Saw a post on TechCrunch that indicated that Amazon has opened their offerings of blog subscriptions for the Kindle reader to all blogs that sign up.  So now Libology is available to readers of the Kindle… with two caveats:

1. It costs.  A lot.  Way more than you are paying now.  A whopping $1.99 per month (and I have no say in the price, so there).
2. I get some of the money, a whopping 30% (that’s 66 cents per month per subscription).

So really, if you don’t feel the need to pay to read this stuff, don’t.  Keep reading this stuff for free, though.  And if you are philosophically inclined (or reclined) against my getting paid, then, again, don’t.

Seriously, if you are really into the Kindle, and find the blog-perusing experience to be great, then I am glad to provide Libology as an option, just as I have provided a mobile-browser friendly version.  They do offer a 14-day trial if you want an excuse to try it out.  Just don’t feel guilty about canceling… I understand, trust me!

ALA TechSource has a brief blogger forum post on the state of E-Book Readers.  The quote that I think is most worth thinking about comes from Jason Griffey:

E-books are the future of reading in a very real way, simply because at some point they will be too cheap to not use. One of my staff brought a receipt to me this week for a laptop that the library bought in 2000. It was $3600. I just priced netbooks for my library, and can get a machine that is ridiculously more powerful than the year-2000 laptop for under $350. The Kindle, and most other e-readers, are hovering around the $350 or so dollar mark right now. In ten years, what will they cost? How can paper continue to compete with Moore’s Law?

Not only does it make sense, for reasons of legality (terms of use) and usability, to wait before purchasing and implementing E-Readers in a library, but it also makes sense from a monetary standpoint.  Amazon’s Kindle is king of the hill right now, but I think the big one is yet to arrive.  Watch for it, however:  when the convergence of price, usability, and usefulness happens, you want to be ready.

Authors Guild:  Contracts Forced Amazon to Flip on Kindle is an article on CNet.com in which the Authors Guild asserts that Amazon turned off the Kindle’s Text-to-speech function (unless authorized by a book’s publisher) due to contractual obligations, not pressure from the Guild.

The response from Amazon’s spokesperson was simply “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal.”

previously

found via LISNews

The impending release of the Kindle 2 wireless reading device has been all over the news this week, accompanied by many reviews and commentaries.  One response to a new feature strikes me as extreme, however:

“Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice.

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won’t confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.

Source:  Wall Street Journal

On one level he is correct:  the audio rights, like movies and other adaptations, are derivative and subject to negotiation.  However, text reading features are considered an assistive technology, and to attempt to make the output a derivative under copyright law opens a nasty can of worms.

Imagine if reading Goodnight Moon to your two-year-old was considered a “performance” and required permission… that’s how nasty and worm-ridden this can is.

One example of a negative effect of this viewpoint basically involves any website that would sell audio books, including Amazon.  How would someone with a visual impairment be able to order the audio book version of a title without using a screen reader?  In addition, how would they know whether a website allows for the use, under copyright law, of their own website by someone with a screen reader?

Note that we aren’t discussing audio books, which are derivative works, and are mostly very professionally produced and are meant to enhance the experience of the book, not simply to allow the person to experience it at all.

The argument by the Author’s Guild representative is a nasty legal mess that we should not consider reasonable under copyright law.

found at Open Access News