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...

Gizmodo has a great article by Matt Buchanan laying out the “Tower of E-Babel” problem: different readers have their own different, restricted file format ecosystems. There is not a lot new to long-time TeleRead readers, but it would be great to show anyone just getting into e-books, or thinking about it. The article starts with a Steve Jobs quote about Apple using the EPUB format because of its “openness,” and proceeds to fill in what he is not saying: “open” or not, DRM-locked iBooks books will not be readable on other DRM’d EPUB capable readers, nor vice versa....

TechDirt and BoingBoing link to public interest group Public Knowledge’s proposed copyright reform legislation. The proposal has five key goals: strengthen fair use, including reforming outrageously high statutory damages, which deter innovation and creativity; reform the DMCA to permit circumvention of digital locks for lawful purposes; update the limitations and exceptions to copyright protection to better conform with how digital technologies work; provide recourse for people and companies who are recklessly accused of copyright infringement and who are recklessly sent improper DMCA take-down notices; and ...

The positives of Ezra Klein's CJR article and related video: He's a new Kindle user and hails the machine as "credible. As a product of Amazon, it's intertwined with the world's largest online bookstore, legitimized by the one company that can lay some claim to having already changed the way we use, or at least acquire, books. The real question, though, is what took so long?" In general, the Klein article is upbeat on E and notes the possibilities of  adjustable font sizes, outbound links, interactivity and updated books (albeit, I'd assume, not the 1984ish variety). At the...

Moderator’s note: Great timing, Jon. I’ve just posted The Triumph of social sites: Publishers, listen up! Annotation-style capabilities, of course, will make in-book communities possible. - D.R. David Rothman recently called on IDPF to develop an open standard, third-party annotation and linking format. I’ve previously written about the need for such a standard in two TeleRead articles [1, 2]. Hopefully the third time will be a charm! The need for such a standard is pretty obvious. Various companies are already implementing their own proprietary standards for third-party annotation of, and linking between, digital media such as books, music, video, etc. Annotation and...