Another obnoxious, anti-Net proposal--this one from Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat carrying water for copyright aristocrats. As reported by Declan McCullagh of CNET, "Biden's new bill would make it a federal felony to try and trick certain types of devices into playing your music or running your computer program. Breaking this law--even if it's to share music by your own garage band--could land you in prison for up to five years. And that's not counting the civil penalties of up to $25,000 per offense."The TeleRead take: Sen. Biden isn't as obvious a property of the entertainment industry as...

"The heat has not quite reached Fahrenheit 451, but a furious little row is raging within the bibliophile British, and Britophile French, communities in Paris. To the dismay of its 2,000 users, the British Council closed its Paris lending library-...

"Students are often scolded for not spending enough time at their school library, but do not blame them. It is the lack of new books and a comfortable room in which to read them that is the source of the problem. 'I never want to go to my school library unless my teacher makes me,' said Maria, who is in her third year at a state high school in Tebet, South Jakarta. Maria blamed the old dusty collection of books and the musty library room for discouraging her from going to the library." - Jakarta Post, July 27, via...

Jonathan Yardley warns against government boondoggles for writers. He is right to worry, given all the risks of state-approved culture. This is one reason why TeleRead for the most part would compensate writers and publishers in the same way they get paid now--by the popularity of individual titles. Private foundations could still subsidize writers, but that would hardly be the main business of the library system itself.Of course, with social needs in mind rather than those of individual writers, TeleRead in a small way could make grants for projects in the tradition of the old WPA efforts.More importantly, via...

Great suggestions from Inside The Beast--from a Hollywood peon (via Scripting News). Also see Berman-related links from Copyfight, Dan Gillmor's observations and a New York Times piece....

InfoAnarchy quotes a Malaysian report that the country may still fight piracy for commercial purposes but not prosecute users reproducing software for educational purposes.Now--the twist. InfoAnarchy warns that Malaysia might actually "play into the software industry's hands"--since the use of commercial software for educational purposes might then compete with the free, open source variety.The TeleRead take: Microsoft and other companies give educational discounts. Is it possible, however, that they actually should think about freebies? InfoAnarchy raises some interesting possibilities. Certainly a TeleRead-style library would be an efficient way of distributing both open-source programs and the usual commercial software...

"Brand-Name Authors Hire Writers to Flesh Out Their Bare-Bones Stories" - Headline, Washington Post, July 23.The TeleRead take: Hollywood is giving us more and more sequels at the expense of orginal, "normal" movies. In one form or another, the MBAs and accounts are winning. Will book-publishing sink to Hollywood's level? And in the end, will "Robert Ludlum" and "Tom Clancy" live on more as brand names than as the names of actual writers? Another argument for a new business model....

"There's more free downloading of music than ever. The big labels hate it--but shutting down the outlaw networks won't be so easy this time." - Headline on article by Melanie Warner in Fortune, August 12. The TeleRead take: The magazine goes on to say: "Napster operated with central servers that tracked and controlled the transfer of files between users, but Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus are completely decentralized" and thus will be harder to shut down. It notes that the industry has bungled "on perhaps the most important front: creating Internet services that people actually like for legitimately licensed music."...

"A group of schoolchildren will say goodbye to some of their heavy old textbooks this fall, instead bringing to school a few computer disks. Prosveshcheniye-MEDIA, a subsidiary of the Prosveshcheniye publishing house, is developing the multimedia disks, or electronic textbooks, which will be introduced for the first time this September in science and history classes at around 100 elementary schools equipped with computers throughout the country, including 12 in Moscow." - Moscow Times, July 23.The TeleRead take: The story raises excellent questions, such as how well the teachers will be prepared. It does not get into issues such as...

"Questions questions questions. Can a small record label run a virus too, or just the monopolies? How about a software company? How about the Department of Justice? Can they install a virus on our systems to look for terrorism and report it back to the FBI? Do you think that would be constitutional? What if there's a conflict between" a record label's virus and a car dealer's virus, which one survives? Can a record label rent space in its virus to do someone else's bidding?..." - Dave Winer, Scripting News, July 26, discussing Rep. Howard Berman's bill.The TeleRead take:...

One of the main precepts of TeleRead is that a national digital library system should strengthen rather than replace local libraries--should allow them to set up links and search engines that help local people. Neighborhood libraries also are invaluable as meeting places and potentially as sources of training and other tech-related help.Now comes an article in the Christian Science Monitor telling how the Web has actually been a boon for local libraries--since people want a human touch in coping with the masses of information available through the Net. More money is actually going for local library construction: "Last year,...

I pulled out of just about all my AOL Time shares at around $16, far above yesterday's close at $9.64, but I should have done so much earlier.The really nefarious thing about the post-merger AOL was that it once seemed a reasonable hedge against corporately promoted copyright laws that could wreak havoc on Net-oriented writers and editors like me. I believed that the officers of the company would be at least somewhat responsible about earnings and revenue forecasts, and that the share prices would not fluctuate like those of a dotty dotcom. Given these uncertain times, it is understandable...