"These are Japan-only. Got a Japanese brochure from User's Side (US branch of Japanese tech store) in NYC." - Mike Cane.Note: Yes, despite the books appearing in the ads for hardware series shown here, there's a major question. "What are e-book devices?" Is a better expression "e-book-capable devices"? Not sure. I myself find that my Sony NX60, picked up used on eBay for $125 with a 320x480 screen, is a great e-book-capable device. And it comes without onerous DRM. Perhaps the best indication of a true e-book device is whether Sony has seen fit to hobble the Japanese...

David Faucheux, the blind TeleRead volunteer in Lafayette, Louisiana, is still going strong with his audio blog named Blind Chance. The home page of Audioblogger continues to promote the blog offering witty commentaries and book reviews. Especially I liked David's item How a blind woman made a difference in Tibet. The Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center has linked to Blind Chance's free headline service; and other sites, especially library-related ones, are very welcome to do the same....

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, supposedly passed to protect authors and other creators, hurts more writers than it helps. Over the weekend--most likely Sunday--I'll tell why.I'm focusing on the Act because populism may be a little more in vogue now than before, and in populist terms, the Act is poison with its redistribution of wealth from ordinary people to the Hollywood elite and the estates of the rich. Copyright is good, but a little balance, please. Meanwhile:1. I hope you'll read a just-posted essay--Fewer Americans enjoy good books--but here's how Washington could help--if you haven't already. Print...

The English-language version of the Wikipedia encyclopedia has reached the 300,000-article mark and has far more items and words than the Britannica. Anyone can contribute to the Wikipedia--it's a massive collaborative effort using Wiki technology--but entries are subject to editing and vetting. More at Slashdot....

"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all." - Henry David Thoreau's wisdom as quoted in Book Digest--itself now in suspension.Funny. So many publishers and writers love the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which stretched out copyrights by 20 years past previous terms. But what if the main threat weren't piracy on the Net but people not caring about reading and literature in the first place? This morning's New York Times carries an item headlined Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds. Better schools would be the...

Bill Janssen, a researcher interested in e-books, as well as one of the stalwarts of the eBook Community List, came up with an interesting look at the Librie in action:I've finally got my hands on a Librie, which is sitting here on my desk here. It's slim, perhaps a half-inch thick, and light, about the weight of a paperback edition of The Name of the Rose. The device itself is larger than a paperback book (by about 2 inches vertically and 1 inch horizontally). There's a gray leatherette cover, which flips open--it's attached on the right side of the...

Sharp is repeating the stupidities of Sony and wants to inflict on the world a DRM-crippled machine for reading e-books.Unlike the Sony Librie, this one has a color screen.I'm not sure right now about the display technology and don't know the related specs. Other bad news, beyond the DRM, is that the Sharp won't reach stores until 2007. But that's a tiny negative compared to the DRM issue."...until any of these readers allow us to add our own DRM-free eBooks, they will continue to be amusing but frustrating additions--but not replacements--to regular old paper books," says the Gizmo Web...

In the May 2003 issue of the Washingtonian Magazine, writer Charles Hurt profiles John Edwards and tells how the Senator was lusting after the very kind of soft money donations that Edwards said he wanted banned by law. The man was a human cash-raising machine. One wonders about possible quid pro quos, including possible compromises of the Net on copyright issues. An excerpt from the Washingtonian article:I interviewed Edwards at the height of last year's debate surrounding campaign finance reform which he supported. Yet even as he voted to ban soft money, he was breaking records raising it. Of...

Congratulations to John Edwards, a North Carolina textile worker's son, who, as the Democrats' just-chosen vice presidential candidate, will ideally remember his parents' blue-collar backgrounds in his feelings toward schools, libraries and copyright policy. This is the time for the self-made Senator, a member of the copyright-related Senate Judiciary Committee, to come clean about why his PAC received $900,000+ from Hollywood producer Steve Bing very early in the campaign during the 2002 election cycle. So far the Edwards people have been mum despite the damage that Clinton-era copyright laws have done to the cause of knowledge in this Internet...

I thought that the designers of the Sony Librie--the test version for the Japanese market--had won honors for the most obnoxious DRM. Who can beat books that vanish after 60 days?But an outfit called NuVision is another good contender, especially in the Orwellian division of the competition.NuVision has begun selling the Constitution as a mini e-book on Amazon for $2.99 in Microsoft Reader and Adobe Reader formats. Now here's the bizarre thing: It's encrypted and you can print it only twice a year.You'll violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if you print NuVisions's Constitution more often than that. So...

Delighted to see Mark Frauenfelder in BoingBoing blogging the DRM outrage from Sony, just as we have repeatedly. I agree totally with Frauenfelder's observation that an Associated Press writer--although critical of the Librie's DRM--wasn't harsh eough. The DRM that makes books vanish isn't just annoying. It is infuriating. Also see Will our grandchildren be allowed books? in the half-pie blog, as well as the Richard Stallman story The Right to Read.Reminder: This is the Japanese incarnation of the Librie involved here. I'm rooting for an American one to appear and be better....

Some numbers from the Family Care Foundation:If we could reduce the world...