"A controversial portion of digital copyright law will get a public airing next month. Starting Nov. 19, the United States Copyright Office will begin taking public comments on the section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, known as the DMCA, which prohibits people from breaking encryption technologies." - Wired News.The TeleRead take: Not an abstract matter. What if you want to make an extra copy of an e-book for your own use? You might well have to break the encryption used in copy control. Right now if you do so, you'll be violating the law....

Adobe's new ebookware for libraries will make e-books will vanish when due, and NetLibrary will be among the users. Trouble is that this ignores one of the advantages of the medium--the ability of many, many users to be able to read the same item at once. Under TeleRead you could keep a library book as long as you wanted--on your own machine. Would the writer or publisher miss out on payments from the library? Not at all. The system would track your accesses to provide for payments from a national digital library fund....

The $100 TeleReader isn't here yet, but progress goes on. Dell will introduce a $199 PDA at Comdex (via Lockergnome). More details from eWeek. Meanwhile Jenny "Shifted Librarian" Levine is warning Palm to try harder....

Libraries are a hotspot for e-book growth, according to Publishers Weekly (via Library Stuff)....

"The bookmobile is a print-on-demand-mobile. It changes the notion that books are a limited resource. It changes the basic concept of what libraries do, as well as the idea that schools need large book budgets. In a print-on-demand world, where the cost of creating a book runs about $1 and the capital costs run under $10K, libraries don't lend books, they give them away. Schools aren't dependent on the textbook readers the state board of education buys at a cost of millions of dollars -- every district, every school, every teacher can create their own reader at minimal cost."...

"The copyright monopoly...isn't a subsidy for artists. It's an incentive for them to create more useful works. After the 'limited time' is up, my creations can be used by all, however they wish. To understand just how important that limit is, just ask William Shakespeare, who borrowed plots, titles and even the names of characters." - Law Prof. Larry Downes, USA Today, Oct. 7, 2002.For the latest on the Supreme Court case on copyright extension, see CNET and LawMeme and the New York Times. Meanwhile some academics are challenging the concept of "intellectual property" and saying that it can...

"Children apparently know more about the Internet than about books, a survey suggests. Six out of 10 youngsters questioned knew that 'homepage' was the front page of a website - but only 9% could explain what the preface to a book was. More than a third knew that 'hardback' was a type of book, but 57% identified 'hard drive' as part of a computer. Children said they were regularly using the internet to help with their school work." - "Net beats books with children," BBC, Oct. 3. The TeleRead take: Yes, it's a U.K. survey, but the same results...

Thanks to TeleRead technical consultant James Linden for writing a script to get our blog headlines on the home page. Check out James' Gnosium Blog, complete with a definition of blognitive. He also has some thoughts on e-books as a curiosity energizer for the young....

A new bill would guarantee your right to back up your digitized music, books and other media and easily transfer them from one gimzo to another without violating copyright law. Check out Jenny Levine's blog for the details about the proposal from Zoe Lofgren, a congress member from the Silicon Valley area. Similarly helpful legislation is expected from Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia....

The Korea Herald is upbeat on the country's e-book industry, which apparently has 20,000 books in electronic format. But that's not all. Remember our suggestion that the Hiptop computer-phone-PDA combo could be an e-book platform? Well, the Herald reports: "Major wireless service providers are rolling out PDA phones that can download e-books or text-based content from the mobile network." Korea's love affair with e-books isn't the only way in which the country is ahead of the States. Along with some other Asian countries, it's also walloping the U.S. soundly in broadband, as noted by Jenny Levine....

A "computer scientist has launched a site, called Fritz's Hit List, that points out devices that could be forced to carry anti-copying technology if Sen. Fritz Hollings', D-S.C., Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) passes. The bill, which is designed to thwart piracy, would restrict digital products that don't carry government-approved security technology." - ZDNet, Oct. 1, 2002. The TeleRead take: As noted many times here, TeleRead would make it easier to share books and other content--while making it possible for content-providers to collect revenue, either directly or through a national digital library fund. Hollings' approach is...

"Legislation aimed at reducing the load that students lug to and from school was signed into law during the weekend by Gov. Gray Davis" of California. "The bill's author, Assemblyman Rod Pacheco, R-Riverside, and medical professionals hailed the law as an important development in addressing the rising number of injuries to children attributed to heavy backpacks." - Contra Costa Times, Oct. 1, 2002.The TeleRead take: Gov. Davis has "asked the Board of Education to examine the costs and benefits of hardcover books against Internet resources and CD-ROMs." Nice, but he'd do well do check out the item below. If...