Slashdot Mirror

The property struggle of our generation will be fought not in the streets of Matewan but in the tiny print in license agreements. Glassbook is Adobe's attempt to e-books, but they have a few details yet to iron out. Take Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for example -- check out the permissions you acquire when you "purchase" this "book." Thanks to Art Medlar and TBTF for this one. Update: Curiouser and curiouser. Apparently I misinterpreted the meaning of "this book cannot be read aloud"; Glassbook tech support tells me this refers to its capabilities, not, as labeled, permissions. I apologize for that. But I don't understand why, after this story was posted, they decided to change this. Now if you download Alice, you'll find it can be read aloud.

Incidentally, Adobe is using the text of Alice as transcribed by the awesome Project Gutenberg, whose entire purpose for existence is to bring reading material to as many people as possible. One of the first things I did when I got a laptop was to download a couple dozen of their books. In ASCII format. Say what you like about vi, at least it doesn't tell me to shut up.

phinance asks: "Are there any (preferably free) tools for publishing (free) eBooks (Glassbook, Rocket Book, et. al.) for Linux? There's an Open eBook specification, but the popular readers don't support it. Do I need to build a Windows box to make an eBook?"