On Techdirt, Nina Paley posts about a new site called Public Domain Review, that has started up to call people’s attention to some of the more obsure and unknown works available in the public domain. The site looks like an interesting way to find out more about free e-books, music, art, and so forth that might otherwise languish in total obscurity. Since the site accepts submissions, I have half a mind to write a piece about the Arsène Lupin novels of which I am so fond. Regardless, it’s an interesting reminder that the “Internet slushpile problem” is not...

On Techdirt, Mike Masnick discusses a post by J.A. Konrath proposing turning each e-book into its own social network. The idea is to give an e-book a form of “interactivity” that is more interactive than the audiovisual bells and whistles most publishers seem to associate with interactivity these days. Konrath’s post discusses the possibility of friends inviting other friends to buy a particular book, and then meet together in interactive on-line “book clubs” to talk about it as they read it. It also talks about ways authors can interact with their readers through it, through such means as Skype...

At Techdirt, Mike Masnick has an interesting piece looking at the dynamics of Groupon, and how they’re able to keep ahead of competitors. You would think that there’s nothing particularly special about a coupon site, but Groupon manages to stay ahead of the competition through its execution—most notably, the snappy, humorous copy it comes up with to promote even the most prosaic of deals. As a final aside, the quality of Groupon's content highlights another key point that we've raised many times before: how "infinite goods" like content make scarce goods more valuable. In this case,...

Cory Doctorow’s latest column on The Guardian talks about ways to convince people to pay for “legitimate” products rather than downloading free versions off the Internet. He points out that many companies are trying to fight piracy using mostly sticks, when in fact that carrots would work better in some cases. In the article, Doctorow examines the pros and cons of each method—some good, some bad—and how content creators are succeeding or failing at applying them. The methods include: Buy this or you’ll get in trouble Buy this because it’s the right...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The technopanics we’re seeing now over e-books replacing print books, computer gaming ruining people’s minds, and other technophobias of the day are nothing new. I’ve reviewed a book to that effect—Nick Bilton’s I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. On Techdirt the other day, I spotted a link to a historical analysis of the life of fifteenth-century abbot Johannes Trithemius, who really, really hated the printing press for what it was doing to the business of copyist monks. It’s very interesting reading, not least because...

A public-domain score site founded by a conservatory-turned-law student continues to be controversial in classical music circles, the New York Times reports. Much as Project Gutenberg does for books, the International Music Score Library Project makes scores written by classical composers that have long since passed into the public domain available for free download and inexpensive printing via a musician who runs a print-on-demand service. After a copyright challenge from European publisher Universal Edition in 2007, founder Edward Guo took the site down until it could exhaustively be checked for copyright violations. It returned owned by a company to...

A lot of people completely misunderstand the nature of copyright and the Internet. It’s a common misconception that anything posted to the Internet is free for the taking. It’s even been used as the “innocent infringement” defense in peer-to-peer piracy lawsuits. But it’s less common to find a publishing-industry professional—in this case, the editor of a regional food magazine—who holds that opinion. But that’s exactly what happened to writer Monica Gaudio, who was startled to discover that Cooks Source magazine had republished one of her old essays, entirely without permission. Gaudio wrote to the editor, complaining about...

One big story that broke yesterday was that the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has come out with a new policy prohibiting the use of Creative Commons-licensed music in any of its podcasts. Predictably, the conspiracy theorists came out in force, especially where the story was reported on BoingBoing and Slashdot. But it turns out that there was actually a reasonable and understandable explanation behind it all; it just took a while to come out. Mike Masnick at TechDirt reports that Chris Boyce, Programming Director for CBC radio, finally provided the full explanation: The issue...

Last week, Helienne Lindvall published a column in The Guardian whose point seemed to be to say, “Look at how all these people such as Cory Doctorow, who advocate giving stuff away for free, charge large fees for speaking appearances! Isn’t that funny?” Mike Masnick at Techdirt wrote that Lindvall completely missed the point of giving things away for free. The point of giving things away for free, Masnick said, is to allow you to make money by charging for other things. Free is a part of a business model. That's all anyone's...

Hey, everyone, it’s that time again! What time, you say? Time to write to the government about copyright policies! A while ago we covered Obama’s new copyright czar’s request for guidance on what stakeholders thought the role of her office ought to be. Then we covered the responses (here and here). Now the U.S. Commerce Department’s Internet Policy Task Force wants comments about “the protection of copyrighted works online and the relationship between copyright law and innovation in the Internet economy.” The official Notice of Inquiry can be viewed here (PDF). The Internet Policy Task force...

This Saturday, I drove about 30 miles west of Springfield to visit the Gay Parita Sinclair, a restored period filling station in Paris Springs, just west of Halltown, Missouri on old Route 66. Several huge photo blow-ups of the place hang on the wall in the breakroom at TeleTech where I work, in keeping with the building’s “Route 66” decor theme. It was only last week when I googled it that I realized I had actually driven right past it without even noticing it twice while on my way to Carthage. I guess I’d mentally filed it...

Galleycat has a tidbit from a forthcoming Mediabistro feature on marketing guru Seth Godin: Godin has pledged never again to publish books via traditional publishers. Godin said, in part: I like the people, but I can't abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don't usually visit to buy something they don't usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that's hard to spread Godin is no stranger to direct-to-consumer e-publishing. In 2001, he...