In an interesting postscript to my prior entry about the Storyteller's Bowl model of publishing, someone is now trying that model out in the tabletop roleplaying game industry. Philip Reed, president of the Ronin Arts publishing company, has pledged to create an open-game-licensed game system called FASERIP (short for "Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, Psyche," the character attributes it uses), compatible with the old Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game, in return for $1000 in donations. This game system would only include the core rules, with no extraneous copyrighted or trademarked material, in much the same way as Wizards of...

It's about time. eBay's record in protecting intellectual property is disgraceful. As shown by a screen shot from last August, the Potter books are not the only titles pirated. One partial solution for the Potter books: Letting legal copies go on the Net for e-book fans. Related: eBay- and Potter-related article from the Times in the U.K. Also see earlier TeleBlog items on eBay, Potter and piracy. ...

Please note that such efforts are nothing new. Some Slashdot readers are underwhelmed....

"...Digimarc has now patented watermarking technology that then alerts the copyright holder that its content is being used. Of course, given the earlier discussion about how the technology isn't particularly good, this patent seems more likely to hurt the watermarking concept than help it." - Techdirt. Related: The e-copyright debate and a Microsoft alum's new watermark service. Just how will the Digimarc patent affect Infoflows (photo of Infoflows head Steve Stone)? I much prefer watermarking to the usual Draconian DRM, but Techdirt is still raising useful questions....

Six candidates are vying for an IDPF board seat---Samir Kakar (Techbooks), Craig Miller (LibreDigital), Jon Noring (DigitalPulp Publishing), Matt Shatz (Random House), Malle Valle (Harlequin Enterprises) and Eli Willner (Green Point Technology Services). Voting will end on March 13. The seat was opened up after the resignation of Kelley Allen of Random House from the board of the leading digital publishing trade organization. So what are the four biggest issues that the candidates, whose biographies and platforms you can read by clicking on their links, should be addressing? Related challenges for e-bookdom First, e-books need to be made easier to find, buy,...

So, gang, what do you think about the pros and cons? Browsing means better shopping, but, look, I want to own e-books for real. That counts even more than social networking-related features or tie-ins. So let's hope that the E-Book Museum approach won't replace downloadable files. Reuters has the details about the Random House and HarperCollins experiments with browsing: Random House, whose writers include Danielle Steel and Norman Mailer, said on Tuesday it will let consumers search and browse through more than 5,000 of its titles on the Internet through a new service called Insight. Random House is also introducing a tool...

"If e-books are marginal, their impact will be small. If they are to be successful, they may have to be much cheaper than printed books. If they are much cheaper, they could well undercut both publisher and author incomes. Only a substantial increase in additional unit sales will pay for what e-books may well do to p-books." - Ethan Ellenberg, a literary agent. The TeleRead take: Amen! This may not be what some e-book boosters want to hear, but that's the reality---and one reason why I'm so keen on global literacy programs, the $100 laptop project, and well-stocked digital national library...

Will a $165 e-paper machine---similar to the Sony Reader---actually hit the market in late fall or winter of '07? And will a front-light fit over the reflective screen for when you're in dim light? Here are the specs: Project of the device for reading electronic books Screen: 6 "SVGA Electronic Paper Display (not E Ink Corporation) CPU: ARM7, 73 MHz SRAM: 1,0 Mb ROM: 256 Mb (it is used 248 Mb) USB 2.0 SD/MMC: up to 2.0 GB Formats: TXT, XML (FB2), RTF, JPEG, GIF, BMP Weight: 185 gram Retail price: 165 Usd The beginning of sales: IV-2007 I'm skeptical because of the price, among other things---remember, Sony intends to make money...

The war against the TeleMice is at the Afghanistan stage, with the foe no longer quite in charge but still hiding in the caves---er, behind bookshelves and the like. Carly and I keep baiting two black Victor electronic traps---on the kitchen floor---with Jif peanutbutter. We're also relying on a mix of old-fashioned spring traps and glue traps elsewhere, not to mention countertop cleanings and the rest. And, yes, we'll welcome further advice from fellow mouse-hunters. Body count so far is 10+ as the war goes on against second-gen enemies. With bin Laden-relentless rodents and other distractions stealing blog time, it's good to...

I first noticed these columns when Slashdot pointed out the most recent one (albeit with an incorrect writeup claiming Flint said "DRM causes piracy." But then, that's about par for the course for Slashdot "journalism"), but I had been familiar with Flint's writings about so-called "piracy" from the days of his "Prime Palavers" back when the Baen Free Library and Webscriptions first started up. Happily, the years since then have only given Flint time to expand upon and develop his themes, and all six columns are well worth reading. The first three are an examination of copyright and term length,...

Today on CNET, Opera’s CTO Håkon Wium Lie (portrait at right) critically looks at both Microsoft’s Office Open XML and the Open Document Format. He describes both as essentially “memory dumps with angle brackets.” Instead, he believes that the better way is to build upon the long-universal standards of XHTML and CSS. To demonstrate this, he and co-author Bert Bos wrote a book (published by Addison-Wesley Professional) entirely mastered in XHTML and CSS3, using the powerful Prince application for direct conversion of the master to PDF for the print book edition. An example chapter from their book is available online: one view...

Is this building---headquarters of the U.S. Patent Office---a crime scene? Or maybe the U.S. Congress is instead? Imagine intellectual property laws that require Microsoft to pay $1.52B in an MP3-related patent suit. Yes, at least for now, I'll take Microsoft's side even though the company itself is an eBabler in love with proprietary technology. This ruling for Alcatel-Lucent could ...