"Cyberschool educators say they would prefer to see more support from traditional textbook publishers, although they don't expect that to happen anytime soon," says BookTech Magazine. "They also want the electronic versatility that paper-based books can't have."BookTech warns the e-book industry to catch up with the times, given all the competition possible from teachers themselves. The magazine says:At CoolSchool (Cyber Oregon Online School), in Eugene, Ore., instructors electronically author their own courseware, which can run 400 pages or more. Teachers at Florida's Virtual School are also developing their own multimedia courseware. One reason teachers are authoring their own content...

"While widely available in English, something as simple as e-book conversion software is still unavailable for Arabic. In a region where print censorship remains widespread, e-books--produced and distributed online--are the simplest way to bypass authorities...

How to do DRM in a way that protects consumers' rights, not just software companies'? InfoWorld columnist and blogger Ed Foster and his readers have some ideas....

"It's comforting to have a paper book. It's more fixed in the mind than if you read it off a screen." - Michael Jackson, vice president of fine-paper businesses at Weyerhaeuser Company, as quoted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Bill Virgin.The TeleRead take: Salting up the wounds, Virgin says: "Books and the paper that goes into them were supposed to be another victim of technology (I can recall writing several columns in 2000 on the subject of e-books and the potential for piracy). They may still someday supplant the paper version, but for now they're still a very small...

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will drain billions of dollars over the years from schools and libraries and consumers in general. Time for library advocate Bill Gates, Sr. to take a stand? And as someone who is pro-estate tax, mightn't he just want to consider the injustices of further enriching the Gershwin heirs and other members of the copyright elite at the expense of ordinary Americans? Hey, Mr. Gates, that was an inspirational speech to the Public Library Association, but some pro-library lobbying against Bono--at the personal level, no need to involve the Gates Foundation--wouldn't hurt, either....

Well, another digital divide report is out, this one from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and partners, including the sponsoring Gates Foundation. And guess what. The report, released in a screen-hostile PDF format, fixates on physical schools and libraries as sources of knowledge.I'm for more library funding, not less, but policymakers would do well to consider one of the places where students and the rest of us absorb knowledge--home! And that should mean a concerted, TeleRead-style effort to popularize e-books and other forms of online knowledge for use on PDAs, tablets and desktops at home. If electronic...

Jessica Litman author of Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet, is one of the leading authorities on U.S. copyright law. Here, via an excerpt from her new interview with GrepLaw, are her thoughts on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you're in a state about to hold a presidential primary, why not encourage the local media to ask the candidates about the DMCA and related issues she discusses in the full GrepLaw article?Things have turned out somewhat worse for consumers than I expected them to. Before the DMCA, the copyright law didn't have a lot to say...

Oh no! Pirates are scanning paper books without even bothering to OCR them. And they're getting pretty good results via the sacred PDF format--so dear to major software companies and certain publishers, especially with onerous DRM in place. The pirates themselves couldn't care less about DRM. Via image-based PDF, they simply want to spread the stuff around with minimal work for themselves or their readers. Just plain good marketing, even if no money is involved.Pirated Kama SutraVia a download from UseNet, I've just seen a magnificent but perfectly illegal copy of Anne Hooper's Kama Sutra. Textbooks are also being...

OverDrive is branching out into audio books, which it's unveiling at The Public Library Association Tenth National Conference this week in Seattle. But already a high-profile librarian in the Chicago area is worried, rightly, about the use of a proprietary format. Alas, the topic is as timely as ever. In a news release, OD Content Director Pamel Turner says: "Working with the Microsoft Windows Media format means we will enable libraries to obtain rights to provide patrons access to premium audio book titles on a tremendous range of devices including PCs, PDAs, portable audio players, Smartphones, and the new...

"...talking about technology with patrons alerts them to the current state of libraries. 'Hey, we...

Yo, Microsoft! Doubt that your e-book DRM can be a great way to turn people into Linux users? Read this horror story from Red Beard, the pseudonym for a European living in Brazil. No, despite the name, he is not a pirate, just a POed end user. - David RothmanI never thought I'd be visiting the Lindows site until Monday night when I was launching Microsoft Reader for first time since November 2003 to access one of several Secure Microsoft Format books I'd purchased. Up popped a message to go to...www.microsoft.com/reader/update ...to update installed Reader version 2.1.1. No...

Alas, The Last Book isn't here yet. So good writing is especially important if you're to keep the attention of e-book readers--given the limitations of PDAs and all that. To the rescue comes an old p-book hand, Elmore Leonard, with rules fit for novels in all media. Found via LISNews....