On Copyright, Eric Schmidt Is Right and Britain Is Wrong
(gigaom.com): Google chairman Eric Schmidt has been taking some flak from large media and content companies for comments he made about copyright in Britain, where the authorities have been considering a rewrite of the country’s 300-year-old copyright laws. His critics believe Schmidt and Google are bent on promoting a lawless,… Read More
France Lets Book Publishers Fix Minimum E-book Prices
(paidcontent.org): France’s national assembly has passed a bill (full passage here) which would allow publishers to effectively fix the minimum price of e-books, just as printed books, sold there - a move seemingly designed to maintain publishers’ income as the industry moves toward an environment in which many books are… Read More
Is Google eBooks Planning A Rental Service?
(paidcontent.org): What’s next from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) eBooks? An e-book rental service, perhaps? Scott Dougall, Google Books Director of Product Management, wouldn’t officially confirm that a Netflix-like model is in the works, but his tone suggested it’s on the way. Read More
France attempts to impose e-book prices on Apple, others
(arstechnica.com): Passed last week by both houses of the French parliament, the new law updates France's 1981 "Lang Law" setting prices for paper books. Under that law, publishers could print their price on the back cover a book and every bookstore in the country had to sell it for about… Read More
Semiotics for enterprise search
(kmworld.com): Readers of KMWorld are comfortable with the semantic processes that knowledge management systems employ to make sense of business information. There are knowledgebases, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies and access control tags. Knowledge management is more than key word search and retrieval, although finding information is part of the discipline. Read More
From Shelves to Internet: America’s Digital Library Takes Shape
(livescience.com): Five-story robots patrol an underground chamber to retrieve books beneath the Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago. It's a sight that would impress most people, but U.S. librarians and academics have their eyes set on a still more futuristic concept. They want to build the Digital Public Library… Read More
E-books aren’t shelving libraries
(thechronicleherald.ca): Despite increasing electronic technology, public libraries are as popular as ever, says the outgoing president of the Canadian Library Association. All these technologies are actually enhancing what libraries do and are making them more valuable and more popular. Walker said libraries are a social place. Read More
Academic Publishers Attempting To Eliminate Fair Use At Universities
(techdirt.com): For those who may not be aware, e-reserves are a practice by which universities can share course materials with students, relying heavily on fair use. Basically, it used to be that professors would have to reserve printed materials in the university library for students, the school paying permission fees… Read More
Why Wired Is Wrong About eBooks: Digital Reading is Ready for Primetime
(blog.laptopmag.com): Last Week Wired.com’s New York Editor, John C. Abell, offered up five reasons why eBooks aren’t “There” yet. The There in question is being ready to replace paper books. According to the article, most of Abell’s reasons why eBooks aren’t “There” are flat out wrong. That’s what happens when… Read More
Amazon Will Get 10% Of Its Revenue From Kindle In 2012
(businessinsider.com): Amazon's Kindle business is about to contribute 10% of the company's overall revenue, says Citi analyst Mark Mahaney. Mahaney estimates Kindle unit sales for 2011 to be 17.5 million, which is $2.1 billion in revenue. He estimates eBook sales to be 314 million units, which is $1.7 billion. Combined… Read More
