"This is great, and I hope to see more stories like this in the future. Why can't the government do this sort of thing?" - Ernie the Attorney on wireless hotspots in low-income housing.The TeleRead take: I'm thinking of the speed of Wi-Fi and looking back to the time when people told me that e-books would never work out because modems weren't fast enough. And talk about a way to reach low income people who may not even have reliable phone service (perhaps because they've skipped a payment)!Other details from CNN--about the Boston-area experiment: "Now that Camfield's Internet provider has...

"Bill Gates manages to write a guest editorial about 'libraries' that does not mention the word books. In fact, it's just an ad for the Gates Foundation. Remember, freedom of the press is only for those who own [or can buy and sell] them. [ thanks bill ]." - From librarian.net. The TeleRead take: Gates concludes the Seattle Times editorial: "We must all pitch in to keep our libraries vibrant and strong, whether through volunteer hours, donations or government spending. We must continue to support our libraries so they can keep the doors of knowledge open to all."...

Ophrah Winfrey's revived book club will do the classics--three to five a year. Great excuse for local libraries to print out hard copies of Project Gutenberg texts and also recommend them in e-book form, not just on paper. And if Oprah can send a little money in PG's direction, so much the better. Again, I'm not saying, "Hey, Oprah, just talk up the e-books and the printouts." Most readers will want the familiar medium of paper, and many will insist on commercial editions--I'm happy to see the publishers get the business, which, these days, they badly need. But...

For years I've wondered if ex-White House advisor Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assocation of America, might not be a foreign agent. Hilary Rosen, too--the CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. No, not really, but almost. Along with many others, I've warned of the intense hatred that our clueless copyright laws are stirring up against the States. Brilliant way to recruit hackers for Saddam. Regardless of the consequences, Hollywood and Washington want to inflict our antiquated intellectual property models on the whole planet. Who says the Iraq crisis is the only source of divergence from...

"'Blogging is not journalism.' Period. Technology consultant Bill Thompson--whoever he is--has an absurd little temper tantrum today on BBCNews.com in a column about Google's purchase of Pyra and the excitement it stirred in the blog community." - JD's New Media MusingsThe TeleRead take: J.D. Lasica is right on the above--and something else, too. Especially I fear Thompson's call for extremely close government regulation of search engines. Well, yes, Google does bear watching on the privacy issue. But be careful. Paradoxically, the more closely the government regulates, the more likely it is to demand sensitive information about users--and get it!...

"While the Internet has given us all a forum within which to write and be published as never before, the Internet also gives us tools to search for and locate documents online to detect work or works that have been plagiarized. Detection of plagiarized material can be as simple as doing a Google Search or when the stakes are higher, using a specialist service that can detect plagiarism for you." Google Search"Simply copy out any sentence of the text that seems to be the most representative of the uniqueness of that text and place that in the search...

Cable/Phone Monopolies Take Aim at Muncipal Fiber In today's column I suggest that the phone and cable monopolies will do everything communications alternatives. That may include sheer deception, as this report from an Illinois newspaper suggests.- Dan Gillmor's eJournal. The TeleRead take: Not that different from copyright extension. If you're rich enough and you don't like the rules--well, just come up with enough campaign contributions to change 'em. ...

Dr. Ralph Wilson, a marketing expert who has self-published, serves up some interesting advice in his Web Marketing Today. He discusses formats and even Adobe Acrobat substitutes. Meanwhile here's what he says on the issue of password protection:"E-book publishers seem paranoid that someone will steal their intellectual property and e-mail it to a friend. And they will--occasionally. This is my take on the matter. Few people who spend $25 or more on an e-book are likely to e-mail a copy to friends. And most of the people who collect such illicit freebies never read them--nor would they have likely...

From Ted VanItallie, president of the Florida Historical Society, urging the signing of a petition to save the State Library: Dear Friend of Florida History:As President of the state's only statewide historical society and oldest cultural institution, The Florida Historical Society, I feel it is imperative for me to voice my strong objection to Governor Jeb Bush's recent proposal to eliminate the State Library of Florida, severely limit the activities of the Division of Archives, and eliminate the State Museum of Florida. This is an ill-conceived idea that will greatly impair the work of individuals interested in Florida's history...

Live in Florida? This petition is a "must" sign if you value the State Library--now menaced by Gov. Bush. Remember, this pol is a librarian's brother-in-law. Imagine the threat posed by the rest of the pack amid all the budget-cutting. No advocacy of government waste. But here we're talking about an attack not just on a library but an entire state's memory.On the positive in Florida: Under the Florida Virtual Library Plan, individual library users would have access to a wider variety of material as a result of consolidated databases--with statewide licensing (perhaps to extend to e-books someday?). In...

Microsoft is planning to build Digital Rights Management into Office 2003, according to a Slashdot item quoting an article in Microsoft Watch. The new restrictions will be on Outlook mail messages, as well as on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Users should be prepared to potentially suffer obnoxious Digital Rights Management in tools that they may use to try to work with or view "protected" content--not merely in DRMed books themselves. Microsoft could be planning to help escalate the war against fair use through restrictions based not just on normal copyright and contract law but on rules enforced by...

"...Lawrence Lessig, pointed out Wednesday that millions of consumers are downloading music and other materials onto their computers because slow dial-up connections make it tough to stream content quickly to a variety of devices. That's bound to change within a few years as connections get faster, he said, making today's debate irrelevant." - AP, Feb. 20, via NewsScan.The TeleRead take: "In the future," Lessig is quoted, "it will be easier to pay for subscription services than to be an amateur database administrator who moves content from device to device. We're legislating against a background of the Internet's current architecture...