Government wiretappers, rejoice. Ernie Miller's blog tells of the pleasures ahead for snoops if a current anti-P2P proposal becomes law. Imagine the possibility of federal wiretaps for even alleged downloading. And for civil suits, even?Hmm. J. Edgar Hoover was an amateur at this privacy invasion business, spying on Martin Luther King and scads of other Americans for the love of it. But the well-bought pols in DC are enthustiatic pros. Give enough campaign money to 'em and they'll turn federal snoops loose on alleged infringers, with the solons enjoying the fruits of the piracy invasions. Just my opinion, but...

"'Consumption of music increases dramatically with the introduction of file-sharing, but not everybody who likes to listen to music was a music customer before, so it's very important to separate the two,' said Felix Oberholzer-Gee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the authors of the study. Oberholzer-Gee and his colleague, University of North Carolina's Koleman Strumpf, also said that their 'most pessimistic' statistical model showed that illegal file-sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.' - Washington...

I'm enjoying yBook. Got an e-book newbie going with it in five minutes. He almost immediately was downloading a Project Gutenberg book from within yBook. The paperback appearance should be a hit with people like him. I hate reading books hour after hours on a desktop--hey, each to his own!--but this software would be a nice addition to the hard disk of a laptop or tablet. More details on the way later this week. Please note that to be used in Linux, yBook requires Wine emultation (sorry--should have said so earlier)....

"While 18 to 34 year-olds comprise only 24% of the total U.S. population, they account for 38% of the total time spent online and 40% of the total pages viewed. This skew is even more pronounced among men in this age group." - News release from the Online Publishers Association.The TeleRead take: Full report is online in PDF. If I were a publisher not on the Net now, I'd take these stats as a pretty strong warning. The case for e-books gets stronger and stronger since technology is just going to get better and better, as the Librie shows.(Found...

...it's the proper side for Japan. Amy Roos writes: "Just a reminder: in Japan many books are read 'backwards' from those in English and standard European languages. I presume a version designed for the western market would open in the direction we are used to expecting books to open." Thanks for setting us straight, Amy....

Info from Mike Cane:--The Simputer--a low-cost Linux handheld for villagers in India and elsewhere to buy for community use--didn't come in as cheap as expected. Not at $220. See a review in Engadget, as well as an AP story and Slashdotters' take.--On the Librie: "Dan Jackson will have no problem getting tha new Sony ebook reader. It'll be a near-global launch. That Sony showed it and announced it at CeBIT confirms that. Sony would have quietly launched it only in Japan if they had no plans to be aggressive in the ebook area. I am now thinking...

yBook and CEBook 3.5 are on the review schedule here. Thanks to Susan Glinert for the pointers.About the free yBook (Windows and--under Wine--Linux) she says: "Very, very smart."And CEBook (CE and Pocket PC) : "A fantastic reader for Windows CE. Can read double-byte, .prc, .pdb, txt, html files, and Pocket Word, and Note files. Landscape and portrait. Some menus are still in Chinese--whoops!"I'll welcome other people's possible thoughts to be included with my own impressions.Correction: Yes, yBook needs Wine emulation to run under Linux. Sorry about the error. My fault....

You're apparently out of luck if you own an existing Axim X3 or X5 and were hoping to upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. More at Pocket PC Thoughts. (Via Pocket PC eBook Watch.)...

Hold off for now on buying your Librie until you know more. So suggests Brad Collins in Thailand. Via my TeleRead address, I'll be happy to forward queries to him. Below are his current thoughts....I'm waiting to hear back from a friend in Osaka who can dig up some info. I'm trying to find more about:--Memory stick support? White or Blue (white memory sticks mean copy protection restrictions on copying files)--Which ebook formats do they support?--Is this just a test product used to see what the reaction will be in Japan, or do they intend to release versions...

George Bush last week joined the Democrats in calling for universal and affordable broadband, but something is missing. Can any politician say the T Word? Yes--the same one that William F. Buckley Jr. used some years ago in appealing to Newt Gingrich for a TeleRead-style approach.A well-stocked national digital library system with books, educational software and other items could start small and grow, especially as e-book technology improved. George Bush's wife, a trained librarian, would do well to keep an open mind about the technology, about which so many are ignorant. Even without new tech like the Librie, screens...

The Librie isn't the only hot machine out there. If you want a five-inch color screen and $1250 isn't too scary a price and you don't mind the WIN CE operating system, check out the Samsung Nexio S160 convertible-style PDA, shown to the right without the keyboard in place. It comes with a 400Mhz processor and blended-in WiFi and got a good send-off from TechWorthy. A nice machine? Sure. Just not a cult item.If, however, your budget is lower and you'd cherish E Ink tech even if it's just grayscale, then only a Librie might do. Which raises the...

Can you smell the stench coming from the Senate Judiciary Committee?I'm just across the Potomac in Virginia. But this odor is strong enough to waft all the way back to Hollywood.The entertainment industry is the source of the campaign cash behind the latest treat from our Senatorial copyright Tories, a proposed anti-P2P law pushed by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and Democratic colleague Patrick Leahy.The odoriferous details are in Wired about a lowered burden of proof in P2P-related criminal cases--while allowing the Justice Department to tackle civil cases against sharers.Hatch and Leahy aren't the only culprits of the moment. Lamar...