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And also, this one.

Getting to see the books is not what Google Books is for. It was never what Google Books was for. You've bought into the fallacy promoted by the Authors Guild, who came in after the fact and tried to wangle their lawsuit against Google Books into an orphaned-works library without actually having any authority to do so. Google shrugged and went along with it, because why not, but it was never what they had intended.

From the very beginning, Google Books (nee Google Print) was intended to populate a search database so people could search within paper books as easily as they could search within the web. If the book was still in copyright, then finding that book to read was the searcher's problem. (Interlibrary loan works a treat.) Google was very straightforward about that in early blog posts and publicity about the project. Don't blame them for falling short of the Authors Guild's goals. Those goals were never theirs to begin with. See the link in the first paragraph for more information.

It might make a little more sense distilled into this article, which I wrote for another blog afterward to discuss the matter.

Effectively, the original Maurice Leblanc Arsène Lupin stories borrowed Sherlock Holmes, much to Conan Doyle's annoyance. Subsequently, manga writer Monkey Punch based Lupin III on the Leblanc stories without permission, much to the Leblanc estate's later annoyance. (He was able to get away with it because Japan didn't honor trade copyrights at the time, and the Leblanc estate didn't even find out until years later.) Castle of Cagliostro drew on the Leblanc stories and the Lupin III franchise, and a number of other works, and inspired countless other works that borrowed from it in return.

And it never would have happened if the rights holders had been able to shut Leblanc and Monkey Punch down.

Cory Doctorow wears the habitual rose-colored glasses of the impassioned activist, so I tend to take what he says with more than a few grains of salt. Nonetheless, it's nice to hear a little optimism even if it may be largely unfounded. We'll just have to wait and see what comes of it.

Does no one here read Vernor Vinge?

(Spoilerish bit follows. Only a spoiler for the worst of purists, but they have been warned.)

Rainbow's End has an act where an virtual book cartel deploys a giant vacuum/shredder/optical scanner to the UCSD Geisel Library. It sucks in books a shelf at a time, feeds them thru a wood chipper, and the shreds pass thru a tunnel lined with optical scanners. A photo is taken of each bit, and software reconstructs the books.

Needless to say, this idea displeases many people, and the climax of the novel takes place as the bibliovorous machine threatens the library.

(End spoilerish bit.)

Rainbow's End should be on Slashdot's list of top 10 reads. I'm surprised it hasn't spawned a half dozen cliches here, e.g., belief circles and Scooch-a-mouts.

Of course, with a name like "macs4all", I can expect you to be objective.

A quick Google search turns up this. DRM here, Multi-task here and underpowered for me is an extension of the fact that it cannot multitask. Having a large iTouch able to do one thing at a time does not really mean that it's blazing fast. Either it can't multitask because it doesn't have the specs for it or something is wrong with the iPhone OS (yeah, it's not running OS X).

For what it's worth, it's generated ill-will on the part of e-book consumers, too, many of whom feel this whole thing is yet another instance of the continued cluelessness over e-books that they've had to endure for the past ten years, and who feel that authors and publishers are deliberately ignoring them or misrepresenting their positions.

A couple of examples:

"Maybe we should be hurting the authors" by Ficbot
"The Amazon/Macmillan blow-up: An e-book lover's appeal for understanding" by me

For what it's worth, it's generated ill-will on the part of e-book consumers, too, many of whom feel this whole thing is yet another instance of the continued cluelessness over e-books that they've had to endure for the past ten years, and who feel that authors and publishers are deliberately ignoring them or misrepresenting their positions.

A couple of examples:

"Maybe we should be hurting the authors" by Ficbot
"The Amazon/Macmillan blow-up: An e-book lover's appeal for understanding" by me

I thought the publishers had been setting their prices all along and Amazon was buying them at one price and selling them at a cheaper one. Doesn't that mean that Macmillan will make the same amount per ebook since the price Amazon pays isn't changing but that they don't want readers to get used to "only" paying $9.99. http://www.teleread.org/2009/05/13/amazon-losing-money-on-999-e-books/

It's DRM'd to high hell - books, movies and apps. The only reason the music isn't is thanks to competition from the likes of Amazon. There's something slightly frustrating about using an explicitly open format and then spewing their own brand of DRM all over it.

That's exactly right. The only reason the OLPC group set out to design the XO in the first place was that there were no computers in that size and price range at the time. They simply did not exist.

Well, now they exist. Cherrypal is selling them. They're not going to have the same kind of standardized architecture that the XO does, but nonetheless they're Real Live Computers that can run real operating systems (and by "real operating systems" I of course mean Linux).

OLPC ought to be putting educational software on those rather than blowing more money chasing this touchscreen pipe dream.

To be fair, the approaches of the two projects are a bit different. OLPC is like the Apple of the third-world-laptop world. They're designing a specific set of hardware, and tailoring not just an OS but a specific educational software suite to run on it.

Cherrypal is like the PC, taking the "beige box" approach of just buy or throw together any old thing, all it has to do is access the Internet. Let the organizations who buy it come up with their own curricula.

(And by the way, my interview with the chairman of Cherrypal is now up on TeleRead.)

According to their chairman, they use Debian.

The niche is a little larger than that, actually, and it's an entirely different one.

The target are people who need Internet access but can't afford anything better. As more and more government and other services nudge people toward the Internet, those below the "digital divide" have an increasingly hard time accessing those services.

I talked with their chairman about it, and wrote up the interview last night.

Here's my account of, excerpts from, and opinions about the interview.

It's 3,300 words long. (Yes, yes, I know, "TL; DR". :P )

Indeed!

Ask editors, agents and other professional readers as well: you'll find they love e-Readers because a stack of manuscripts is heavy! It's way easier to carry around and read a stack of electronic manuscripts on your Kindle or Sony E-Reader than it is to manhandle all that paper around.

Ask a group of extremely avid consumer readers: romance readers. This is a group whose typical readers go through multiple books a week, bought and paid for, not freebies from Project Gutenberg. They were the first group to get on the e-book bandwagon in a big way, and there are a number of e-only small publishing houses in the romance genre. In fact, I find it vaguely depressing that the commenters on a forum for geeks, etc (Slashdot) is less informed and less interested in e-books and e-readers than that of a popular romance blog Smart Bitches, Trashy books.

I also recommend the Teleread blog, for keeping up on things e-book.

Oddly enough, I just wrote a fairly lengthy review of Rainbows End over on TeleRead.org. Submitted it to Slashdot; it's still pending. (I'm not optimistic, but it was worth a try.) I talk some about the book, and about how Vernor Vinge's ideas for "the book of the future" have been evolving and changing since True Names.

It'll be fascinating if this technology actually starts to show up in real life.

Actually we don't know what a majority thinks. There have been about 300+ downloads. Only 15 chose to rank the app and they've given it an average of 2 stars. Sure, some couldn't grok the terribly complicated scrolling system, but I think it's still far from a majority.

I would take a more detailed survey but I can't. Apple owns the customers.

Now, on to the best way to page. The swipe is much too random and jarring. I downloaded other packages and read reviews like this one:

  http://www.teleread.org/2008/08/23/iphone-e-book-review/

After some field tests, I adopted the one I did. It's still the most favorite. Many of my testers grew to hate the animation and the swiping. They wanted a tap. To this date, I still prefer my Palm TX which pages with a rocker switch.

So there you have it.

  I've got to move on to other work now. You're welcome to have the last word.

#2: http://www.teleread.org/2009/06/22/device-limits-fuzzy-on-downloads-for-kindle-books-if-so-should-the-ftc-investigate/

And a Kindle wielding friend of mine was complaining that newspaper subscription he uses is limited to one device, too. Which is insane.

#3: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44350&highlight=amazon+banning

This dude now has a $350 door stop.

#5: Yes, my bad.

#6: That still doesn't change the fact that until this problem is addressed (and Amazon has enormous leverage here, while I personally don't), Kindle will not be able to replace books for me.

I beg to disagree here

1) Amazon owns Mobipocket [1].
2) Over time Mobipocket has developed software readers for 12 devices [2].
3) The AZW book format - including DRM - is identical with Mobipocket save one byte [3].

So if Amazon wanted more software readers one call at Mobipocket and a week later they would have some. Which is probably the way they got the iPhone reader: http://www.teleread.org/2008/12/04/is-amazon-sitting-on-the-mobipocket-iphone-client-after-all/

Martin

[1] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3833
[2] http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp
[3] http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/mobipocket-books-on-kindle.html

It's interesting to note that Amazon OWNS Mobipocket, the encrypted format used by many of their competitors in the e-book industry, but have "embraced and extended" the format so that their Kindle is completely incompatible with other stores' Mobi encryption (without a lot of messing around with python scripts, anyway).

It occurs to me to wonder just how much longer Amazon will be content to provide DRM services to its closest competitors in the e-book biz. If it were to stop licensing Mobi DRM entirely, it could very well cripple large sectors of the rest of the e-book industry.

ePub is XHMTL with CSS and a additional file handling the organization of the book.

Look there for a better explanation :

http://www.teleread.org/2008/05/16/epub-demystified-tomorrows-e-book-reader-the-web-browser/

Cool! Apple is using Social DRM on their music files.

I wonder: did they invite people like Cory Doctorow?
Did they invite people like Eric Flint?

Or are they only going to listen to voices from the dark side, the side that believes culture was invented to make big companies rich and where "non-commercial" is a profanity?

So what if it exists? It's a tempest in a teacup. Apple has always controlled its gizmos more tightly than anybody else, in the name of mediating the user experience. If you don't like it, you go use someone else's gizmo instead.

Anyway, as lax as the approval process seems to be for their App Store (NetShare, IAmRich, etc.) it is probably a good thing they have a malware kill switch; sooner or later they'll probably end up approving some malware by accident.

Kindle is not an accurate use for digital distribution. It's a big ole marketing hype. Kindle is akin to 1 step of a complete staircase.

Content control is not the solution, and the device is a piece of garbage. DRM and other problems left and right. People just like that it's cheaper than normal books. This not being kindle's fault but the publisher's own.

Wait until people create a double sided OLED bendable/foldable reader....then you're good. I'm sure its being developed as we speak, probably by MIT or CMU.

Once book prices go reasonable online (say 2-5 bucks a book at maximum), then things will sell like hotcakes and piracy will drop. For now, even e-books for some books are ridiculously priced.

Internet/computers have created their own market for pricings. Until pricing gets to a volume level instead of scarcity level, things will continue to be purchased illegitimately. I'm not going to trade a night of going out to the bars just to buy a textbook...but I will download it free instead.

Great tip, thanks. I was intrigued enough to go looking further:
http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/09/18/hanlin-ereader-v9-due-later-this-year-with-10-inch-e-ink-screen-new-vizplex-tech-included/

Of all the readers out there, the only one that has me really interested is the Iliad (discussed briefly in a comment above), but the high price tag is making me a bit reluctant to jump. The price of the current Hanlin is much more reasonable, and I've been dying for an eReader with a big screen for me to read technical PDFs and RTFs on.

JuiceBox -- http://myvogonpoetry.com/wp/index.php?p=57

http://www.teleread.org/blog/2005/06/02/the-12-e-book-reader/

"So what would get me to switch completely? ... form-factor of a small clipboard ... high-resolution display ... at least 18 hours on one charge ... plaintext, postscript, HTML (including MHT or MAF or some comparable all-in-one-file HTML container, including full gif/jpg/png/bmp support) ... It must also not complain about merely storing any other type of file ... must accept a non-proprietary low-cost DRMless media type such as standard CF or SD ... reasonable quantity of nonvolatile on-board storage ... load-and-render time ... 3 seconds worst-case ... act as a sort of general purpose PDA - Nothing fancy ... at least one "open" programming interface ... up to around $500up to around $500"

Something like the Jinke Hanlin V2 perhaps?

(194mm(L)*133.6mm(W)*13.4mm(H), ePaper 600×800 4 level grayscale, power for turning not less than 8000 pages, PDF Viewer, WOLF Viewer(WOLF File Format:convert from txt,htm,DOC ,PDF,Excel,PPT,Images,mp3 ets),HTML Viewer,TXT Viewer, 64MB Nand Flash, SD/MMC card, faster page turning than the Librié (a first generation eInk device), Linux based and SDK available, price est. at 350US$)

"So what would get me to switch completely? ... form-factor of a small clipboard ... high-resolution display ... at least 18 hours on one charge ... plaintext, postscript, HTML (including MHT or MAF or some comparable all-in-one-file HTML container, including full gif/jpg/png/bmp support) ... It must also not complain about merely storing any other type of file ... must accept a non-proprietary low-cost DRMless media type such as standard CF or SD ... reasonable quantity of nonvolatile on-board storage ... load-and-render time ... 3 seconds worst-case ... act as a sort of general purpose PDA - Nothing fancy ... at least one "open" programming interface ... up to around $500up to around $500"

Something like the Jinke Hanlin V2 perhaps?

(194mm(L)*133.6mm(W)*13.4mm(H), ePaper 600×800 4 level grayscale, power for turning not less than 8000 pages, PDF Viewer, WOLF Viewer(WOLF File Format:convert from txt,htm,DOC ,PDF,Excel,PPT,Images,mp3 ets),HTML Viewer,TXT Viewer, 64MB Nand Flash, SD/MMC card, faster page turning than the Librié (a first generation eInk device), Linux based and SDK available, price est. at 350US$)

There are two websites about ebooks and the portable devices to read them on, and I am mentioning them here because they delve much deeper than Slashdot generally does: Mobile Read and Teleread.

Disclaimer: I am a Teleread contributor.

I guess it is worth repeating here.

>3. Lack of content: Books they are interested in aren't available in electronic format

Generally, this is it. I am a fan of eBooks, not because I prefer that over a real book, but because it fits my lifestyle better. I can read in places I wouldn't have a book handy, carry more with me, take a few minutes here a few more there...

The problem is getting the content. I am not rabid for or against DRM, I understand both sides of the issue. I don't have a *real* preference for a reader I just use what I have on my PDA (although PDF format on a PDA blows donkeys, but that is another stopry).

Look at this:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/22/sequel_to_sca lzis_ol.html

In spite of this being an author who is (apparently) pro-ebooks, you can't find much of his published work in that format. Pity, I find myself more and more turning to electronic books (and more recently--magazine subscriptions!) since it simply fits my lifestyle better. Do I miss the 'feel' of reading a good book? Hell, yes and I indulge myself when I can, but sadly that is far less often than I like. Someone already mentioned Fictionwise.com, they are an excellent place to start looking for content.

Lastly (and most on topic) look here:

http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=4346#more-4346

"Biggest complaints were about the costs of e-books, lack of enough titles, and, yes, DRM and format hassles."

Everything s/he says, except that I have a Palm PDA, and that I would not mind if the epaper screen were foldable or rollable.

Exciting developments on that front, actually!

Two e-ink based readers are supposed to be released soon: The Hanlin V8/V2 and a device from iRex. The iRex reader is supposed to support Linux and be released in "early 2006" in Europe. The Hanlin V8 with a proprietary OS is supposed to be released "by the end of this year" in China for around $300, with the Linux-based V2 being released in May worldwide at about $320.

My money is on iRex, since they're backed by Philips and have a larger screen, but they might be more expensive than the Hanlin device. We'll see!

Check out Thout Reader www.osoft.com. The Thout Reader uses loose DRM, and Books are typically 30% off. You can download lots of free documentation from there website to check it out. Thout Reader is written in Java and is open source open source (GPL 2.0). It also looks like they plan on implamenting the open reader format see http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=3575

It would appear that OpenReader.org is tackling the e-book problem as evidenced by David Rothman's blog at http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=3575/here>. For years they have been developing standards but have never come close to building an actual e-book reader. It looks like they finally got off the ground and are rolling something out in Q1 2006.

here's the best source of information I've been able to find so far:

http://www.teleread.org/blog/2003_10_26_archive.ht ml#106768614604144566

I quote:
The copyright terms for sound recordings in most developed countries
are reasonable and rational. For example, in Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and most of the European Union countries, the term is 50 years
after the year of fixation or of first public release. Thus, in these
countries most (if not all) of the recordings from the pre-WW2 era are
in the Public Domain, including those recorded in the United States.
Other countries have slightly longer terms for sound recordings (e.g.,
60 years in India, 70 in a few)--in such countries many to most pre-WW2
U.S. recordings are also Public Domain.

here's a piece I wrote about it yesterday.

http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=3369
Summary: yes, it probably sucks, but if DRM offers significant benefits to the consumer (in this case, it DID not), people will accept it.

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Wow, nice criteria you have.

How about...what's the difference on the candidates support of the PATRIOT Act? How about their stance on the poor intelligence leading up to the Iraq invasion? (Senate/House Intelligence Committee members bears some of the blame.) What's their stance on the DMCA? What does Kerry have to say about Bruce Lehman being a Technical Advisor? (Bruce Lehman was a big mover and shaker during the Clinton years..not a friend of this crowd to be sure.)

Why does Kerry's yay vote appear in the resolution authorizing the President to use force in Iraq, but later he says it was the wrong war at the wrong time? The whole damn world knew GWB was itching to invade Iraq...if he wasn't for invasion (before he voted against it), why did he vote yay?

What's the difference in the candidates Energy Policy? Why does Bush favor nuclear power and Kerry favor expanding coal usage? How does either one address our need to find alternative fuels or lessen our consumption of fossil fuels?

TeleRead and ODP and Books of the Future are also good reviews.

Anonymous coward asks,

www.projectgutenberg.org ( WTF? )

Disgruntled ex-volunteer.

For an interesting read on the issues (and in fact numerous others affecting eBooks), check out Teleread's Blog

To be completely honest, we didn't really report this originally, it was at Teleread. They have a good Follow Ups as well, and a good archive of eBook stories. The latest has an interesting quote:

"In fact, that's exactly why Project Gutenberg 2 troubles me, because it at least appears to be a sellout of some valuable ideals, and Mr. Public Domain still does not grasp the implications. Proprietary DRMed formats like Adobe, encouraged by the existence of DMCAish laws, are among the ways the rules get rigged."

Right now I'm just hoping my server can take a slashdotting. We've gotten just over 1,100 referrals already. I'm not sure my slashcode an handle real slashdot numbers. Load average is still just under 2, which is higher than normal, but probably not too bad so far.

tail -f access_log | grep slashdot
It's scary watching a new one pop up every 5-10 seconds!

To be completely honest, we didn't really report this originally, it was at Teleread. They have a good Follow Ups as well, and a good archive of eBook stories. The latest has an interesting quote:

"In fact, that's exactly why Project Gutenberg 2 troubles me, because it at least appears to be a sellout of some valuable ideals, and Mr. Public Domain still does not grasp the implications. Proprietary DRMed formats like Adobe, encouraged by the existence of DMCAish laws, are among the ways the rules get rigged."

Right now I'm just hoping my server can take a slashdotting. We've gotten just over 1,100 referrals already. I'm not sure my slashcode an handle real slashdot numbers. Load average is still just under 2, which is higher than normal, but probably not too bad so far.

tail -f access_log | grep slashdot
It's scary watching a new one pop up every 5-10 seconds!

Especially of interests are the following 2 points:

- PG trademark owner and PG2 owner are supposedly friends.

- PG2 tries to claim copyright over the files as well, even though the text themselves are supposed to be in the public domain.

Just a gentle reminder that the E-Book Museum would preserve the artifacts and tell the story of the technology. It would not be so much of a content-preservation project. That's for other worthy endeavors and proposed endeavors. As for the role of e-books in the UK content-preservation initiative, they are at least among the items included. Good enough for the point to be made! Needless to say, I couldn't agree with you more about the usefulness of preserving e-copies of nonbooks, too, such as magazines and newspapers. - DR

No NIH syndrome, I'd hope. Keep in mind that the E-Book Museum proposal focuses on the artifacts that the public can see right there in person and on the Net--the machines and the media, as well as videos of old e-book references in movies, on TV, and so on. That's a different issue from content preservation per se. What's more, the TeleRead item already includes a link to http://www.digitalpreservation.gov--please don't think I've denied LOC credit for existing activities. What I have in mind, of course, would make the preservation job easier by reducing the chance that LOC would be out of luck because it could not find the right machines to display dead formats and emulation was tricky. Let's hope, of course, that a nonproprietary standard e-book format arrives soon, but if nothing else, as I've noted in the TeleRead item, the E-Book Museum could help cope with the present mess. Please take a look at what I wrote for TeleRead, not just the quick summary. And by the way, I'm right across the Potomac River in Alexandria, and, though I realize you don't deal with e-books at LOC, you or colleagues are welcome to reach me at 703-370-6540. Thanks! David Rothman, for TeleRead.org

"Project Gutenberg is in the cross hairs of J. Bradford DeLong, a Berkeley professor and Wired Magazine contributor, who accuses PG of failing to 'achieve any form of critical mass.' I'll get to Gutenberg in time. But first a few words on the DeLong column and then plenty more on his former employer, the Clinton Administration..."

Read the rest at http://www.teleread.org/blog/index.html.