Update, 10/02: The Copyright Royalty Board has decided not to change the royalty rate after all. The National Music Publishers' association has requested that the royalty rate they receive on songs from the iTunes Music Store to be raised from 9 cents to 15 cents per track. The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C., which sets royalty rates on statutory licenses, is expected to issue a ruling Thursday. Apple feels that the music market is not mature enough to raise prices beyond the 99 cent price point—that doing so would inevitably lead to declines in sales and profits. Rather than absorb the increase...

As you know, David Rothman recently had a heart attack. Also, I have been out of the country for the last three weeks, so Teleread has been kind of slow as a result. But I'm back now and will have more time for this blog. Obviously, filling in for David will be difficult, and I'm not the only one who hopes he comes back soon. In the meantime, I'll be the acting editor. If you have any teleread matters you need taken care of, feel free to contact me. idiotprogrammer at fastmailbox.net ...

I was getting nervous because David hasn't posted in so long, so I called him at home and his wife told me that he had a heart attack last Thursday night at about 10pm.  Last Friday he had quadruple bypass surgery and is recovering.  Evidently all 4 arteries were 90% blocked.  David didn't smoke and was a vegitarian, but his wife said he has a family history of heart problems.  She is hoping that he will be released from the hospital this Thursday. According to his wife, when David comes home he will be very weak and not capable of doing...

David Rothman had a heart attack on the weekend of September 25, 2008.  (Read Paul Biba's initial announcement here).  David will be away indefinitely. This URL  will relay updates about David's condition. (By the way, comments are disabled for this post. If you want to wish David good health, you should make a comment on the initial announcement linked above) (Also, not sure why the sidebar for this page is doing crazy things. Please excuse that for now). Keep in mind that people at TeleRead may not know the latest information or we may not be in a position to disclose it publicly....

On the SF Novelists Blog, author Steven Harper Piziks has posted a rant about e-books and e-publishing that is attracting a fair amount of discussion. Piziks brings up the same refrain that e-reading critics have repeated since time immemorial: nobody wants to read on a computer screen, and e-reading devices suffer from a "chicken and egg" dilemma where there needs to be a critical mass of e-books to support e-readers and vice versa. To solve this dilemma, Piziks proposes using a "cellphone" business model for e-book readers: give basic readers away for free, just as cellphone providers subsidize...

One of the definitions of irony, according to dictionary.com, is: 5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected. 6. the incongruity of this. According to Wikipedia Lessig is: ... founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications. Put the two together with a DRM'd version of his book from Amazon which has just gone on sale, and we have a perfect example of the...

It looks as if DRM has taken away people's music again. The following letter from Wal*Mart was posted by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. I'm trusting to Cory's credibility, because I have been unable to verify it from other sources. I think it speaks for itself: From: Walmart Music Team Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:42 PM Subject: Important Information About Your Walmart.com Digital Music Purchases To: xxxxxx@gmail.com Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases We hope you are enjoying the increased music quality/bitrate and the improved usability of Walmart's MP3 music downloads. We began offering MP3s in August 2007 and have...

Current discussion of DRM in gaming has been dominated by the Spore debacle (as covered extensively here on TeleRead). However, there is a gaming company now starting up that offers another perspective on the issue. A company called Good Old Games has launched a site, currently in beta, that is selling classic older games with the consent of the games' publishers. These games are sold inexpensively, for under $10 each. They are DRM-free, and bundled with any DOS emulator or clock-manipulation software necessary to run them properly on modern computers. Ars Technica has posted a three-page interview with...

Now that I've had my Kindle for a few months, I recently noticed a pretty dramatic impact on my reading habits. In my pre-Kindle days I'd spend my reading sessions going through a few magazines as well as a chapter or two of whatever book I happened to be immersed in that week.  The key point is that the majority of my time was spent reading books. Book time vs. newspaper time Nowadays I spend just as much time reading as before, but it's all centered around my New York Times subscription, my Kindlefeeder...

DailyLit has started serializing Oxford University Press books via e-mail and RSS. Shown is one of the choices, What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam---96 installments for $4.95 starting with three free samples. Given OUP's stature within publishing, the deal is another sign that e-mail/RSS serialization idea is catching on. This is A Good Thing for busy nontechies who might not always be within WiFi hotspot distance. Or they may not want to mess with format conversions. DailyLit has also announced a bunch of fresh features, such as the ability to spotlight new or especially active...

Someone on the Mobileread forums pointed out this handy piece of software being given away by Giveaway of the Day: a PDF to HTML converter, normally a $50 value. This could be useful for people looking to convert PDF documents to more readable e-book formats. The giveaway will only last until the end of Thursday, September 25th in the US Pacific time zone. Be sure and back it up once you download it; you won't be able to go back and download it again! Technorati Tags: freebie,PDF,HTML,conversion,giveaway,giveawayoftheday...

iRex e-readers have won over many a serious e-booker. The sleek new 1000 series strikes me, at first glance from afar, as a joy for recreational reading at home. Not just the business uses that iRex Technologies  is focusing on. Thin and stylish, the machines boast 10.2-inch screens and can even survive a drop of a meter. I hated to send back a review unit of an earlier model, the iLiad 2nd Edition. Especially I loved the ease of flipping pages. iRex and Sony, while not perfect, might well be the champs of ergonomics in the...