Dan Bloom has an article in TechEye about: Taohua.com, a website that sells digital content inside Communist China, recently did something you don't see too often in China: It apologised for selling 50,000 pirated e-books, with a statement saying all 50,231 pirated units had been removed from the online offerings. In a web dispatch from Shanghai, publishing executive Wuping Zhao - who graduated from the prestigious Columbia University Publishing Course in New York a year ago - noted that versions of most bestsellers in China are available online as pirated e-book editions, even via mainstream portals like Baidu.com and Sina.com. More info in...

From the Manila Bulletin: Unauthorized Chinese versions of popular Japanese novels, including works by best-selling author Haruki Murakami, have been sold as e-books on Apple's online store, Japanese media have reported. Digital versions of Murakami's "1Q84" and of crime novels by Keigo Higashino were being sold without the authors' permission for a few hundred yen (a few dollars) each, the Kyodo News agency and the Asahi daily reported. More info in the article....

eBookNewser has a summary article about this phenomenon. Here's a snippet: The South China Post has more: “Some Net users are accustomed to using proxy servers to circumvent the mainland restriction, but the Kindle makes this unnecessary. ‘I still can’t believe it. I casually tried getting to Twitter, and what a surprise I got there,’ a mainland blogger said. ‘And then I quickly tried Facebook, and it perfectly presented itself. Am I dreaming? No, I pinched myself and it hurt.’ More info at the site....

When most people complain about the iPhone or iPad being “locked down,” what they mean is that you have to get apps for them through Apple’s walled garden and nowhere else. But the People’s Daily newspaper—the official paper of China’s ruling Communist party—goes a little farther than that. “There are many disadvantages” to the gadgets, it wrote. “For example you cannot install pirate software on them, you cannot download [free] music, and you need to pay for movies you watch on them.” This has to be at least a little embarrassing given...

TAIPEI -- Apple is keeping mum in Taiwan. While it plans to launch the iPad here someday, nobody knows when that day will dawn. According to Chin-hsien Lo, a government official who handles tech issues, Taiwan is ready for the iPad, except for one minor, yet very "complex" issue. While communist China uses the ''simplified Chinese character'' writing system, which current iPads do handle, capitalist Taiwan uses the traditional ''complex Chinese'' writing system which iPad at present cannot make heads or tails of. Therefore: no iPads in Taiwan until the glitch is fixed. When a local newspaper tried to contact Apple's office in...

Update: Two Mechanical Translations of the Guide (Discussed in the Article Below) by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). 1. via Microsoft Translator 2. via Google Translate From a China Daily News Story: The country's first regulation to guide the development of the electronic-book industry was released by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) over the weekend. The "e-book" addressed in the regulation is specifically digital content - formatted as print, images, audio and video - that is downloaded over the Internet and read on handheld devices, such as the Amazon Kindle or the Apple iPad. The regulation, designed to improve the development of...

Indian Android news site Androidos.in has broken the news that the $35 “home-grown” tablet touted by the government of India (and lauded by OLPC’s Nicholas Negroponte) looks suspiciously similar (that is to say, identical) to Chinese manufacturer HiVision’s Speedpad Android tablet. AndroidOS reports that HiVision’s tablet was first seen at CeBIT in March, 2010, where it was predicted to retail for about $100. Androidos is not pleased by the discovery that this tablet, claimed to be the result of development at India’s top engineering colleges, has apparently turned out to be a Chinese import in actuality: ...

 + Baidu, Most Used Site in China Begins Selling e-Books (via Bloomberg News) Baidu also provides a popular search engine. Baidu info page in English. + China: The E-Reader Boom (by Yu Shujyun, Beijing Review) + OPDS [Open Publishing Distribution System Catalog] Primer on Feedbooks (by Paul Biba, TeleRead) + Video Notre Dame ereader study (by Paul Biba, TeleRead) + Macmillan Dictionaries Launches Apps (by Victoria Gallagher, The Bookseller) + Kobo Powering Samsung Galaxy Tab E-Book Reader (by David Pierce, PC Magazine) + Staples to Carry Kindles (by Eric Engleman, TechFlash) + Videos From Multiple Sources: Sony Launches Three New E-Readers (via Newsy) + New Kindles reinforce e-reader's...

Given Australia’s geographical position, we’re used to seeing “Made in China” stickers on the backs of everything from TVs to Australian flags. For a while, Korea made a play as our chief supplier of everything, then Japan had a tilt at the title, but China is still king. In fact, China is now the world’s manufacturer. And I, for one, say hooray. During the last month, the promised flood of cheap ereaders and touchscreen tablet computers has begun here. And they haven’t been big brands. I either have reviewed, or am about to review three – the Kogan eReader, the LASER EB-101...

Shanda Literature Group, China's largest epublisher, has launched an ebookstore with over 3 million titles. In addition it has launched it's own ereader, called the Bambook. According to Publishing Perspectives, the Bambook will sell for the equivalent of $147 and will be a typical e-ink unit with Wifi and a slot for mobile internet data cards. It will have voice functions in Chinese and English. Supposedly the ebook store will have 3 million copyrighted titles, move than 10,000 books published by China's 60 major publishing houses, 1,000 e-magazines and self-published books as well....

Publishing Perspectives has an article about this today. Here is part of an interview with Liu Chengyong of the China Publishing Group: Do you think that two or three years mobile phones might dominate the market for e-books? Are e-readers a dead end? Chengyong: I really hope it will not come to this situation, but it is very, very likely. The e-reader is a medium that is still very immature. In the last year Hanvon announced they sold 500,000 units of their e-readers. In comparison to the total population of China (1.3 billion) and the number of people who own...

Apabi Technology, a major player in the Chinese (mainland) ebook market is going to challenge Adobe PDF. According to Information Week, Apabi already has contracts with about 500 Chinese publishers and provides technologies for electronic publishing and electronic libraries and sells ebook readers. Its new CEBX technology stands for Common E-document Blending XML. A CEBX file can store document data and is fully compatible with PDF, but technically superior, the company says. There are currently three software packages that work with the CEBX format. Apabi Reader is a home-grown equivalent of Adobe Reader, and it only allows users to...