A few weeks ago, a DMCA takedown notice was issued by Andrew Burt in his capacity as Vice President of SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Association. The notice concerned many documents on Scribd.com, a site where people can post documents much as they might post photographs to Flickr. The notice alleged broad infringement of copyrights, and resulted in the standard 10-day takedown mandated by the pertinent provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA's takedown provision protects Internet service providers such as websites from being sued for copyright violation provided that they act right away to remove infringing...

"Prince Johan Friso, son of Holland's Queen Beatrix, and his wife, Princess Mabel of Oranje-Nassau, last week acknowledged having altered a Wikipedia entry about the princess, formerly known as Mabel Wisse Smit." - New York Times....

[poll=34] Comments welcome! What can Creative Common authors to do turn readers into buyers? Update:, 9:24 a.m.: Within the 25 percent or less range, what might your percentage be? Do the authors perhaps think that volume will be high enough to justify a five or even one percent rate?...

Sony e-book strategists, not just e-book fans, should read and reflect on the above item from from Gizmodo. The longer Sony relies on its proprietary BBeB format, the more risky for all. For the company's sake, not just consumers', Sony should do as expected and change to Adobe Digital Editions, which can read the standard IDPF epub format, an Adobe-DRMed version, and encrypted and nonencrypted PDF. Let's hope that owners can update their Sony Readers, that the change won't just happen in the forthcoming model. Survival of Sony's BBeB-oriented store: Iffy? But that will still leave me wondering about the purpose and...

The Achilles Heel of the DT 375 Web tablet, which has an eight-inch screen and is sold at uBid for just $155, is the slow Internet Explorer browser. But the diligent Andy at DT 375.com has arranged for an experimental adaptation of the Opera Web browser. I'm removing the download link posted earlier since he'd like a little more time before going live. Caveats: --Andy is still working out the wrinkles of Opera. He doesn't yet have dramatic speed improvements over Internet Explorer. If nothing else, though, I'll hope that Opera gets along better with current Web sites than the old...

I dropped by the Sony Reader's e-store to pick up a some free Connect classics before the deadline expires at the end of tomorrow, Friday, Aug. 31. It's also the deadline for the $50 credit toward nonclassics. The big question about Connect Classics, listed here, is, "What's the point?" Has anyone taken a close look at the freebies to see if they contain many fewer typos than public domain equivalents available via Project Gutenberg, Manybooks.net or elsewhere? I glanced at the Sony Connect version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, picked up from Pennyslvania State University's Electronic Classics series. As the...

The BeautifulPeople.net site, a dating service and social network for lookers approved by enough screeners, drew a well-deserved verdict from Wired as one of the six lamest social nets on the Web. Curious, I dropped by. Notice the preferred browser? Internet Explorer, of course---even if I doubt that BeautifulPeople.net would grant Microsoft's Bill Gates a membership despite all his billions. Ugly cheapskates? There. Doesn't that make you feel all the better for having chosen Firefox or another open source alternative to Internet Explorer? No respect for Firefox users, eh? At least one book-related site has already dissed Firefox surfers as cheapskates because so...

Over four years ago I published an eBookWeb article entitled “OEBPS: The Universal Consumer eBook Format?” Unfortunately, due to eBookWeb going defunct (a casualty of the “E-book Dark Ages” that resulted after the dotcom collapse), that article has essentially disappeared from the Internet. So I am reposting the eBookWeb article here, not only for preservation purposes, but because its themes are stil very relevant today as will be briefly explained in this foreword. DeLorean jokes When I wrote that article, e-books were considered a lot like the DeLorean automobile — weird and impractical — the butt of many jokes. The DeLorean even played a...

Sounds a little paradoxical, no? Use PDF to help popularize FBReader, the open source program that runs so well on Nokia handhelds like the 770 and N800, as well as other machines such as the Pepper Pad, shown here. But if Dr. Ellen Hage wants a PDF for her convenient reference, perhaps others will, too. So here it is. Hope that helps, Ellen, whether or not you'll do an actual printout! Meanwhile remember, TeleBlog folks will be refining the original post and doing a Wiki version. We'll welcome volunteers! No need to be a big FBReader guru. Nikolay Pultsin, the program's...

Don't be scared if you're an e-book newcomer and have shied away from a Linux handheld. The menus on the affordable Nokia 770s aren't that hard to puzzle out, for example, if you spend a little time at it. And good e-reading software is available, FBReader, which is open source. Missing until now: Handy customization instructions The missing ingredient up to now has been a set of handy customization instructions for FBReader newcomers, many of whom might want to modify their respective key layouts to turn Nokias or other devices into much better e-reading machines. Below, I'll share some FBReader...

Moderator's note: Some of the giants of p-publishing rejected Prof. Richard Bellaver's requests to allow small numbers of books to be digitized for his valuable K-12 experiments---even though he was willing to pay. So what happens? The Ball State University professor is going elsewhere for his content. Lesson here for the big boys? Also see link at the end of this post. - D.R. By Prof. Richard Bellaver The bane of my existence in the world of handheld computers has been lack of e-book content. You just might have read about my weeping because publishers won't provide content for me to...

How do you say ouch in cow talk? One big loud moo? Whatever the word, Gateway, Inc. must be uttering it now. Famous for cowhide images in its ads, Gateway once was more than Holstein-sized in the PC industry---having zoomed to billions of dollars in annual sales after a start on an Iowa farm near Sioux City. The photo is of ex-Gateway CEO Ted Waitt as a 35-year-old billionaire. Alas, however, technology and the marketplace changed, and now Gateway is selling out for $710 million to Acer, which, if corporate acquisitions run their normal course, will eventually wipe out Gateway as a...