Will the NIH Syndrome apply? Harvard has just received a $600K grant from the MacArthur Foundation to continue fleshing out copyright scenarios. It'll be interesting to see what if anything is said about a TeleRead-style national digital library system. About the only time we've heard from a Berkman Center type--well, actually it was probably just a hanger-on instead--was when a blogger apparently from that circle took after TeleRead for relying on users for voluntary payments to copyright owners. Wrong, as he admitted later. Payments actually would be from a national digital library fund (a mix of public and private...

"U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher (D.-Va.), a longtime champion of fair use rights, said Thursday the Copyright Office's ruling earlier this week denying consumers the right to make 'fair use' copies of digitally recorded material except in very narrowly defined cases, was a 'misguided decision.'" - DC.Internet.com, via eBookAd.The TeleRead take: The good news is that some corporate interests are in favor of Boucher's proposal to mitigate the DMCA's effects. The story says: "Boucher said the tech community now considers fair use rights to be 'one of its highest priorities' and pointed out that supporters of his legislation include Intel,...

"Just a week after Amazon.com introduced a tool that lets people search the entire text of many books it sells, the online retailer reported a boost in sales as a result of the feature." - CNET.The TeleRead take: Too early to say for sure. Also, it would be interesting to see what's happening to individual titles such as reference books.Update: An Amazon news release quotes customers, including one in Vancouver, Washington: "During the past weekend, I entered a search for a favorite author, Jean Pierre de Caussade, and was surprised to find that, instead of the usual thirteen listings...

Two for your money? - Via Tech Dirt.Related: Dawn of the dual screen PDA, on CNET - Via eBookAd....

"As of today, one of my country's (Brazil's) largest newspapers is totally dumping HTML in favor of PDF editions. According to their website, the HTML format 'didn...

Still wondering why we keep ranting about the DMCA? Check out Ed Foster's post on Diebold's campaign to hush up critics of its buggy electronic voting machines. The Copyfight blog aptly quoted Foster's nifty rewrite of the First Amendment:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or of the press ... except as needed to allow trademark and copyright holders complete power to control discussions about their brands.Remember, Bill Clinton signed off on the DMCA. Does your silence, Governor Blogger, mean you may well...

"...I think...Americans are dying for...someone who'll listen to what they say, respond honestly and directly, and if he disagrees he'll say why. I've heard him do that--I went to a fundraising party for him in Chicago a couple of months ago. The amazing thing about that was that I thought I'd go see a lot of my friends, and there were 500 people there and I didn't know a single person. This is a movement." - In These Times founder James Weinstein as quoted in Salon on Howard Dean.The TeleRead take: OK, Governor Blogger, now show us that you...

Google to its credit has so far rejected a merger proposal from Microsoft, but it would be nice if it said unequivocally that one won't happen in the future, either. Just imagine--the world's largest software monopoly controlling the Web's largest search engine, with all those listings of uppity sites. Better back up your bookmark file more meaningfully than the Redmond goblins want you to be able to back up e-books in the .lit format. Related: A Slashdot item, as well as To Place Ads, Google Searches For Best Bidders, in the Washington Post. ...

Big conglomerates would be able to claim some new rights even on public domain works--just by transmitting them. The bad guys have had the audacity to include that proposal in a new international treaty. Will the treaty enjoy the blessing of copyright 'crats at the international level like Kamil Idris, pictured to the left (more on him below)? Don't be surprised. Maybe it's time for a fresh term. You've heard of vanity laws like the DMCA--bought by and written for members of specific industries. How about "vanity treaty"? Yoo-hoo, John Dean and you other Presidential candidates? Guess you're taking...

You already know: Presidential candidates' Web sites excel in hiding contact info to reach influential advisors. Jack Valenti and crew have the open-Sesame information. You don't. How to articulate the philosophy behind this not-so-accidental little omission on many a campaign site? Well, the protagonist in Our Friend the Charlatan, a novel that the British writer George Gissing published in 1901, does a preternatural job of expressing the elitist DC mindset that permeates the Website-creation philosophy of Dems and Republicans alike, even if they won't fess up to it. Influenced by--wait, more or less plagiarizing from--an obsure French...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of our favorite groups. But how to amplify its voice and those of similar organizations? Several times we've called for the creation of a Digital Media Users Association. A little tidbit from The Register--on the disappointingly limited DMCA ruling from the U.S. Copyright Office--really makes the case in effect:...both the original DMCA and the state-centric "super DMCAs" have sailed onto the statute books without adequate lobbying in DC, without the public being aware of the implications and, in the case of the super DMCAs, without the EFF even noticing. The EFF renewed...

Over at PalmDigitalMedia, Lee Fyock objects to an item we picked up earlier on the new Palm Reader Pro 2.2.9's fix for the Tungsten T3. The post said, "The program was not originally designed to work with the Virtual Writing Area, and as a result it would not allow you to see the text correctly with the slider closed." Lee writes:You're mixing up a couple of things. The Virtual Writing Area, actually called the Dynamic Input Area by PalmSource, is the Graffiti writing area that can slide up and down. Separately, the T3 has a hardware slider that...