According to the Huffington Post, three independent bookstores are filing a class action suit against Amazon and the "Big Six" publishers. Alyson Decker of Blecher & Collins PC, lead counsel acting for the bookstores, described DRM as "a problem that affects many independent bookstores." She said the complaint is still in the process of being served to Amazon and the publishers, and declined to state how it came about, or whether other bookstores had been approached to be party to the suit. "We are seeking relief for independent brick-and-mortar bookstores so that they would be able to sell open-source and DRM-free books that...

Amazon has patented a means to sell used e-books within the Kindle system. A book will be branded within the system when it is bought, and when the buyer puts it up for resale at the Kindle store, it will be removed from his account and transferred to the buyer’s account. Amazon will receive a small fee for each sale. A limited number of sales of each book may or may not be included in the system. According to copyright law, specifically the first sale doctrine, this is illegal because digital goods aren’t physical things so they can’t be resold. (See...

Self-publishing has a lot of advantages and just as many countervailing drawbacks. The biggest advantage is, of course, you get to be your own boss and can publish whatever you want to, without some publisher taking a cut of the money. But the dark side of this freedom is that it can leave you vulnerable if some big company with money and lawyers decides it doesn’t like what you’re doing. And even if their claims are completely outlandish, it will cost you money you don’t have—more money than your book will ever make—to fight them, and you don’t have any guarantee...

Apple is now the lone hold-out. As you may recall, three publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster—immediately settled, leaving Penguin, MacMillan and Apple to fight it out in court. Penguin settled in December, probably to protect their pending merger with Random House. And now Macmillan joins its fellows. Macmillan CEO John Sargent cited financial reasons for the settlement, according to this story on Publishers Lunch: "Our company is not large enough to risk a worst case judgment. In this action the government accused five publishers and Apple of conspiring to raise prices. As each publisher settled, the remaining defendants became responsible not only...

I’ve written quite a few pieces here about the various attempts to try to create a workable digital resale market—most recently with digital music resale firm ReDigi, which is currently engaged in a legal dispute with music label EMI over its activities. Now it looks as if, as with a lot of its digital media sales, Amazon may have achieved yet another leg up on the competition. On paidContent, Laura Hazard Owen reports that Amazon has been awarded a patent on the idea of a marketplace for “used” digital content. Amazon applied for it back in 2009, and it...

  By Keaton Keller A while ago, I thought that cellphone carriers were unaware that consumers could buy a phone for the contract price and then use it anywhere unrestricted. Then, after a while I learned this wasn’t the case and that carriers had every possible loophole filled in. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a bill to hinder hackers from wandering away from their device’s service provider, will now include an additional rule stating that unlocking phones will be deemed illegal. Keep in mind, people will do it and in the past we’ve seen the U.S. Government do something like this before. Jailbreaking, the act...

Remember how, back in 2009, Wizards of the Coast pulled all its PDF products from on-line gaming store Paizo and announced it was ceasing PDF sales altogether? Apparently it only took about four years for the company to change its mind again. Wired’s GeekDad reports that WotC has launched a new e-book store site, dndclassics.com, in conjunction with on-line RPG e-book seller DriveThruRPG. The site currently offers over 80 products ranging in age from the old red and blue books up to the latest 4E stuff, with prices ranging from $4.99 for older products to $17.99 for...

On Friday, Aaron Swartz was found dead in his apartment; he’d apparently hanged himself. Swartz was only 26, a brilliant and troubled young man who suffered from clinical depression, and also an Internet activist who spoke out and acted out in favor of making access to public information more free to everyone. He was a friend of both Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow. Swartz’s other accomplishments include RECAP, a tool that uploaded public-domain legal documents retrieved from the subscription-based PACER document record system into a duplicate free-access database. He was also reportedly involved in the early stages of...

  Macmillan, the last of the major publishers still fighting the U.S. Justice Department over antitrust charges, says it has renegotiated its e-book deals with retailers to allow some discounting. In an open letter posted on his book-publishing company's website Wednesday afternoon, Macmillan Chief Executive John Sargent said the firm is still committed to fighting the antitrust case brought by the Justice Department involving allegations that Macmillan and four other publishers plus Apple Inc. (AAPL) conspired to raise e-book prices. Read Full Article... Source: Global Finance * * *      ...

Just to be 100 percent clear from the jump, the infuriating bit of news in this post doesn't directly have anything at all to do with e-books or e-reading. But I'd guess that the majority of us here have ordered expensive electronic devices online in the past—devices that have to be shipped via FedEx or UPS or DHL. And considering that the holiday season is now in full swing, who isn't coming home from work each day to find a small mountain of brown cardboard boxes waiting on the stoop? (No one actually does their holiday shopping in stores anymore, right?) But I digress....

We reported yesterday on the sad news that e-book pioneer Fictionwise will be shutting down at the end of the year. I feel very bittersweet about this. The sweet is that I'm very proud of the revolution that little company started, and I love that e-books are a commonplace, normal thing, and that devices have evolved into cool little gadgets you can affordably buy at just about any chain store. The bitter, of course, is that it didn't have to end this way. Fictionwise never recovered from the one-two blow of agency pricing and its sale to Barnes & Noble. Its...

In his Copyright and Technology Blog, Bill Rosenblatt has an interesting column looking at the Owners’ Rights Initiative, a lobbying coalition of interested parties who have united under the slogan “you bought it, you own it,” seeking to promote the right to resell digital property. The group includes used book vendors such as Powell’s, movie rental firm Redbook, and used merchandise outlets like eBay, Overstock, and others. But it also includes a number of public library advocacy organizations, because if you “own” something like an e-book, you also have the right to lend it. The group seems particularly interested...