E-books in court 

Appeals court rules against Random House in e-book dispute by Hellel italif

With electronic rights to countless books potentially at stake, a small e-publisher has won a second legal round against Random House Inc.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously upheld an earlier decision rejecting Random House's request for a preliminary injunction against RosettaBooks, which is selling e-versions of "Cat's Cradle" and seven other old Random House books.

"It is a good day for authors and for the development of electronic reading," Arthur Klebanoff, RosettaBooks' chief executive, said Monday.

Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum said the ruling "was on procedural grounds, not on the ultimate legal merits of our arguments," and that the copyright infringement lawsuit would continue. [read more]

Author and publisher 

The "Standard" Book Contract: An Antitrust Lawsuit Waiting To Happen by Thomas Hauser

Publishing is a business. No one questions that reality. And whatever it might have been in the past, publishing is no longer the "gentlemanly" business it was once thought to be. Rather, it's about squeezing every last dollar out of every available source--and the most vulnerable source is the author.

Best-selling writers might be treated fairly by the media conglomerates that dominate publishing today, but the average author isn't. And no clearer proof exists than the "standard" book contract, routinely forced upon authors and their agents. Many of the clauses that have been imposed on authors throughout the industry bear no relationship to any economic reality other than the best interests of the publisher.

Yet these clauses flourish because virtually every major publisher insists on them--and the average author has no recourse. [read more]

More on Copyright Term Extension 

Extending Copyright Helps Corporations, Not Artists by Jonathan Tasini

Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether Congress violated the Constitution when it extended copyright protection four years ago. Individual creators will instinctively side with Congress, believing that control of copyrights should go on as long as possible. They are mistaken. Congress acted unconstitutionally and, by doing so, chose the economic interests of corporations over culture, knowledge and society.

In 1998, Congress extended the term of copyright from life plus 50 years for individual creators to life plus 70 years. In other words, my heirs can control any works I create and own for 70 years after my death. The law, known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, also added 20 more years of protection to "corporate" copyright.

The main plaintiff in the case, Eric Eldred, runs an Internet library that posts works in the public domain. He contends that Congress' extension violated the constitutional copyright principle embodied in Article I, Section 8, which reads, "The Congress shall have power to ... promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."... [read more]

The Classic--now online 

The 1911 Edition Encyclopedia Britannica

The 1911 encyclopedia was unfettered by pressure groups, had journalistic integrity and was open to a wide variety of philosophies. The 11th Edition is frank and honest in its articles on religious history, especially medieval church history. Women's suffrage was given a soapbox, as were many other controversial subjects of the day. Even W.E.B. DuBois, one of the earliest and most radical of civil rights leaders, was encouraged to put in his two cents worth.

But why do they have to burn them? 

Book Lovers Pay Their Final Respects by Dana Hedgepeth

Tamara Woolf, 44, couldn't bear to think of a Dostoevski novel burning, so yesterday she took one of her students and went to the Victor Kamkin Inc. bookstore in Rockville to buy a shopping cart full of history, art and Russian classics -- almost all in Russian.

The Kamkin inventory -- estimated to be as many as 2 million books -- had been slated to be sent to the Montgomery County incinerator tomorrow because the owner is behind on the rent and faces eviction.

"The idea of burning books brings to me a memory of the Nazis burning books," said Woolf, a resident of Rockville who teaches Russian at St. Albans School for Boys. "It's unimaginable to me that this would happen here. I'm stunned and shocked."

There was word late yesterday of a possible reprieve for the vast collection of books, which includes limited editions and rare volumes. [read more]

Censorship 

A Brief and Indiosyncratic History of Censorship by Robert Atkins

Should homo sapiens be renamed homo censoris? We're certainly the only species capable of censorship. Where does this troublesome urge come from? Perhaps it's merely an extension of that age-old, apparently hormonal instinct to dominate and control. Whatever its origins, censorship--the prohibition of speech or expression divorced from action--transcends cultural boundaries and predates recorded history. The Old Testament informs us that the Hebrews burned the prophecy of Jeremiah because it was too downbeat. Confucius's writings were incinerated around 250 BC after a change of dynasty made them politically incorrect. The Roman historian Tacitus mistakenly believed that Augustus was the first emperor to destroy books and punish speech,but the Romans had actually taken their cues from the Greeks. To be fair, the Romans should be credited with refining the practice of censorship, as well as with coining the term itself. Beginning in the fifth century BC, they commissioned "censors" whose primary purpose was to conduct the "census," in order to rationalize the collection of taxes. As night follows day, the imposition of moral standards followed the imposition of standards for citizenship. Around the time of Christ, Augustus codified these moral standards into law. But as Tacitus wisely noted about "immoral" books: "So long as the possession of these writings was attended by danger, they were eagerly sought and read: when there was no longer any difficulty in securing them, they fell into oblivion."

So what else is new? That's the thing about censorship--it seems to spring from misguided, but ever-so-human nature. What follows is a sometimes tragic, sometimes inadvertently amusing chronicle of mostly Western milestones in censorship since the fall of the Roman Empire. Rest assured that each of these objects--or agents--of censorship stands for hundreds like it. [read more]

The is more interesting information on censorship at The File Room Censorship Archive

Copyright Term Extension 

The Mouse That Ate the Public Domain: Disney, The Copyright Term Extension Act, And eldred V. Ashcroft by Chris Sprigman

Unless you earn your living as an intellectual property lawyer, you probably don't know that the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Eldred v. Ashcroft, a case that will test the limits of Congress's power to extend the term of copyrights. But while copyright may not seem inherently compelling to non-specialists, the issues at stake in Eldred are vitally important to anyone who watches movies, listens to music, or reads books.

If that includes you, read on. [read more]

Long-Awaited? 

Long-Awaited ebrary Has Arrived

While netLibrary and Questia struggled to establish themselves as the premier provider of academic and scholarly ebooks to the higher education market, ebrary quietly sat on the sidelines and watched. What ebrary saw was a great deal of complaining about netLibrary's pricing (150% list price) when only one person at a time could access the title. They also observed that students are not willing to pay $19.95/month of their own money for research materials that they cannot first evaluate and deem worthy of the price tag. Both netLibrary and Questia have experienced severe funding shortages and have dramatically reduced their staffing level (Questia is down to only 27 employees).

With the competition on its knees, ebrary launched its ebook system, ebrarian, in mid-January. Although libraries did not appear initially to be an important customer base for ebrary, libraries have become ebrary's core customer. Unlike netLibrary, any given title in ebrary's collection can be viewed by unlimited, simultaneous users. Moreover, a library purchases access to ebrary's entire, expanding collection and not on a title by title basis as is required by netLibrary. Unlike Questia, patrons can view all of the titles within ebrary's collection for free. However, a per page fee is charged for each print and/or copy transaction. The fees range from $.15 to $.50 and are determined by the publisher. [read more]

Question: Just exactly who's been waiting so long?

It's the book, stupid 

thought for the day by Gary Frost

The print original, its microfilm copy or its digital posting all provide access, but FotB suspects that CLIR (Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2002 "The Preservation of Our Brittle Books Must Also Preserve Access" by Deanna B. Marcum and Anne R. Kenney) feels that the surrogate modes provide the "real" access, either over time as with film or with automated search and finding aids as with digital library building. The conventional print access from originals is discounted by disqualification of the source as "brittle" or vulnerable to deterioration. This consideration should really not disqualify print access in view of the relative permanence of the surrogate media!

FotB suggests that the inherent attributes of print access need more advocacy... [read more]

Rising Monopoly 

OCLC Closed Purchase of netLibrary

On January 24th, the sale of netLibrary to OCLC was finalized. netLibrary's purchase price was approximately $10 million, far less than the over $100 million that netLibrary raised in venture capital during its early years (from Rocky Mountain News). According to Publishers Weekly, netLibrary will remain in Boulder, under the oversight of Rob Kaufman, founder and CEO. The ebook operations will become a division of OCLC, while MetaText, a digital textbook company previously purchased by netLibrary, will become a for-profit subsidiary of OCLC.

As soon as the purchase of netLibrary was approved by the courts, OCLC announced changes to netLibrary's services and payment options. Effective January 24th, netLibrary discontinued access to its eBook Reader, a software that supported off-line viewing of netLibrary ebooks. In addition to low usage and general customer dissatisfaction with the software, netLibrary also attributes the decision to the growing number of titles in pdf format; a format that the eBook Reader does not support. [read more]

Future issue: Coming soon, to the net, electronic delivery monopoly.

Photography 

PhotoGraphic Libraries, Education resource