The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age - Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/features/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars

A veteran of a former turning of the e-book wheel looks at the past, present, and future of reading books on things that are not books.

Dynamic web fonts are coming. Actually they’re already here, but most of Our People haven’t noticed yet. But they will, and that’s going to be a huge boon to somebody.

The more I read about embedded web fonts, the more I crystalize my thinking. Take, for example, this latest “A List Apart” article where Jeffrey Zeldman interviews David Berlow: Zeldman: Let me put it another way. I want to use your ITC Franklin in a site I’m designing, but I’m not willing to violate my end user licensing agreement. How do we resolve this impasse, from your perspective? Berlow: The next step is for those who control the font format(s) to define and document a permissions table to be added with all due haste to the OpenType, CoolType, TrueType, and FreeType formats. … Zeldman: How can type designers and web designers work together to persuade the engineers who control the formats to modify the code to include a permissions table? Berlow: [W]eb designers flat-out refused to part with real type, which has filled the web with type as graphic files, scaring the bejesus out of a lot of engineering people. … How important dynamically rendered type is to de

Your Fonts are superior to Our Fonts in every conceivable way, except one: WE CAN’T FUCKING USE THEM

Mr. Pilgrim at his best :)

Unless Amazon embraces open standards, the Kindle's lead will become a very short story.

Great quote! "Open allows experimentation. Open encourages competition. Open wins." from @timoreilly (Kindle vs Open Book)http://is.gd/kwWx [from http://twitter.com/LoXD/statuses/1245406729]

rt@timoreilly My post on Forbes: Why Amazon Kindle needs to support open standards. http://bit.ly/hjtfO [from http://twitter.com/frankhellwig/statuses/1253515333]

While users can load some of their own documents onto the Kindle, there is no easy way to "rip" a book.

He makes sense and is sane. I hope amazon listens.

tim o'reilly

DRM has affected how people use their content beyond simply protecting IP; restricts what would otherwise be considered fair use.

[ars technica]

A UK researcher has spent years interviewing people about whether DRM has affected their ability to use content in ways ordinarily protected by the law. Surprise! It has, even leading one sight-impaired woman to piracy.

End users are allowed to time-shift programs, but Jill Johnstone of the National Consumer Council notes that "the way DRM is being used is causing serious problems for consumers, including unreasonable limitations on the use of digital products and infringement of consumer rights. "

AHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA

"Publishers and other content providers make a grave error when they ensure that legitimately purchasing their products involves more hassle and uncertainty than simply pirating them." - one of the comments. Very true.

"This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. [...] apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price. " Allein die Tatsache, dass sich Leute so eine Ausgeburt an DRM-Geschwülsten zulegen, bei der deren Anbieter sogar noch retroaktiv Zugriff auf den vermeintlich eigenen Buchbestand hat... unglaublich.

it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table. You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony? The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

Amazon removed purchased e-books from Kindles when a publisher had second thoughts about online distribution.

amazon smáznul z kindle čtečky lidem zakoupené kopie orwella, protože podle nakladatele byly neautorizované, sice jim poslal peéíz ena účet, ale udělal to bez ptaní, druhej den prostě knížku ve čtečce neměli

Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so? You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question.

President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so?

iPods, First Sale, President Obama, and the Queen of England | Electronic Frontier Foundation

RT @nitot: Obama a acheté de la musique et donné un iPod à la reine d'angleterre. C'est un pirate ! http://tinyurl.com/cob9jm [from http://twitter.com/hvaudaux/statuses/1444222097]

Obama's "hip" gift to the Queen raises some interesting questions and points to a need for more discussion on the topic of what's really copyright infringement.

President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so? You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question.

Free Software Foundation

FSF launches campaign against Windows 7 and proprietary software Windows 7 Sins: The case against Microsoft and proprietary software The new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, Windows 7, has the same problem that Vista, XP, and all previous versions have had -- it's proprietary software. Users are not permitted to share or modify the Windows software, or examine how it works inside. The fact that Windows 7 is proprietary means that Microsoft asserts legal control over its users through a combination of copyrights, contracts, and patents. Microsoft uses this power to abuse computer users. At windows7sins.org, the Free Software Foundation lists seven examples of abuse committed by Microsoft.

Important notice regarding impending lack of privacy, freedom and security from Microsoft Corporation.

El cuarto pecado es el que más me repele de Windows!

It's almost a truism in the tech world that copyright owners reflexively oppose new inventions that do (or might) disrupt existing business models. But how many techies actually know what rightsholders have said and written for the last hundred years on the subject?

RT @featureBlend: Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad. http://j.mp/q0guK [from http://twitter.com/cyberdad/statuses/5427335635]

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: * * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability. * * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel. * * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules t

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: * * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability. * * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

I love my Amazon Kindle. I love reading with it, I love how light it is, and I love the battery life. I also love the fact that it automatically syncs with the Amazon Kindle application on my iPhone and iPod touch. That means any book will open to the last page read regardless of the device last used. it is an amazing bit of technology that makes reading books across multiple platforms beyond simple. It’s a perfect situation — right? Well, it’s an almost perfect situation. This afternoon I discovered a huge Achilles heel in the whole Amazon Kindle environment.

Imagine a world in which all copies of once-censored books like Candide, The Call of the Wild, and Ulysses had been permanently destroyed at the time of the censoring and could not be studied or enjoyed after subsequent decision-makers lifted the ban.

Kindle owners awoke to discover that Amazon had reached into their devices & remotely removed copies of George Orwell's 1984 & Animal Farm. Amazon explained that the books had been mistakenly published, & it gave customers a full refund. It turns out that Orwell wasn't the first author to get flushed down the Kindle's memory hole. In June, fans of Ayn Rand suffered the same fate—Amazon removed Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, & The Virtue of Selfishness, with an explanation that it had "recently discovered a problem" with the titles. & some customers have complained of the same experience with Harry Potter books. Amazon says the Kindle versions of all these books were illegal. Someone uploaded bootlegged copies using the Kindle Store's self-publishing system, & Amazon was only trying to look after publishers' intellectual property. The Orwell incident was too rich with irony to escape criticism, however. Amazon was forced to promise that it will no longer delete its customers' books.

Kindle Issues - Censoring, Monitoring, etc.

Book piracy may explode soon, now that books are becoming widely available in electronic form. Here's an interview with a fellow who already trades extensively in pirated e-Books.

stealing books the electronic way

Great piece on bank pirating, with a huge discussion thread. Also, great stuff on this ebook / print book marketing plan: How about doing what Manning Publications did with a recent purchase; add a unique ‘code sheet’ in the book, ask for 3 random entries from it and, if not previously used, allow the person who bought the hard copy to download a *personalised* (ie their email address is embedded in various places throughout) electronic copy. Most books that I want to read in an electronic form I’ve already bought the dead tree version of! All credit to Baen and their authors though. Fantastic library, bought many more books they’ve published as a result."

"Who are the people downloading these books? How are they doing it and where is it happening? And, perhaps most critical for the publishing industry, why are people deciding to download books and why now? I decided to find out, and after a few hours of searching ... I found, on an online forum focused on sharing books via BitTorrent, someone willing to talk. He lives in the Midwest, he’s in his mid-30s and is a computer programmer by trade. By some measures, he’s the publishing industry’s ideal customer, an avid reader who buys dozens of books a year and enthusiastically recommends his favorites to friends. But he’s also uploaded hundreds of books to file sharing sites and he’s downloaded thousands. We discussed his file sharing activity over the course of a weekend, via email, and in his answers lie a critical challenge facing the publishing industry: how to quash the emerging piracy threat without alienating their most enthusiastic customers."

1) With digital copies, what is “stolen” is not as clear as with physical copies. With physical copies, you can assign a cost to the physical product, and each unit costs x dollars to create. Therefore, if the product is stolen, it is easy to say that an object was stolen that was worth x dollars. With digital copies, it is more difficult to assign cost. The initial file costs x dollars to create, but you can make a million copies of that file for no cost. Therefore, it is hard to assign a specific value to a digital copy of a work except as it relates to lost sales.

Hmmm, I never considered myself a pirate. I just thought I was reading. The people who lock ideas away behind hard-to-use uneeded "technologies" seem to be some kind of bad-guys though.

I found, on an online forum focused on sharing books via BitTorrent, someone willing to talk. He lives in the Midwest, he’s in his mid-30s and is a computer programmer by trade. By some measures, he’s the publishing industry’s ideal customer, an avid reader who buys dozens of books a year and enthusiastically recommends his favorites to friends. But he’s also uploaded hundreds of books to file sharing sites and he’s downloaded thousands. We discussed his file sharing activity over the course of a weekend, via email, and in his answers lie a critical challenge facing the publishing industry: how to quash the emerging piracy threat without alienating their most enthusiastic customers. As is typical of anonymous online communities, he has a peculiar handle: “The Real Caterpillar.”

When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with “unauthorized computer trespassing.” That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, “On whose computer did he trespass?” The prosecutor’s answer: “his own.”

Ongoing analysis of the iPad and how it relates to programming and hacking.

Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they’re doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of “jailbreaks” stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers. There won’t ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won’t be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that’s a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn’t even know it yet.

Another treatise on the effect that corporate content owners are having on our society. Does freedom have a chance, or will we live in a 100% copy-protected world?

"I still remember what it felt like when I realized that you — that I — could get this computer to do anything by typing the right words in the right order and telling it to RUN and it would motherfucking run. That computer was an Apple ][e." Mark Pilgrim's take on the iPad as a locus of Apple's control.

if you are a pirate this is what you get..

Wish my DVDs were as easy to launch as pirated works....

pirate vs legit dvd chart

The Brads – a comic about web design »

DRM doesn't work

The Brads – a comic about web design » http://bit.ly/cGAhNe

i think the cory doctorow argument against the iPad is perhaps the dumbest thing I've read in years. http://bit.ly/cGD98l – chris dixon (cdixon) http://twitter.com/cdixon/statuses/11508479609

Point. As pretty and shiny as it is, I'll probably end up with a Kohjinsha

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boingboing.net%2F2010%2F04%2F02%2Fwhy-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html

RT @cdixon: i think the cory doctorow argument against the iPad is perhaps the dumbest thing I've read in years. http://bit.ly/cGD98l

via http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/blnz5/cory_doctorow_if_you_want_to_live_in_the_creative/

Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its lega...

Fud!

@jasongreen she might have mentioned it, but the rule says nothing about it http://www.copyright.gov/1201/ – Ira Socol (irasocol) http://twitter.com/irasocol/statuses/19610158731

@budtheteacher http://www.copyright.gov/1201/ – Meredith (msstewart) http://twitter.com/msstewart/statuses/19607502254

Statement of the Librarian of Congress on the Anticircumvention Rulemaking: Text

Jailbreaking and bypassing DVD CSS DRM is now legal for fair use purposes Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works

The Librarian of Congress has announced the classes of works subject to the exemption from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) until the conclusion of the next rulemaking.

Hey @Canada_Gov I think you should read this -> DMCA exemptions now make it legal to rip DVDs for education http://bit.ly/5zLPnr