So how much attention is the e-book industry paying to video games--a major competitor for time and money--and just what will the games' effect be on the young? Here's an excerpt from Weaned on Video Games in today's New York Times:

"We have been looking at data that shows that kids at an earlier and earlier age are starting to play video games," said Julia Fitzgerald, vice president for marketing at VTech Electronics North America. "We wanted to know how we could make this phenomenon work for Mom" - and make it educational.

It is unclear whether video games teach preschool children more about phonics and problem solving than about simply how to tool around in a virtual playground. But everyone seems to agree that the ranks of young video gamers are substantial.

A report last fall by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research organization, found that half of all 4- to 6-year-old children have played video games - on hand-held devices, computers or consoles - and one in four played several times a week. Of children 3 or younger, 14 percent have played video games.

Digitized libraries are one of the best revenges against practitioners of genocide. They might even help discourage future Hitlers.

If books and other forms of art can be preserved in digital form throughout the world, mass-murderers will not be able to wipe out the culture of a people. Books, paintings, statues, and other art can live on forever in redundant digital archives across the planet, from Melbourne to New York. Not that haters are rational; but perhaps a few would-be Hitlers will understand the limits of even the most complete Final Solution.

Much-needed start

Led by a Lansky associate named Gabe Hamilton, the Project has already digitized 3.5 million pages of Yiddish books, making available print-on-demand versions of the works of such greats as Sholem Aleichem and I.J. Singer, older brother of Isaac Bashevis Singer. That's most Yiddish books--masterfully saved from oblivion. "Modern Yiddish literature," Lansky writes in his readable memoirs from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, "holds the dubious distinction of being 100 percent acidic: printed on inexpensive, wood-pulp paper, which, because of its high acidity, gradually breaks down, turning yellow and brittle and, eventually, crumbling into fragments and dust."

As valuable as the scans and print-on-demand books are--you can even buy the PODs online, directly from the center--much else might be done with the proper resources. For example:

1. With e-books in mind, the center's books could be OCRed and converted by enthusiastic volunteers into a high-quality digital text format and made more searchable than they would be with the emphasis on mere images of the books.

Compared to images, the resultant text would also be more readable on the screens of computers, especially handhelds and tablets. One must remember that millions of children are now growing up accustomed more to reading off computer screen than off printed material. For Yiddish books and others to live on in young people's minds, not just in databases, it might be helpful to go the next step with a gracefully evolving universal consumer format like OpenReader with all the typographical niceties.

OpenReader also would allow conversions into many other formats optimized for readers' PDAs and other devices. But OpenReader is intended to be easily updatable to allow for improved machines in the future.

2. Regardless of the final format, an OCR approach producing computer text would if nothing else make machine translation possible.

Current translation software isn't as good as human translators and surely will never be the equal of one of Isaac Bashevis Singer's first English-language translators, Saul Bellow. But in the future, it might be hard to distinguish between human and machine translation.

3. With a format allowing links, even sentences within individual e-books could be linked to those within other books. OpenReader will allow this. What a boon to scholars.

4. If a text approach were used, especially OpenReader with powerful linking capabilities, it would be easier to build online communities around individual books. Participants could precisely annotate books. Needless to say, they also could voice-chat and blog in Yiddish and English.

Whatever the form, digital preservation is essential for other cultures, too, not Yiddish alone. Think, for example, of the Taliban's jihad against the folk music of Afghanistan and the role that audio has already played in helping to keep it and oral histories alive. Archivists should go the next step and electronically preserve great Afghani works in a permanent and consumer-usable text format, as opposed to the ephemeral formats that so often show up in the world of e-books. Luckily some good efforts are already underway to preserve Afghanistan's culture despite the limitations of current technology.

Luck of the Yiddish

But let's not forget Yiddish; Lansky's book makes a cogent and poignant case for keeping the language alive through technology and otherwise. His title comes from a quote from Max Weinreich, a Yiddish scholar who was lucky enough to be lecturing in Finland when the Nazis invaded Poland. Skeptics wondered why Yiddish should be preserved since Hitler had already killed half the speakers of the language. "Because," Weinreich said, "Yiddish has magic, it will outwit history." Certainly technology can and should be part of the outwitting process, and it is good to know that Steven Spielberg and the MacArthur Foundation have been so supportive of Lansky's work in various media. If you yourself want to contribute--much else needs to be done--you can visit a donations page.

Why are Margaret Mitchell's heirs so eager to scare Project Gutenberg of Australia into taking down Gone With the Wind? Won't the new Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. lengthen copyright terms anyway?"

Well, despite all the talk from the Australian government, the treaty is far from a totally done deal. Here is an Oct. 28 story, Disputes defer FTA deadline--a day "ahead," courtesy the time differences--from the Australian:

AUSTRALIA will miss a critical deadline implementing its landmark free trade deal with the US, with the Trade Minister Mark Vaile yesterday conceding it was unlikely Australia and the US would exchange memos on October 31.

Mr Vaile told The Australian yesterday "we might not make" the October 31 deadline because of a number of outstanding disputes between Canberra and Washington on pharmaceuticals and copyright issues.

"But this is not the end of the world. Both Australia and the US are confident the agreement will start up as planned on January 1," Mr Vaile said.

The FTA process requires Canberra and Washington to exchange letters certifying that they have implemented the principles of the FTA 60 days before the deal comes formally into effect, in this case on January 1, 2005.

A Librie List poster with the pseudonym of Scythic says he has just created a demo file for the format-and-DRM-hobbled Librie. Meaning? Perhaps you'll soon be able to use the Librie to download Gutenberg-type books and others of your choice--rather than limit yourself to Sony-blessed rent-a-book collections and other such fun. Some details:

I have generated an LRF file from user content, and uploaded that to the files section.

And, I've done one better, and uploaded the (Windows commandline) binary and source code as well. (For best results, you'll probably want to use 'textify' or similar on the PG files).

Now, there are some problems still - the "paging" is by chapter instead of real pages, the rendering seems a bit slower than it should, possibly because each "paragraph" is so long.

On the librie (but not on the PC) there are a bunch of boxes after the end of the chapter - but I think I can fix that.

As far as the source code.. its ugly.. it may cause permanent damageif you look at it too long. There's lot of "magic" there, and half-formed guesses. Should be lots of fun if anyone wants to play with it -- maybe figure out formatting, or the real meanings of tags which I've guessed at, or explore the potentials of the different fonts.

And a little note, which I shouldn't need to do, but I will - this program is for personal use. It is NOT public domain, it is NOT GPL (at least not yet). And I'm utterly positive that I'll regret writing it when I see people selling CD's of project gutenberg titles for the librie on ebay.

Just as a follow-up--the demonstration I uploaded to the group is a complete Project Gutenberg title.

While there are minor warts (the small image doesn't work, boxes at the end of the chapter, and the rendering might be slightly slower), the book is definitely readable.

And as far as I can tell, I'm not breaking any US laws. The free titles aren't protected by an access control device. Generating user content is covered under interoperability exceptions. If you know otherwise, please let me know.

Heirs of Margaret Mitchell have threatened the U.S.-based Project Gutenberg and Project Gutenberg of Australia--charging infringement of copyright.

The Stephens Mitchell Trusts wants Australian Gutenberg volunteers either to remove Gone With the Wind from their servers or else take steps to prevent downloads in countries where copyright law bans unauthorized distribution of the 1936 classic.

Otherwise, a lawyer for the heirs says in email and a certified letter, "we will take all appropriate steps to protect and enforce our clients' rights."

Special interest law vs. American culture

Welcome to the world of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which corrupted U.S. copyright law at the request of the Hollywood elite, other entertainment moguls and rich heirs. Over time, the term extensions will cost society billions and harm valuable cultural activities.

Had the special-interest legislation not been passed, cash-strapped Gutenberg would not be facing this threat since the classic would be legal to download by now. [Wrong! Mea culpa. I've corrected this information. But that's a detail. Point is, Sonny Bono extended the risk period by 20 years and was part of a very nasty pattern of questionable copyright extensions. - DR, October 29, 2004.]

And yet U.S. politicians of both parties, fat with campaign donations from Hollywood, generally refuse to speak out against the Bono Act. The Kerry-Edwards campaign has been deaf to Bono-related pleas from me and others despite some possible progress on other copyright matters. Meanwhile U.S. media blithely report on entertainment-industry donations to candidates without a word of Hollywood-bought laws like Bono.

Estate: Gutenberg set up Australian PG for illegal downloads

In using the Bonoized copyright law to harass Gutenberg, New York lawyer Thomas Selz wrote:

"It appears to us that Project Gutenberg established PGA to permit the illegal downloading of works that are still subject to copyright protection in the U.S. and elsewhere. Project Gutenberg’s and PGA’s willful, knowing and unauthorized distribution of GWTW to users in the U.S. and elsewhere where copyright protection remains available is a blatant violation of our client’s rights under applicable statutes and common law."

Let's hope that the likes of Larry Lessig and the Electronic Frontier Foundation can slap down this harassment immediately. Could they even threaten a countersuit? If the estate successfully sued, Gutenberg-style organizations throughout the world might have to adhere to the strictest copyright laws in the cosmos or risk situations such as the one with Gone With the Wind. Hollywood can well end up buying off the legislators of certain Third World countries.

There are also implications if INDUCE-style proposals are revived, since lawyers might have more legal ammunition in their claims that the U.S. Gutenberg is inducing infringement by Americans able to download Gone With the Wind.

Two legal traps

Meanwhile the Gutenberg volunteers face a possible legal trap--in fact, two. If the Australian Gutenberg takes down the novel without a request from the American PG even though Australian law does not require this, Margaret Mitchell's estate may just say the two groups are in cahoots with each other. The estate might claim that the Australians were trying to protect the Americans. If the U.S. Gutenberg asks for a take-down, the estate might also claim a close relationship.

A related argument might be trademark. The estate lawyers may use this as further evidence of an actual tie.

The good news is that the Mitchell estate is already a laughingstock among many in U.S. legal circles for its silly suit against an author for a parody of Gone With the Wind (too bad that Houghton Mifflin felt compelled to settle, given the absurdity of the suit). That outrage is itself a textbook case of the need for a robust public domain, so that image-fixated heirs can do minimal damage to still-productive authors and publishers. Last I knew, Margaret Mitchell hadn't written any new works lately. Isn't copyright law supposed to encourage the arts and sciences, including, presumably, literature? And yet, with or without Bono, Miss Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind.

Significantly, Margaret Mitchell died in on August 16, 1949. Without the Bono Act, the book's copyright would have expired in 1999. Now, however, in the States, the book apparently won't enter the public domain until 2019. With this situation in mind, it is high time that Congress either repealed Bono or at least mitigated it--lest greedy heirs and Doberman lawyers shut down worthwhile efforts like Gutenberg.

Meanwhile Australia, which appears on the cusp of increasing copyright terms past the 50-year mark, would do well to consider the repercussions before letting wealthy American heirs and donation-crazed U.S. politicians dictate law to them. The expected changes in Australian copyright law would not have come out without U.S. pressure by way of a trade agreement.

Yet other issues arise. Given the threat from black suits, I am reluctant even to provide a link to Project Gutenberg of Australia, much less to the the e-text of Gone With the Wind.

If you cherish culture and freedom to link, speak up now to your favorite presidential candidates and your local Congress members. Guess what other work is free in Australia but not in the Bonoized United States. Nineteen Eighty Four. In curbing our freedom of speech with onerous copyright laws, our politicians have done Big Brother proud.

/////////////////////////////

Below, in its entirety, is material that went out over the gutvol-d mailing list.

From: dlainson@sympatico.ca
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 4:03 PM
Subject: [gutvol-d] [Fwd] Copyright Infringement of Gone With the Wind



Hello

Here's a letter (which I'm apparently breaking some US law by forwarding, but I'll take the risk) which I find disturbing. Seems that "Project Gutenberg established PGA to permit the illegal downloading of works". Of this I wasn't aware. As a big contributor to PGA it concerns me personally, as well as setting a very dangerous precedent.

Does one country have the right to dictate to another what a website can contain when it falls within the law of the host country, and can they force some sort of restrictions on the downloading of material?

Don.

------- Forwarded message follows -------
From: "Col Choat"
To: "Don Lainson"
Subject: FW: Copyright Infringement of Gone With the Wind
Date sent: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:36:48 +1000





From: Gonzalez, Dalgis [mailto:dgonzalez@fkkslaw.com]On Behalf Of
Selz, Thomas
Sent: Tuesday, 26 October 2004 6:29 AM
To: colc@gutenberg.net.au
Cc: Paul Anderson Sr. (E-mail); Paul Anderson Jr. (E-mail); Thomas
Hal Clarke (E-mail); Thomas Hal Clarke (E-mail 2); Selz, Thomas
Subject: Copyright Infringement of Gone With the Wind

October 25, 2004


Certified Mail-
Return receipt Requested

Project Gutenberg
405 West Elm Street
Urbana, IL 61801

By e-mail (colc@gutenberg.net.au)

Project Gutenberg of Australia


Re: Copyright
Infringement of Gone With the Wind

To Whom It May Concern:

We represent the Stephens Mitchell Trusts (the “Trusts”), the owner of the copyright to the book, Gone With The Wind (“GWTW”). There are copyright provisions around the world, including, without limitation, the United States Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §101 et. seq, which grant the Trusts, as copyright owner, the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute GWTW in the United States and elsewhere.

It has come to our attention that Project Gutenberg’s affiliate, Project Gutenberg of Australia (“PGA”), is publishing GWTW in electronic book form on its web site located at www.gutenberg.net.au (the “Web Site”). The Web Site states that PGA “produces etexts in accordance with Australian law” and that the books available on its site are in the public domain in Australia. While the Web Site warns that some of its ebooks may still be protected by copyright in the U.S. and suggests that U.S. users check U.S. copyright laws or visit Project Gutenberg’s U.S. web site for its list of public domain works, there is nothing to prevent any U.S. user from simply downloading GWTW from the Web Site. Indeed, we were able to do so easily.

It appears to us that Project Gutenberg established PGA to permit the illegal downloading of works that are still subject to copyright protection in the U.S. and elsewhere. Project Gutenberg’s and PGA’s willful, knowing and unauthorized distribution of GWTW to users in the U.S. and elsewhere where copyright protection remains available is a blatant violation of our client’s rights under applicable statutes and common law. Please be advised that Project Gutenberg and PGA are subject to U.S. copyright law and to jurisdiction in the U.S. for their infringing activities through applicable jurisdiction statutes governing the commission of acts of infringement that either occur in the U.S. or have an effect in the U.S.

On behalf of the Trusts, we hereby demand that Project Gutenberg and/or PGA confirm to us within five (5) days of receipt of this letter that you have removed GWTW from the Web Site entirely or that you have taken all necessary steps to prevent the downloading of GWTW in all places in which it is protected by copyright.

Please be advised that if we have not received confirmation of your willingness to comply with the foregoing demands, we will take all appropriate steps to protect and enforce our clients’ rights.

This demand is without prejudice to all of the Trusts’ rights and remedies in this matter, both legal and equitable, all of which are specifically and expressly reserved.

Very truly yours,


Thomas D. Selz

cc:Paul H. Anderson, Sr., Esq.
Paul Anderson, Jr., Esq.
Thomas Hal Clarke, Jr., Esq.
Dalgis E. Gonzalez
FrankfurtKurnit Klein & Selz, PC
488 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10022
Tel: (212) 980-0120 x6735
Fax: (212) 593-9175
E-mail: dgonzalez@fkkslaw.com

This e-mail and any attached files are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which this mail is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. Any use, disclosure, copying or distribution of this e-mail or the attached files by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail or collect call to (212) 980-0120 and delete this e-mail and attached files from your system. Thank you.

------- End of forwarded message -------

Don Lainson
dlainson@sympatico.ca

//////////////////////

Update, 6:34 a.m., October 27: We've just been Slashdotted--the Mitchell outrage made the top of the home page. Meanwhile check out an old Dan Gillmor article about the estate's war against the Gone with the Wind parody. Among the tidbits there:

In 1790, copyright terms lasted 14 years, with a 14-year renewal period. But in this century of big and powerful media companies, Congress has turned the idea of "limited'' into something perversely long, with repeated extensions...

When Mitchell wrote the book, the maximum term was 56 years, said Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University. In other words, the copyright should have expired in 1992, and Scarlett O'Hara and her cohorts should have entered the public domain, where any author could do anything he or she pleased with the work.

An item from Palm Infocenter, dated Oct. 25:

PowerByHand today announced at the CTIA Wireless I.T. conference that it has changed its name to Motricity. The new name reflects the company's unified solution for mobile content delivery and the company's vision of empowering any mobile user to transform their device into a highly personalized extension of their life.

"We are excited about launching our new corporate name, which we believe more accurately reflects our vision and leadership position within the global mobile industry," explained Ryan Wuerch, Motricity’s chairman and CEO. "This gives us a new and exciting brand to leverage as the company continues to increase revenue, expand market share and drive success for our customers."

Adobe's e-book format thrives not because it's the best--but rather because Adobe Reader is everywhere. Handheld owners suffer especially: the format is not as scalable as alternatives. People lack as much control over textflow as they should have. With software ergonomics in mind, not politics, some critics have even accused Adobe of offering a "fascist format."

Now, however, as reported by the Associated Press, Adobe has taken another step to promote the use of its user-hostile software--a partnbership with Yahoo:

For San Jose-based Adobe, the partnership will add online features to one of the software maker's core products, Acrobat. The program is used by more than 500 million people and has become a common format for viewing documents over the Web and in e-mail attachments.

Under the deal, Adobe will first introduce a cobranded Yahoo browser toolbar that users can choose to install on their computers when prompted to download an update of Acrobat Reader. The toolbar—an increasingly popular method of online search engines to stay constantly visible on a user's Internet browser—will feature links to Yahoo products and services as well as Adobe's Web-based subscription service that lets people convert documents into the Adobe PDF file format.

Later, the companies said, the toolbar will add features such as the ability to quickly convert Web-based content into Adobe PDF files. Yahoo search will also be built into a future version of the Acrobat Reader, allowing users to search for more information from within the document without going through the extra steps of launching a Web browser.

Now that John Kerry already has his millions in Hollywood donations, will the Democratic presidential candidate be a little more courageous about the anti-consumer DMCA? A CNET story suggests that's a possibility.

In a barely noticed remark on Thursday, the Democratic senator said he might support defanging the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)--the unpopular law that has prompted take-to-the-street protests from the geek community.

If Kerry is serious, that would be a remarkable metamorphosis on a law that the Senate approved without one dissenting vote. It would also be remarkable because, contrary to what Kerry and President Bush tell you, few differences exist between the two White House hopefuls on nearly any topic imaginable.

Kerry's campaign said the senator might support rewriting U.S. copyright law to let Americans make backup copies of digital media they've purchased.

Pay attention, folks: In the tech world, this maybe-or-maybe-not pusillanimity counts as headline-grabbing news. Right now, under the DMCA, it's unlawful to make a backup copy of copy-protected DVDs or computer programs. The 1998 DMCA broadly bans "circumventing" anticopying schemes, and selling softwarethat can do so is a criminal offense.

Kerry's survey response said he is "open to examining" whether to change current law "to ensure that a person who lawfully obtains or receives a transmission of a digital work may back up a copy of it for archival purposes" or transfer it to another device. CompTIA's open-ended question had merely asked "What should federal policy be toward protecting intellectual property on the Internet?"--without mentioning backup copies.

"Recorded Books and NetLibrary are teaming up to offer downloadable audiobooks to libraries—with unlimited access to each title rather than the one-book, one-borrower model. "You’re not taking advantage of all the things the digital world can offer if you’re saying ‘one book, one user,’" noted Brian Downing, publisher of Recorded Books. The NetLibrary/Recorded Books program, to launch in December, will include 500 titles." - Library Journal.

The TeleRead take: Five hundred titles will be available in December. Further details:

The announcement comes as rival OverDrive, which began—as did NetLibrary—with ebooks, is set to launch its own downloadable program in November, with 1000 titles from several audiobook publishers. The OverDrive model is one-book, one-user, but allows libraries to purchase titles individually rather than as a collection, though they must first invest in a Digital Library Reserve Platform.

In Libraries ignore the value of stories--appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education--a Wisconsin professor makes a strong case for balance when choosing content and setting other priorities:

Statistics clearly demonstrate that many people rely on libraries for their stories, and generally, librarians know what gets checked out. Unfortunately, librarians have little knowledge of why people read what they do. As a result, they lack a deeper understanding of how libraries already serve readers, and they miss evidence that they could use to convince state legislatures and other sources of financial support that spending money on stories is important. They also are often unable to help patrons find just the right story to read, nor do they develop enough programs--book clubs, for example--to connect readers to one another.

The ever-tasteful New Yorker Magazine magazine has spotted many amusing typos in mere newspapers. But here is one that you presumably won't see there:

BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office now shits their attention to the music industry, particularly its practices for influencing what songs are heard on the public airwaves.

Global e-book sales could be perhaps $40 million if you optimistically extrapolate from the incomplete figures of the U.S.-dominated Open eBook Forum. So what is a UNESCO Web site doing with the numbers in the paragraph below--in a report on a UNESCO-sponsored workshop?

E-book publishing is a dynamic, fast paced and still evolving field. It is estimated to be a big industry too- worth an estimated $ 400 billion and a 250 million e-book reading public by 2005. The stakeholders in the e-Books community-authors, publishers, distributors, and consumers, are faced with twin challenges: technological obsolescence - short lived technologies - both hardware and software; and the diversity in relevant formats and standards - often incompatible and non-interoperable...

The invitation only workshop on 16 September was an important milestone in the UNESCO e-book project, with more than seventy participants representing the diverse stakeholders’ community.