TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for 2006

By Jon Noring

I am saddened that David Rothman brought up, in public rather than in private, the “three musts” he raised in his recent blog article regarding my involvement in e-book standards work. David has not only been a long-time business associate, but a friend. It saddens me more because we are in philosophical agreement about most things in the digital publishing arena, and seek the same end goals. I am also troubled that others were needlessly brought into this matter, such as my friends at OSoft, and my friends and associates at DPP.

The valuable time that I am spending to write this article could instead be used to work on other things to help promote OpenReader, such as BookX. BookX is intended to be used by smaller digital publishers as an intermediary XML master to readily produce OpenReader Publications and most of the digital publication formats in use today and tomorrow (and this includes OEBPS.)

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By Branko Collin

Librarything, the online personal library manager founded by Tim Spalding and co-owned by Abebooks, taught me something about myself: I don’t really care about cataloguing my personal library. Sure, it would be nice if somebody had done it for me, or if all my books had an RFID tag that would automatically keep my catalogue up to date, but I can easily go without a list of what I own.

So what goes on in the minds of those who do like to catalogue their personal library, and what does Librarything do to meet the demands of those people? I find it hard to answer the former, and therefor undoable to answer the latter.

Luckily, if you were already interested in Librarything, there is the free account. Anyone can store up to 200 books in their private database. And although you may own a lot more, once you hit a couple of dozen books entered you start getting a feel what Librarything can mean for you. Even if you decide that this is not the PLM for you, you can export your data to a tab delimited file and take it elsewhere (through the oddly named Joy menu). The only thing you’ll lose this way is the cover images you collected.

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By Robert Nagle

Wow, did anyone notice that Lessig went to court last month? He argued in Kahle vs. Gonzales before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the change “from an ‘opt-in’ to an ‘opt-out’ system of copyright alters a ‘traditional contour[] of copyright,’ requiring ‘further First Amendment scrutiny’ under the standard established in Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 123 S. Ct. 769 (2003).”

The plaintiff’s brief is here , and here are Lessig’s thoughts afterwards (sort of confusing to read, because he’s responding to lots of commenters). Here’s an mp3 audio of the oral arguments (27 minutes long). Generally, Lessig sounds better prepared than the government’s attorney, and the questioning judges pressed both sides on how this case differed from Eldred. One judge asked the government’s attorney (at the 17 minute mark):

Question (Judge Schroeder): Is there anything in the legislative history to indicate that Congress was aware that in changing the system there might be some copyrights where there’s nobody there anymore who really enjoys the copyright right?
Answer (government attorney): I’m not aware of any discussion that specifically focuses on that point.

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By David Rothman

Carly and I are leaving Statesville, North Carolina, to head back to the Washington, D.C., area. That means no new TeleBlog entries from me until Sunday or Monday.

Enjoy the holidays, and if you, too, will be driving along Route 77 through the Blue Ridge Mountains, please watch out for those trucks!

Recommended read: 2006: Looking Back and Looking Forward—blind blogger David Fauxcheux’s discussion of tech predictions for ‘07 and beyond.

By David Rothman

Look, schools and libraries should discourage kids from visiting sex sites and chatting with perverts. But the Deleting Online Predators Act overdid it, and parents, teachers and children can be thankful that the proposed law died. Andy Carvin has the details.

Among the friends of DOPA-style legislation: Mark Foley, the sleazy ex-congressman who seduced young Congressional pages in between his pious utterances. Moliere, Moliere, you should be alive today in the United States to give certain politicians the writeups they deserve (painting).

Thought: DOPA also might have harmed the cause of interactive books.

By David Rothman

News release: Ruby Kulles, 7, is engrossed in an illustrated children’s book from the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) Foundation.

Kulles is part of Kids Team, a research arm of the Foundation at the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, involving children in the design and testing of the Library’s interface for children’s books across digital media.

The bright green computer she is using is a test model of the new, low-cost laptop developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization (www.laptop.org). ICDL Foundation has the world’s largest collection of children’s literature available freely on the Internet.

(Thanks to wayan at OLPC News for the find.)

By Robert Nagle

Here’s a useful chart indicating which types of reuse are allowed by which creative commons licenses.

A few months ago, TeleRead linked to a page of ebook links I’ve been compiling. Well, I’m going to link to it again because I’ve been adding steadily to the links over the months. These links have more to do with content creation than anything else.

By David Rothman

All’s well. Just as I thought, Alex simply suffered a minor glitch. Welcome back, MR! Related: Earlier post.

By David Rothman

Fed up with the Tower of eBabel—all the horrors of clashing e-book formats—I joined Jon Noring in founding OpenReader. I even came up with the OpenReader name, and I’ve spent many hundreds of hours talking up OpenReader and its first implementation, OSoft’s dotReader. A standard is worthless without good programs that use it. What’s more, OSoft promised among other things to donate its dotReader technology to a nonprofit library project in which I was and am involved.

As an ordinary e-book user I badly want be able to own digital books for real and not be at the mercy of any particular company. Libraries, schools, publishers and retailers also will benefit if OpenReader takes off. Jon felt the same about a truly nonproprietary OpenReader standard, and, I hope, he still does.

Jon’s A issue

Now, however, at the very least in terms of appearances, Jon has complicated life for us OpenReader supporters. OpenReader’s main founder and leader has revealed he’ll do business and technical development for a California tech entrepreneur named David Cote, who in fact played a role in CD-ROM standards development and was invited to participate in an important XML-related group. David’s past involvement in standards, however, does not in itself guarantee the integrity of OpenReader.

Here’s what OpenReader will need to succeed as a truly independent and nonproprietary standard despite Jon’s involvement with David C, a co-owner of DigitalPulp and related companies:

One: dotReader’s timely ability to read OpenReader files

OSoft’s dotReader needs to render OpenReader files, among other formats. OSoft says that is still in the works, but I expected to see this months ago. While OSoft is a small company with limited resources, I’m disappointed just the same. If part of the fault is Jon’s, then this is one more reason to be uneasy about his relationship with David Cote’s companies—which so far have been playing up dotReader but not OpenReader. (more…)

By David Rothman

In a few minutes, I’ll be offering my thoughts on the OpenReader e-book standard in the wake of Jon Noring’s new relationship with a California entrepreneur. As a cofounder of the OpenReader Consortium, I’ll tell what OpenReader needs to survive as a nonproprietary standard. The gist of my personal opinions: Jon over the years has been one of the heroes of the e-book industry, and OpenReader is valuable and fixable—but only if at least three conditions are met, now that Jon will do business and technical development for David Cote, a co-owner of DigitalPulp Publishing and other companies. Please withhold comments, public or private, until the post appears.

By David Rothman

MobileRead has been down for a number of hours, and I’ve written Alex Turcic and Bob Russell for an explanation. I suspect it’s just a technical glitch—perhaps happening while Alex is out of town for the holidays. Good luck fixing the problem, guys.

Update, 8:44 a.m.: Bob believes that the problem stems from a move to a new server Alex recently bought—nothing more, just as I myself would think. Combine that with the holidays, and you have the most likely reason by far.

Housekeeping: More TeleBlog posts will be coming later today.

By David Rothman

Manybooks.net has laudably worked to offer formats for the iLiad and Sony Reader, among others—and now a startup site will focus on E Ink machines. Slightly edited, here’s the announcement from Feedbooks.

Feedbooks is a new Web site made from the ground up with E Ink devices in mind. The goal of this site is to provide a whole new experience, delivering books in the public domain, user submitted content and news. It is divided into three main sections:

• Discover: Download books from the public domain and submit additional books.
• Share: Using a simple dynamic (Ajax) interface, any member can create a book easily. This way you can upload and tag your works, making them available for everyone
• News: Generate customized newspapers using RSS feed or create your own newspaper with friends using a simple Ajax interface

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