The Chinese government should throw the book, so to speak, at a piracy site called BookClub About I.T.Again and again TeleRead has taken on greedy copyright zealots and called for the replacement of the DMCA with a more sensible approach. But what about professional book thieves who use the medium of e-books to steal brazenly from writers and publishers? That's a different question entirely from Fair Use-style sharing; and the BookClub About I.T. is a good example. Here we're not talking about browsing in the Amazon vein or about file-sharing in the context of promoting obscure writers or musicians--but...

The intellectual property sections of the FTAA treaty are still a threat and will be discussed by delegates at a special meeting in 2004. We'll look forward to more details from IP Justice in the wake of the latest round of negotiations. Meanwhile IP Justice's Robin Gross writes in Infoshop News:One of the most controversial sections of the IPR chapter requires countries to outlaw the circumvention of technological restrictions. Similarly to US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), FTAA would require all other countries to outlaw the bypassing of technological restrictions controlling copyrighted works, such as DVDs, CDs, and eBooks....

An LISNews reader has called attention to our item on library bullies--Luddite librarians who absolutely can't stand e-books and go into a Doberman mode when the topic arises. Thanks.Of course, our frustration is more with a particular moderator than with LISNews founder Blake Carver, who has promised more thoughts on the topic. In fact, overall, my personal Karma score as of this writing seems to be just fine over at LISNews. A sign of progress? Let's hope so. I'd like to think that e-books do have quiet supporters among librarians, and that the Dobermans are simply discouraging the white...

Thoughts kindly shared by Terry Frazier in Atlanta:Have a look at LaGrange, Georgia. The city is its own CLEC and has provided high-speed access to every citizen. They have full electronic access to city government and some excellent educational initiatives. I don't live there, haven't even been there, but I follow LaGrange in the news because the whole idea is so intriguing. Last I heard BellSouth was fighting such locally-owned CLECs in the Georgia state house under the guise of unfair competition.I need to get offline now--I've tied up my in-laws' phone long enough and actually should return...

(Update, Nov. 12, 2004: Statesville now has both cable and DSL available. - D.R.) Carly and I are visiting her parents in Statesville, North Carolina (pop. 23,320) at the junction of Interstates 40 and 77, north of Charlotte. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of textile jobs have fled Iredell County, of which Statesville is the seat. Almost seven percent of workers are unemployed. Just imagine the boost that better Net connections--and content via TeleRead, including vocational training materials in both text and multimedia forms--could offer business and education. The business leaders of Statesville, as the promotional magazine at the left...

"Has apathy hit the ebook industry?" asks Jon Noring, moderator of the eBook Community List. From his post today:In the last few months I've noticed a considerable decline (about 30-40%) in the number of messages to The eBook Community (TeBC), compared to the same time last year. This is occuring despite the continuing increase in TeBC subscribership: this group now has over 1900 subscribers, 30% greater than one year ago, and climbing daily--we might even reach 2000 subscribers by the time this forum reaches its eight-year anniversary mark in early January.And I don't see this slowness confined to TeBC--I...

LISNews lives up to its name--as a newsy Slashdot-style site. That aside, this virtual salon for librarians is a chilling example of the resistance and even hatred that e-bookers will encounter in the library world from its many Luddites. LISNews also shows the weaknesses of the Slashdot-modelled bulletin-board system, under which bigoted, ornery moderators can act more as if they're in a saloon than a salon.In terms of librarydom, some Luds are still seizing on obsolete studies that ignore the progress that hardware has made in recent years--or that ignore the differences in e-book devices and their users. E-book...

I like the above idea and related observations--from Jason Mazzone, an assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School--as published in Legal Times:Copyright law gives corporations an irresistible urge to claim ownership, however spurious, in everything. The Copyright Act provides no penalty for falsely claiming ownership in public domain materials, and there is no reward for catching this form of cheating. So corporations stick copyright notices everywhere. And while the U.S. Copyright Office registers copyrighted works, there is no official registry for works belonging to the public. . . . Congress should amend the Copyright Act to make actionable false claims...

We've ranted against the Library Palace in Philly. Now comes Tim Whitaker of Philadelphia Weekly with a semi-joking suggestion that the library be gutted and replaced with a Free Computer Workstation Center. A little overdone as humor, no?--but a fantasy of more than a few Star Trekkers, to the horror of libraries. Still in the humor mode, he also suggests throwing out old books by dead writers. Not exactly the most appealing idea for a Project Gutenberg booster like me, but I'm afraid some would actually take Whitaker seriously. And now the most interesting part. When Whitaker tried...

Today's New York Times carries a story about Ditson Garcia, a whiz of a CompUSA sales rep in Emeryville, California. A Bay area businessman, for example, intended to buy just a mouse and ended up with a $600 flat panel display, too, along with other items, bringing his total to nearly $1,000. So here's the deal. Maybe Microsoft, Adobe and Palm and other major members of the Proprietary Format Promoters' Forum can arrange with CompUSA to pick Mr. Garcia's brains. They can ask this guy to give coupons to PDA-buyers for steeply discounted e-books, with the understanding that the...

George Soros and relatives are big supporters of the Democratic Party. And guess what? His Free Expression Policy Project has released a report that is critical of the Sonny Bono Act and the DMCA. In fact, the Project even links to the TeleRead site.The TeleRead take: Does this mean Soros is on the good guys' side? I don't know. But as with Steve Bing, Net activists should not automatically give up. In my opinion, the Democratic Party will deal with copyright issues the way its big donors wish. The party is no longer so grass-rootsy, regardless of all the...

Read Gary North's funny essay about paper-fixated Luddites--complete with a StarTrek reference that inspired the essay's title. (Found via eBookAd.)...