Internet humorist Lore Sjöberg has been paying attention to the furors over “dying” industries that have been erupting lately—including one I haven’t covered here, since it didn’t have anything to do with e-books. A proposed deal between the RIAA and the National Association of Broadcasters/musicFIRST would see cell phone manufacturers required to put an FM tuner in every cell phone they make. Sjöberg thinks this is a great idea, but why stop there? He proposes some similar restrictions in the name of saving newspapers, mapmakers, and travel agents. (The newspaper one involves parakeets.) Related: ...

On the Bookavore Tumblr blog, my attention was drawn to an “e-book article drinking game,” mocking some of the worst excesses of the e-book news coverage field (and TeleRead certainly is not immune to these either!). The first few lines: “Will e-books wipe out/kill/decimate/pulverize/HULKSMASH/angry verb real books?” — one drink Above question is lede — one drink Every use of phrase “real book” — one drink Expert you’ve never heard of before predicting percentages — one drink Any predicted percentage of anything...

Never one to pass up a chance to poke fun at an easy target, Internet humorist Lore Sjöberg has written a hilarious “Alt Text” column for Wired on “Library of Congress Rulings That Could Have Been”. Other rulings give users the right to copy videogames for the purpose of researching the quality and type of security measures embedded therein — obviously the main reason people copy videogames — and the right to turn your electronic book into an electronic audio book, assuming there isn’t a legal audio book version already on the market. ...