevalence of file-trading services and free music on the Internet indicates that recorded music may no longer be an economically viable business.

MYTH NO. 2: Record sales are down. The situation is only growing worse.

MYTH NO. 3: Musicians no longer need the record industry. The Internet and other new technologies make this a new era of “do it yourself.”
posted by Jerry Justianto at 1:03 PM | permanent link

Tom Clancy has made millions off gadget-loving fans caught up in his technothrillers like the NetForce series, but when it comes to e-books, he's a Luddite.

He is so paranoid of piracy that he won't let his novels go electronic despite the huge global market this could help open up in time.

Clancy's income vs. the industry's

Along with heavy-handed DRM, the Tower of eBabel and the usual hardware challenges, lack of content is one reason why worldwide e-book sales have been just a fraction of Clancy's income in some recent years.

"Customers of eReader.com are always requesting titles by J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and others which remain, by their choice, 'not available in ebook form,'" says Mike Violano, vice president and general manager at eReader.com, owned by PowerByHand, in an article in LocalTechWire.com.

Time for readers to speak up? Perhaps e-bookstores like Violano's should publish "Ten Most Wanted" lists of Luddites and encourage customers to pester the AWOL authors. These Ludds need to understand the truth. If e-Luddites don't wise up, pirates will simply scan in paper copies, a trend that's likely to grow as display technology improves. Get it, Tom? All you'll do by withholding your books is to train e-book-loving fans to download you illegally since there's no other alternative. Perhaps as Mr. Net Force, you'll eventually be enough of a technomaven to understand this.

Beyond the issue of piracy arising to meet unmet needs, honest tech-hip readers may simply say learn to say "No" to e-Luddites like Clancy. The e-book industry can help by aggressively promoting "born digital" talents who respect the medium more than Mr. Net Force does.

eReader VP on DRM

Elsewhere in the article Violano talks about the need for publishers to compromise between reader convenience and the effectiveness of copyright protection. True! eReader's protection scheme is easier on customers than most. "Every ebook is encrypted," he writes, "and the unlock key is the credit card number the customer uses to purchase the title. This has proven to be a simple, elegent approach to the protection of content--and it is mighty effective since customers are not prone to post their credit card numbers on the message boards." As Jenny Levine of the Shifted Librarian blog discovered, this method still can be murder on readers who, say, have moved on to different credit cards and no longer have the old numbers handy. Still, it is better than, say, Microsoft's DRM atrocities.

Ideally Violano someday will see the light and go for a more refined and nonproprietary DRM scheme and an open format like OpenReader--a strategy that could help build confidence among buyers of e-books. His article, however, does a good job of pointing out some of the complexities of the DRM debate as acknowledged by the more enlightened participants from both sides.

Detail: Anyone know of a really good official Tom Clancy Web site? Does one exist? If not, how strange that Mr. Net Force should be so disdainful toward his fans. I did check out the sites mentioned in Wikipedia but could find none more helpful than the unofficial Tom Clancy FAQ.
posted by David Rothman at 7:37 AM | permanent link

Washington, D.C., has a fifth-rate library system, at least from the perspective of the smarter people in the 'hoods. Mayor Anthony Williams, alas, is hardly a gung-ho library booster. Now, adding to the insult, the city wants to fritter away a fortune on baseball while the libraries suffer.

Check out Marc Fisher's column in the Washington Post today. Fisher is a baseball fan but is correctly outraged at the prospect of the city approving what the front page describes as a $440 million financing package. I don't know what the net costs to the taxpayers would be, but this is clearly a case of socialism for rich baseball types at the expense of library users and the rest of society. Outrages like this are why the residents of D.C.'s Eighth Ward want to bring the scandal-tainted Marion Barry back to City Council. The baseball stadium is simply a more genteel form of scandal.

"'In his l998 position paper entitled 'Vision for the D.C. Public Library,'" Ralph Nader has said, "the Mayor stated explicitly that: ‘Libraries are a main source of information and central repositories for community history and for information on programs and places for children to learn, expand their minds, and provide a foundation for their growth.'

"'How can these visionary ideas be accomplished when the District’s libraries are understaffed, under-stocked and closed during peak usage hours?'” Nader has asked. True.
posted by David Rothman at 4:55 AM | permanent link

Check out No-Guilt Downloads: Free Books, Music, and Movies, from PC World.

Missing: A pointer to Blackmask, the most convenient place for public domain e-books in multiple formats.
posted by David Rothman at 4:04 AM | permanent link

"Reading as a primary activity varied greatly by age. The oldest age group averaged an hour of reading per day, while the youngest averaged about 8 minutes." - News release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics., via Bill Janssen's post to the eBook Community List.

The TeleRead take: Keep in mind that the stats are for recreational reading and do not include school-related time. Regardless, the 8 minutes is shockingly low.

Based on the above, I'd say the real battle isn't between e-books and p-books. It's getting kids to read, period. The 8 minute figure is for both sexes in the 15-to-24 range. In case you're curious, the category of "Playing games and computer use for leisure" is 48 minutes for teenaged boys and around 25 minutes for the girls.

TeleRead, anyone? Putting thousands of free copyrighted books online--with fair compensaiton for writers and publishers--could go a long way. What's the point of trying to maximize profits, through copyright gouges when books for recreational reading are in such little demand anyway among typical young people?

posted by David Rothman at 10:59 AM | permanent link

Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, in an interview with Technology Review, explains the concept of the semantic Web. The article is yet another reminder of how primitive e-books are compared to the future and even the present Web. As long as publishers and software vendors have the 'tude of "every book is an island," the medium will never reach its full potenital. Needless to say, an OpenReaderish approach would help.

Related: Needed: An HTML-universal standard for e-books.
posted by David Rothman at 5:30 AM | permanent link

"After weeks of negotiations, the U.S. Senate could take action this week on a bill that would make it easier to sue 'peer-to-peer' networks like Kazaa and LimeWire that allow users to copy music and movies over the Internet." - Reuters.

The TeleRead take: Yes, that's one of the questions here. But isn't it possible that the real issue might be something else--massive entertainment conglomerates trying to strangle disruptive technology, with the help of campaign donations? Why is it that news stories rarely mention the political contributions to Sen. Hatch and other INDUCE boosters, or the Music of Orrin Hatch? The man is hardly a threat to Madonna but has enough of an ego to identify his commercial interests with those of big-time entertainers. Meanwhile check out Ernie Miller's blog for the latest on this Bono-level outrage.

Detail: The Reuters piece does mention the opposition of copyright activists to INDUCE. But as you can see, the copying angle is right in the lead. The ideal lead would mention both the copying issue and the issue of Hollywood's war on disruptive tech. P2P networks would love to do deals with Hollywood, and some deals are being made, but hardcare greedsters don't want to derail the gravy train from more conventional distribution arrangements.
posted by David Rothman at 4:47 AM | permanent link

Earlier we suggested wikis as a new kind of book club--as a way for librarians and patrons to interact in discussing books. Now here's a new twist, from Jeremy Frumkin's Digital Librarian Blog.

Suppose that "users could leave behind comments or annotations to a finding aid--providing additional information related to the materials located by the finding aid. It would open the door to sharing research experiences, allowing for collaborative research, and making it easier for future researchers to find the materials they need in a particular collection. Of course, it would also open up the possibility of allowing incorrect information to be added, but again, Wikis are amazingly good at allowing community correction of incorrect or inappropriate information."

(Via LibraryStuff.)
posted by David Rothman at 3:29 AM | permanent link

"Anywhere Books has piloted a digital bookmobile--a van outfitted with a laptop, laser printer, bookbinding machine and cutter--in remote areas of Uganda to print free books for children since November 2003." - Rural Kids Print, Bind and Read, in Wired News, via ePublishing Blog

The TeleRead take: Print on demand is a terrific transitional technology, but ultimately, e-books will be the most cost-effective solution--and certainly the one capable of giving the kids the widest choice of reading material.
posted by David Rothman at 7:48 AM | permanent link

Sounds basic. But many people--and I'm one--have not done it often enough. Instead of just raving on to a friend about the glories of e-books, why not give a demo?

"I showed my Palm Zire 71 to a friend last night at a party," Brad writes in the ePublishing Blog, "and told him there were over 40 books on that device, many of them free. He was amazed and went and showed it to his wife. This despite the fact that I had been telling him about PDA's and ebooks for months on an online forum. Like so much in the computer world, seeing a live demo can be worth a thousand words." Advises Brad: "Take your PDA to your next party."

If you're really fanatical enough, send your old PDA to an out-of-town friend or acquaintance you're trying to convert. That's what I did. Worked like a charm. Now she expects to buy her own PDA, and meanwhile her youngest is enjoying the Blackmask version of Steal This Book and the Mobipocket edition of Aesop's Fables. Oh, how eclectic a reader you can be in this medium.

Tip: Before lending a PDA to a prospective convert, ask him or her for a list of titles to include, and make certain beforehand that everything works smoothly.

Related: Brad correctly suggests that the PDA-makers should devote more energy to talking up PDAs as e-book readers. He's also concerned about the Tower of eBabel and the DRM disgrace and the price gouging--all of which, I suspect, have helped reduce the popularity of e-books on PDAs and other platforms.
posted by David Rothman at 7:24 AM | permanent link

Philip Roth once bemoaned the scarcity of American readers interested in truly serious literature.

I don't remember what statistic he came up with--just that it might have been not much more than small-town-sized. E-book technology, of course, can help the right books reach the right readers, and so can brilliant writing that is just plain good reading.

Readable sample chapter

Such is the case with Roth's The Plot against America, a sample chapter of which I've just downloaded from National Public Radio after taking in Robert Siegel's audio interview with him, via link on the same page. In the book Roth imagines what his life would have been like if Charles Lindbergh had won the presidency, kept us out of World War II, and have done a lower-key Third Reich Act at home.

The Plot looks fine when converted to Mobipocket. Unfortunately, however, I won't be reading the rest of the book soon that way because of my problems with ephemeral formats locked up with proprietary DRM--I want to be able to own my books for real. Even Mobipocket won't let me. So I'll just buy the hardback.

No Plot at online stores

Beyond that, I have not been able to find an e-book version at Amazon.com, ebooks.com, Fictionwise, eBook Express, and the Houghton Mifflin site, all of which I searched out of mere curiosity.

Too bad. So far the Plot impresses me as just the kind of literature with an international appeal--not to mention its social value!--that should be all over the Net and ownable forever. If nothing else, the timing of the book's appearance is superb. The Plot appeared near the start of the Jewish New Year and reminds us of what life might have been like for Jews--I'm one, albeit non-observant--and the rest of us if the darker side of Lindy had prevailed.

OpenReader will provide many satisfactions at the technical level, but at the gut level, nothing would please me more than to see OR help literature like The Plot endure. We can be thankful that this is only a novel, that Philip Roth survived World War II and went on to write his masterpieces. But suppose that e-books become the norm; and let's say that for want of stable formats and reliable archiving in the library tradition, his novels vanish. How ironic that stubborn techies and short-sighted business people fond of proprietary formats might unwittingly obliterate the works of Roth-style novelists--after the Nazis failed.

Lindbergh as remembered by his admirers: An online bio from the Lindbergh Foundation.
posted by David Rothman at 6:08 AM | permanent link

Hurt by weak sales, Toshiba is leaving the U.S. market for PDAs, according to an article and accompanying editorial in Brighthand and a scoop in BargainPDA. Here's another warning to e-book publishers not to bet everything on the PDA platform.

Among the biggest reasons for Toshiba's departure, I suspect, is the trend toward PDA-cellphone combos--not to mention the fact that the market may simply be saturated right now. But the bungling of the e-book industry harmed Toshiba to at least a small extent and maybe much more. If it weren't for clumsy DRM schemes and the Tower of eBabel, then e-books would be in far greater demand than they are today.

No new models in near future

Toshiba's departure from the U.S. PDA scene--no new models to be released, at least in the near future--follows an earlier one by Sony. Given Toshiba's interest in VGA screens for PDAs, clueful e-bookers will particularly miss its PDAs. They may have had their flaws, but I agree with those who saw Toshiba as one way to make HP less complacent.

Needless to say, ignorance of the usefulness of PDAs for e-book reading didn't help Toshiba. It's not that e-bookers should give up on this platform. But whatever the reason, ignorance or others, PDAs as e-book readers have not lived up to their promise so far.
posted by David Rothman at 4:16 AM | permanent link

In the eBook Culture blog, Richard MacManus continues to plug away on the need for e-bookdom to develop a true standard--just as HTML is the standard for the Web world.

Richard is eager to see OpenReader in action. Jon Noring and I and the rest of us feel the same way and are looking for qualified standards-setters from the publishing and XML worlds. The press can help by spreading the word. I expect we'll be up against the 'tude of many journalists and nonjournalists alike--namely that the status quo will endure forever. Mentions in the big-time press could help energize the apathetic, but OpenReader will happen with or without such fanfare. Word is slowly getting around via mailing lists and blogs like Richard's--and O'Reilly editor Andy Oram's. Volunteers can write Jon at jon@openreader.org. In addition, we're looking for corporate supporters from hardware and other areas that could benefit from a true standard in the vein of the international one for digital radio.

Meanwhile, here are some recent eBook Culture items of interest:

--HTML of the eBook World.

--eBooks Open Source Market.

--Web-based eBooks Formats.

Especially I enjoyed eBook Culture's observation that "when an ordinary person fires up an eBook Reader, they then have to figure out which eBook format is compatible with it! Put another way, they have to select which format they want to read and then figure out which eBook Reader device is capable of reading it." Alas, I suspect that all too many propsective e-book users are still at the level of John Mark Eberhart, the book critic at the KC Star. Book people tend not to be techies--they would rather not struggle with the Tower of eBabel.

Reminder: OpenReader will accommodate the readers, writers and publishers of e-books far better than will proprietary products. But it is not just an e-book format but also a general document format that could find applications in such areas as newspapers, magazines, and, of course, business, industry and government. No guarantees, but if OpenReader takes off, then mention of participation in a standards-setting group would not be the worst thing to have on your resume.
posted by David Rothman at 3:10 AM | permanent link