TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Europe’ Category

By Paul Biba

Well, all I can say is good for them! They seem to have more respect for an individual’s rights than the US government. Ars Technica reports that the French La Quadrature du Net sees it as a sign that this is the end of ACTA:

“Written Declaration 12 is a strong political signal sent by the EP to the Commission that ACTA is not tolerable as a way of bypassing democratic processes. Legislation related to Internet, freedom of speech and privacy cannot be negotiated in secrecy under the direct influence of entertainment industry lobbies,” said spokesperson Jérémie Zimmermann. “Full rejection of ACTA is the only option.”

Here is the full text of the non-binding declaration:

pursuant to Rule 123 of the Rules of Procedure

on the lack of a transparent process for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and potentially objectionable content

Françoise Castex, Zuzana Roithová, Alexander Alvaro, Stavros Lambrinidis

Lapse date: 17.6.2010

Written declaration on the lack of a transparent process for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and potentially objectionable content

The European Parliament,

– having regard to Rule 123 of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas negotiations concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) are ongoing,
B. whereas Parliament’s co-decision role in commercial matters and its access to negotiation documents are guaranteed by the Lisbon Treaty,
1. Takes the view that the proposed agreement should not indirectly impose harmonisation of EU copyright, patent or trademark law, and that the principle of subsidiarity should be respected;
2. Declares that the Commission should immediately make all documents related to the ongoing negotiations publicly available;
3. Takes the view that the proposed agreement should not force limitations upon judicial due process or weaken fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy;
4. Stresses that economic and innovation risks must be evaluated prior to introducing criminal sanctions where civil measures are already in place;
5. Takes the view that internet service providers should not bear liability for the data they transmit or host through their services to an extent that would necessitate prior surveillance or filtering of such data;
6. Points out that any measure aimed at strengthening powers of cross-border inspection and seizure of goods should not harm global access to legal, affordable and safe medicines;
7. Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the Commission, the Council and the parliaments of the Member States.

By Chris Meadows

On Saturday, Publishing Perspectives had an interesting story about the problem of digitizing orphan works in Europe. It’s a little hard to count them, given that different countries use different standards for orphanhood, but a European Commission report (PDF) guesses that there are about three million orphan books—books that are still in copyright but whose owners are difficult or impossible to locate—across its member countries.

Among the key findings of the report, which also considers orphan films, photographs, newspapers and music, was that the biggest obstacle to digitization is not the cost of the digitization process itself, but that of clearing rights and the immense number of man hours involved. The report found, for example, one UK project spent £70,000 to clear the rights to digitize 1,400 posters from the 1980’s, while a Dutch project to digitize 500,000 photographs and 5,000 films budgeted €625 000 just to pay for rights.

And only 5-25% of works, the report estimates, are successfully cleared per project.

Norway has an interesting program that allows limited public use of orphaned works in return for a per-page fee, which the commission thinks might serve as one possible model for the rest of Europe.

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By Paul Biba

Now this is an initiative that we all should get behind. According to Neelie Kroes, EU commissioner for the Digital Agenda:

“User data is moving more and more into the ‘cloud’ and people are getting their music, videos and applications digitally (for example through iTunes) instead of buying them in physical media,” Kroes said.

“We need to make sure that significant market players cannot just choose to deny interoperability with their product. This is particularly important in cases where standards don’t exist,” she said.

“Under the Digital Agenda for Europe, we will examine the feasibility of introducing measures to make big market players license interoperability information.”

“This is not just about Microsoft or any big company like Apple, IBM or Intel. The main challenge is that consumers need choice when it comes to software or hardware products,” the commissioner insisted.

“Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future,” she added.

Applications for Apple products, like the iPhone, were another example of a big market player locking consumers into proprietary technology, the commissioner said.

This is one of the most important long-term initiatives, in my view, that the EU can undertake. Why is it that I suspect that nothing at all will ever be done with this here in the US? Let’s hope that the EU can shame our government into taking a similar approach.

Much more information in the article at EurActiv.

By Paul Biba

According to the Financial Times a number of European publishers are holding off on signing onto the iBookstore. They feel that the minimum pricing requirements might be illegal under UK law.

One publishing executive told the Financial Times: “We are not absolutely sure the agency model is either legal or ideal for our authors and us.” Another publishing industry insider said the agency model was “price fixing by the back door” under UK rules. Although there could be a way around this legal hurdle, the uncertainty has left some publishers sitting on the fence.

However, the article points out that some have joined, in part, because Apple allows local currency pricing, which Amazon currently does not provide.

By Paul Biba

It’s rare that you get to see the people behind the product, but here are the CEO (on the left) and Marketing Director (on the right) of Endless ideas – Johan Hagenbeuk and Peter Zieleman. They hail from Utrecht in The Netherlands.

At the previous show they were showing a 3G product which is now discontinued. They told me that the challenges of roaming in Europe made 3G impractical. Unlike the US, you can travel a short distance in Europe and then you will move to a different national carrier whose roaming arrangements are completely different. Thus, you have to negotiate with a multitude of carriers in order to have any sort of 3G coverage. This is one reason, they said, that Amazon has to charge extra in Europe for its 3G Kindle. Endless, then, decided to drop 3G as being too complicated to deal with and is staying with a WiFi model.

The Neo uses a Wacom panel (with a slot to hold the stylus, unlike a competitor) and has great contrast. They told me that the contrast is 100% and the screen refresh is extremely fast (they say 50% faster than other units). They say this is because of the software and the controller.

Their European sales are excellent, with about a 1 week stock turn and they are finding that sales are doubling (along with employees) every month. They’ve just opened an Australian office. Sales take place throughout Europe, but not much is being done in Eastern Europe. US sales are also doing well and are doubling, also, in each quarter. They are still looking for a major US distributor. Their prime competitor in Europe is Sony.

By Paul Biba

According to the Financial Times, European media is not rushing to get out iPad apps for the release of the machine internationally this week. Publishers want to wait and see how much consumers are willing to pay for products before developing them, the paper says.

This includes such popular publications as the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Economist, which will not be in the app store when the iPad launches.

Digital publishers, analysts and design experts say the first publishers’ apps are confusing to use or boringly faithful to the offline product, and are not being used as much as hoped.

“There are some apps which are spectacularly bad, particularly magazine apps,” said Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis. “There is going to be a lot of frantic iteration in the next six months.”

By Chris Meadows

Remember that method of forcing iPhone apps to run full-screen on jailbroken iPads without pixel-doubling we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, that required manually editing a configuration file on the iPad? Gizmodo reports that someone has now come out with a Cydia application (actually an OS extension) called FullForce that will automate the process for jailbroken iPads.

Gizmodo mentions the iPhone New York Times app and Facebook app as prime candidates for FullForce use—and Nate the Great confirms that it does work with Stanza. It’s suddenly become a lot more tempting to jailbreak my iPad.

Siobhan O’Leary reports in Publishing Perspectives that only three weeks away from the German launch of the iPad, Apple still has not signed any of the largest German book publishers onto iBookstore publishing deals. Some magazine and newspaper companies, as well as smaller publishers working through iPhone bookstore textunes will be in iBooks, however.

O’Leary also reports that almost 25% of surveyed German consumers expressed an interest in purchasing the iPad. (Oddly, the survey article says it’s one week before the iPad’s German launch, not three, despite being posted on the same day.)

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By Chris Meadows

Aspiro, a European streaming music and video service, is planning to launch a streaming audiobook service in Norway this fall. The books will be streamable on various Mac, PC, and mobile platforms and, like the Kindle’s whispersync, will allow picking up on one platform where you left off on another.

Aspiro hopes to expand to other countries as well:

"We will also offer our streaming service throughout Europe to publishers, audiobook clubs and other retailers, who want to distribute their books via online streaming," says Aspiro CEO Gunnar Sellæg.

No indication whether it will be coming to America, though.

By Chris Meadows

Three big publishers and a number of smaller publishers have signed onto a “made in Spain” e-book platform called Libranda, Publishing Perspectives reports. It will use EPUB with Adobe DRM, and allow purchased books to be read on up to 6 PCs and 6 mobile devices by default (though publishers may choose to use more restrictive settings).

Unfortunately, e-books in Spain will be sold with a value-added tax of 18% rather than usual 4% for printed books. For taxation purposes, e-books are apparently considered computer software rather than books.(See also the discussion topic in which Edward Nawotka asks if this is fair.)

The article does not say who makes the e-book device shown in the illustration. It looks like another iteration of the Netronix EB-600 (the basis for the Cool-er, Kobo, Pocketbook, and Viewsonic devices).

It is interesting to see European countries start coming out with their own e-book platforms, bravely standing up to the cultural imperialism of the Amazon Kindle. It remains to be seen how well Libranda will work out, especially with that 18% VAT handicap.

By Chris Meadows

The iPad 3G comes out this afternoon, and CNet reports that Apple Stores are actually closing for an hour from 4 to 5 p.m. to prepare for the launch. If anyone picks one up, we’d like to hear from you!

PC World has a 6-page article comparing the iPad to “everything else”. E-book and magazine reading makes up a considerable part of that comparison. The article says that the iPad definitely has the advantage as an e-reader, but that magazine publishers have yet to “create products that take full advantage of the iPad’s display and interface.”

Remember the suggestions that Amazon could use demographic information from its Kindle to show us what readers are doing? Amazon actually has started doing some of that. Snarkmarket links to a collection of the most highlighted passages from Kindle e-books. Interesting stuff.

Erotica e-book publisher Circlet Press (don’t visit this site from work!) is hoping to raise $5,000 to issue a printed book, by selling e-books on CD-ROMs. For $50, one gets a CD-ROM contains 20 e-books, or for $100 27 e-books and a T-shirt. The e-books are provided in PDF and HTML formats (which presumably means they’re also DRM-free). The sale only lasts until May 15th.

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By Chris Meadows

Publishing Perspectives has an interesting article on the fragmented e-book situation in France.

To English-speaking e-book fans, of course, fragmentation is nothing new; there has not been a single cohesive format for e-books since they first gained popularity back in the 1990s. In France, a similar situation has arisen: each publisher is releasing books on its own distribution platform.

A report commissioned by France’s Culture Minister proposes that a single platform be created for the distribution of e-books. However, French publishers reacted to this about as well as you might expect Apple, Amazon, and Google would respond to the notion that they should post all their books together on “iAmaGoo”.

The publishers suggest, instead, a “hub” whereby retailers would be able to sell e-books from any given platform via one access point. Because French publishers consider control of their file systems to be very important, this may be as close as France’s government is going to get.

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By Chris Meadows

TheBookseller.com reports that the Booksellers Association of England and Ireland is expressing concern over the results of a British library review that has proposed a ban on libraries charging for e-book lending.

The BA noted the “undeniable tension” between the library world and the publishing/bookselling world, given that libraries exist to give away information for free and the latter exist to earn a living.

Meanwhile, the Publishers Association has come out in favor of ready access to books whether physical or electronic, and the president of the Society of Chief Librarians says that library reading of any book should not be a charged-for service.

I will admit that I am not entirely familiar with the way British libraries work. I know that, unlike American libraries, they pay a fee to authors for each lending of their books, and I presume that would apply to e-books as well. And of course for libraries that had not been set up to deal with e-books, there would be technical costs in launching and maintaining e-book systems.

I’m still a bit surprised that libraries would think of charging for e-book lending, as that would seem to me to blur the line between libraries and booksellers—especially if you’re paying to check out an e-book that gets checked back in after a set period of time.

Related:

• British Booksellers Association still has problems with Google Settlement
• Review: Fictionwise, Overdrive e-book lending libraries

By Paul Biba

We’ve previously reported on the ACTA treaty which is being negotiated in secret among the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, and a number of other governments. This treaty, which often looks a lot more like a copyright treaty than a counterfeit-goods treaty, could have profound implications for many ordinary Internet users (including e-book readers), such as imposing a “three-strikes” provision that would cut off Internet access to accused infringers.

Now an overwhelming majority of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted, 663 to 13, for a resolution criticising the Treaty and saying that the MEPs will go the the EU Court of Justice if the European Commission does not reject the rules that allow the cutting off of users from the internet if caught downloading copyrighted material. The Parliament’s consent is necessary to conclude the Treaty on behalf of the EU. The MEPs argue that the Treaty flouts agreed EU laws on piracy online.

See here for more information.

By Chris Meadows

Tech review maven Walter Mossberg has posted a review of the Irex DR800SG e-book reader. This reader costs $140 more than the Kindle e-reader and is compatible with the Barnes & Noble store among others. Mossberg was not terribly impressed, pointing out a number of areas where its design and user interface could use improvement.

In observation of Read An E-Book Week, DriveThruRPG and White Wolf are offering a free watermarked-PDF download of the 224-page World of Darkness rulebook (list price $24.99) for as long as the week lasts. Enjoy!

A recent survey shows that 90% of academic publishers have seen a growth in e-book sales over the last two years. E-book sales now make up almost 10% of total e-book sales in those markets—twice the level of e-book sales in general. Academic publishers have apparently been much quicker to adapt to the e-book market than trade presses.

The survey found that academic publishers were also relatively unconcerned about the various challenges presented by the shift towards digital books. Although piracy was one of the biggest concerns, [report co-author Laura] Cox said very few publishers thought of it as a serious problem.

It appears the next smartphone platform to receive a Kindle reader will be Android. jkOnTheRun reports on an Engadget posting of leaked documents from Dell stating that the Dell Streak (aka Mini 5), an Android device, will include a Kindle reader application (as well as several other Amazon services).

Sony is bringing more newspaper and magazine content to its e-book store. Probably in a bid to strengthen its position before the iPad arrives, ReadWriteWeb reports, it is adding 20 new papers and magazines, including the New York Times and Boston Globe. (Sony press release here.)

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By Paul Biba

The Parliament’s Culture Committee calls for more books, maps, film clips and photograhs to be provided to the portal, and these should come from more countries, as well. The Committee says that member states’ contributions are very uneven. The site currently hosts only 5% of all digital books, with almost half coming from France, 16% from Germany and 8% from the UK and the Netherlands respectively.

The Committee’s report “urges the [European] Commission and member states to take all necessary steps to avoid a knowledge gap between Europe and non-EU countries, particularly the USA, stressing the importance of making Europeana “one of the main reference points for education and research purposes”.

More info here.

By Chris Meadows

We’ve reported on Nintendo DS e-book applications several times over the last few years—both homebrew apps such as dslibris and a commercial cartridge containing 100 public domain e-books released in Europe in 2008.

The other day, Paul received an email suggesting the new Nintendo DSi XL could be an e-book reader for Europe in lieu of the Kindle. Times Online actually reviewed it in this capacity in January:

Secondly, the bigger size makes the DSi XL a serious rival for more expensive eBook readers. I’m not sure about this, but if the console can open .txt files, then there’s no reason you can’t download your own out-of-copyright classics and bung them on an SD card. I’ll check this out later.

It turns out it might well be an e-book reader for America, too: today, CNet reports that aforementioned 100-public-domain book cartridge will be released on this side of the Atlantic in June, at a standard retail price of $20. (Business Week has another such report.) Publishing Perspectives reports that a similar bundle of French public-domain literature is coming out for the DSi in France on March 5th.

The $190 DSi XL’s screens will be 93% larger than the old Nintendo DS’s (increasing in size from 3.5” to 4.2” diagonally according to Wikipedia), and support wider viewing angles. They are expected to retain the same 256×192 pixel resolution, however.

While this is not as good a resolution as the iPhone’s 3.5”, 480×320 screen, it is still better than the 160×160 pixel display on the original Palm PDAs, and plenty of people read e-books on those in the old days. It does provide over twice the screen area as an iPhone.

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