Lately your comic strip has chronicled Zonker's fight against "Liberal Hypocrite" David Geffen. This Hollywood biggy had the nerve to close off his Malibu beach property to surfer types. A legitimate controvery? Yes, given all the overcrowding at public beaches in California and elsewhere. But how about a discussion of another important issue--intellectual property rights? Thanks to Hollywood's influence on Washington, the number of free books and other items is the public domain is shrinking. Geffen himself is a major campaign contributor. Political Money Line notes that Geffen "has just about maxed-out to 2002 candidates. In the 1999-00 election...

Volunteers for the Internet Archive "have put about 9,000 public domain books on its site," reports Alternet, "and now they're driving around the United States in a high-tech bookmobile where people can link to the archive via satellite, download the book of their choice, print it out, and take it home to read. And yes, it's all free. The Internet Archive bookmobile will make its first visit to an East Palo Alto school Sept. 30 and will stop at numerous other schools, libraries, and nursing homes during its cross-country trek."On October 8, the bookmobile will be in Washington, D.C.,...

Two hardware items of interest... Item One: What if China ends up far ahead of the U.S. in the use of e-books? Could happen. Remember, TabletPCs may be especially good for Chinese-language users. And once the hardware is out there, it's natural for books. Item Two: The next generation of the Hiptop, a budget-priced PC-phone combination, would be a natural for e-books to be included--complete with easy downloading capabilities and maybe Gutenberg classics built in. Some people, in fact, would consider the present screens to be good enough. The Hiptop already offers Web-browsing, instant messages and email....

What to buy? A foreign-language book or the biography of John Adams? That's what more and more librarians will have to decide, amid fast-growing use of libraries by immigrants. Today's Washington Post writes up the challenges of DC-area libraries.The TeleRead take: Needless to say, a TeleRead-style approach could go a long way toward lowering the costs of a library system serving many needs. One of the best ways for U.S. libraries to aid the assimilation process is to reach out to newcomers. And not just through collections but also through onsite services. This is an issue transcending the "English...

Congratulations to Prof. Jamie Boyle and colleagues at Duke Law School on receiving a $1M anonymous gift to fight copyright extension, the DCMA and similar anti-consumer measures from Hollywood-bought politicians. More details via CNet (at least linking isn't illegal yet)....

Ball State students, in an experiment, found e-books harder to use than paper. But their grades didn't suffer meaningfully. So says an article in the August 26 Chronicle of Higher Education, paraphrasing a report on the BSU study. The TeleRead take: A useful study. Still, keep in mind that the students used Gemstar hardware, which is not the be-all and end-all. Future screens will be sharper, and highlighting and other features will be easier to use. What's more, as noted, even with these limitations, academic performance didn't suffer on a test comparing e-book users with those of paper...

E-books continue to make their way into America's libraries, even without a coordinated approach such as TeleRead. In fact, you can even check them out now from the little library in West Hurley, New York. You can borrow RCA-branded readers to enjoy text. But they are not as popular as LeapPads. As if to confirm Allen Renear's multimedia-related observations, an article in the Daily Freeman of Sept. 2 says that use of the audio-enhanced LeapPads is "growing by, well, leaps and bounds..."The LeapPad books talk, spelling or sounding out a word the child touches with a pointer. Touch a...

CNN surveyed the scene and not surprisingly found that younger college students, especially those with high-speed connections, felt more comfortable with e-books than did older students. Elderly policymakers, please note. It's the material that counts, not how it's delivered.Allen Renear, one of the Open eBook standard-setters, told CNN that electronic textbooks would gain appeal when they come with improved audio and vidoe capabilities. True, true, true.And their capabilities for displaying plain text will get better, too.Time for library systems to plan ahead?(Found via LIS News.)...