EMI versus MP3tunes: A Question of Safe Habour

We have often raised a question of whether the “safe harbour” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) work. Our point is that it is a reactive process and depends on the party whose copyright has been infringed raising the appropriate notice and by the time the material is taken down the cat is probably out the bag and had many kittens. However, the recent Viacom versus YouTube found that the site was not liable for illegal content uploads, because it didn’t encourage them and quickly removed them.

Now we have a New York federal court deciding on another case between EMI and cloud based music service MP3tunes. MP3tunes enables users to store their music and access it from computers and mobile devices and also operates Sideload, a music search engine which allows users to discover music tracks and then copy them to their own space. They claim that their service only enables users to store their music online so they can listen to it anywhere and that it can’t held responsible for copyright infringement and are shielded from liability by the “safe harbour” provisions of the DMCA.

EMI claim that MP3tunes and Sideload represent a two-step mechanism for the discovery and acquisition of copyright music. EMI claim that MP3Tunes ‘does not own the music it exploits; nor does MP3tunes have any legal right or authority to use or exploit that music.’

The legal debate is also about whether someone who bought an EMI CD, ripped it to their computer and uploaded it to MP3Tunes for their own use and so they can listen to it anywhere, is in breach of copyright. It is further clouded by EMI initially claiming they did not place free downloads on the internet and that MP3tunes should have know that any their music on the internet was copyrighted. This was exposed when it was accepted that EMI had given away free copies of songs to the likes of Walmart, Amazon.com, MySpace, Facebook, Google, hoping the songs would go viral. The problem was that they went viral in a way the had not bargained for and made their somewhat righteous stance appear somewhat hypocritical when they had no way of distinguishing many of the music tracks they had leaked online with the tracks they accused MP3tunes of infringing.

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), filed an amicus brief along with others asking the court to protect the “safe harbour” provisions of the DMCA. DMCA defendants fear that the case could go beyond online music storage and impact e-mail, photo and video storage applications.

We don’t like DMCA and safe habour but until we can find a better way its what we have today. Closing down DMCA through this action could have serious implications on social network services and digital restictions on both legitimate as well as infringing material. Many say we should learn from music industry and yet again they are in showing us what not to do.

The Daily: Exclusive iPad News

Imagine a digital newspaper created specifically for the tablet world and published by News Corp and Apple. No print version, no online just a newspaper delivered direct to your tablet for that Apple preferred price point of 99 cents a week.

Rupert Murdoch, is determined to find the digital solution to newsprint that pays. Murdoch's Times recently claimed 100,000 paying customers for its web edition and the Wall Street Journal claims over 2 million readers, but will he now create a new competitor that will effectively compete with these? The US media claims that ‘The Daily’ will be launched at the end of this month and has been under development in the New York News Corp’s office on their 26th floor and has some 100 journalists onboard today.

The difference is that the Daily is solely focused to be a tablet paper and specifically today an iPad one. Murdoch is aligning with Steve Jobs and is gambling that people will be prepared to pay for what is openly free elsewhere online and that a tablet paper beats a newspaper app designed for the iPad and his own alternative newspapers. With no print and no online the paper is targeted at that Apple price point of 99 cents a week and the will obviously include Apple’s share and any taxes! Finally, the biggest gamble is that they can create a new brand.

The move is brave but with Apple backing could generate the adoption by many iPad fans seeking to be different and read the ‘Apple Daily.’

Meanwhile taking a more traditional route The Economist has launched its iPhone and iPad apps. It will be available every Thursday with all articles being cached for offline reading and also includes an audio edition.Existing print subscribers will get the new rendition free with the digital only edition being charged at $110 a year in the US. Dome content will be free and single issues can be purchased within the new app.

Do You Enjoy Social Coupons?

Yahoo must be kicking themselves for not buying Facebook but in the hairy hit and miss online market you win some and you loose some. Google bought YouTube which may have been a bumpy ride but is holding itself well whilst News Corp bought MySpace and it subsequently lost its way.

The next group of companies which are attracting attention are the online social coupon sites. In the US Groupon ,one year from launch are experiencing stellar growth are profitable and have some 270 employees.

Groupon features a daily deal with a huge discounts on a wide range of products and services which are focused on tens of U.S. cities targeting ‘members’ through email or via social networking and uses collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses. Groupon sells coupons to the consumers and collects a lead generation fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

A similar app can be found on the iPhone. Vouchure cloud is now starting to gain traction in the UK and digital vouchers are certainly looking a winner for both consumers and businesses.

Has Christmas Come Too Early For eBooks?

The money appears to be on the ebook, ebook readers and tablets being the Xmas gift this year, so we thought it timely to cast a quick view on what is on offer.

Amazon have announced that you can now give a Kindle ebook to anyone as a gift and neither you nor the receiver of your gift needs to have a Kindle, just an Amazon account for you and an email address for the recipient. The ebooks can be read from Kindle apps on iPhones, iPads, Android and Blackberry phones and both Macs and PCs. You now just select the ebook you want to gift click "Give as a Gift". You will enter the recipient’s email address and optionally, their name and a message and place your order. Amazon will also enable unwanted ebooks to be exchange it for an Amazon.com gift card.

Kobo is releasing also enabling customers to buy e-Readers, eBooks, and accessories and gift them to friends and family. These too are sent via a personalized Kobo Holiday email and delivered on the date they select . You can also to load up a giftcard with a particular numerical value and deliver it electronically.

Waterstones sells ebooks but gifting them appears beyond their capabilities. They do however have a deal on getting the VAT back on a Sony reader. As those in the UK will be aware VAT will increase on January 1st from 17.5% to 20% in the UK so the deal looks attractive until you read the reclaim process which isn’t exactly instant!

Perhaps someone at Barnes and Noble can clarify, but we were unable to easily find how to send an ebook as a gift and stopped at the credit card check, so presume it is not possible today. Their Christmas gifts section fully covered every physical gift but ebooks appears to be outside Santa’s sack. Borders were very similar with ‘gifts for ebook lovers’ restricted to readers and gift cards. Surely an ebook lover will already have a reader and why can’t we give them an ebook? WHSmiths didn’t even mention the word ebooks in their ‘gift, games and toys’ section.

We thought we should look at the publishers who are now wishing to open up a new direct to consumer market. Penguin UK state on their FAQ No 13; ‘At this time, eBooks cannot be sent as gifts. eBook orders can only be sent to the email address on your penguin.co.uk customer account.’ We gave up on Penguin’s US site which some would suggest certainly wasn’t consumer centric. We tried Rbooks Random House UK’s bookstore and instantly realised what the difference is between retail sites and publisher ones.

There are many other offers in the market place, but it is clear that although the market is starting to respond to ebooks, many ebook resellers have some way to go to get into the gifting into the spirit.

Managing Digital Sales Data

When we gave physical inventory it was easy to count the books out and count them back in, but in the digital world there is only one going out and none coming back in.

As a publisher today just how many aggregators and resellers would you give your digital files to? Once you have given them how do you effectively monitor the sales and reconcile and potentially audit these? If someone goes out of business how do you effectively retrieve your assets and what is the service implication on licences issued? Obviously everyone has the answers and new models such as agency don’t impact these questions, or do they?

Today sales are reported many ways, on many different schedules and consolidation is not always straightforward. Services, such as those provided by RoyaltyShare, manage eBook transactions and complex digital revenue data from dozens of eBook, downloadable audio book, and print-on-demand retailers. Today these systems have to supports feeds from tens of digital e-retailers and distributors worldwide and also support both the agency and wholesale models. We already provide such client services and respect that reconciling sales today is not easy. However what is the number of resellers they will need to support tomorrow? Will the industry choose to stick with a small number of big reseller and aggregators or cut out the middle man and enable anyone to sell their titles?

Long overdue standards are coming which should make the reconciliation of sales data easier for all to handle, but does the data challenges stop there?

Do these new outsourced collection companies such as Royalty Share also become the effective auditors of digital sales? Do they have the licence to consolidate the information across publishers and offer sales charts? Can they be used to offer direct royalty payments to authors? Does sales reconciliation and associated activities ever reach a point were it has to come back inside the organisation?

We are seeing the emergence of new service offers that are geared to join the new digital dots, but each needs to be paid for and each extra outsourced operation can impact the bottom-line. It is somewhat surprising that industry bodies and groups of publishers have not collaborated to specify and provide these essential services and are happy to pay individually to address them. Alternatively, why isn’t the obvious industry data collectors such as Neilson’s and Bowker’s stepping up to address this obvious market need.

Things Your Mobile Camera Will Not Do

We recently previewed the Bluetooth mobile camera that fits on the earpiece of the mobile and now we have discovered two further camera developments.

An Iraqi-American performance artist and New York University assistant professor Wafaa Bilal is to have a thumb-sized camera implanted in the back of his head so he can stream live images to a museum in Qatar.

The camera will be beam photos every minute to the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the work will be aptly named "The 3rd I." Some of the professor's students and colleagues have objected to the encroachment on their privacy and Bilal has agreed to cover the camera with a black lens cap while he's on campus. So one can literally now have eyes in the back of your head!



We also read at the BBC about a camera developed by US scientists at MIT that can take picture around corners. Instead of seeing through walls they look around them!

The camera uses a femtosecond laser, a high-intensity light source which can fire ultra-short bursts of laser light that last just one quadrillionth of a second (0.000000000000001 seconds).The light particles scatter and reflect off all surfaces including the walls and the floor and the camera captures the result with the light being effectively reflected around any obstacle. The light bounces around reflecting off objects, or people and effectively round the bend.The experimental camera shutter opens once the first reflected light has passed and also captures the arrival time of the light particles at each pixel.

To build a picture of a scene, the set up must repeat the process of firing the laser and collecting the reflections several times.

The uses are obvious and many but the picture may not be what you expect.

Amazon is Becoming the True Publishing Vertical Business

So you think you know what Amazon is but think again as the global brand makes more media moves which although small show just how savvy the organisations.

The first announcement that Amazon.com is launching Amazon Studios.

The new Amazon Studio website lets users upload scripts and sample movies and then use community tools to evaluate and edit each others' work. Its like a film slush pile which will then enable works to judged by a panel of experts and Amazon executives. The best will be then taken to Warner Bros, who Amazon has signed a first-look deal with. If they succeed there then could be feature films under the Amazon Studios production label.

In making this move Amazon start to address that often broken link between the studios and the creators and its certainly a move that would appeal to many would be script writer and budding directors and technicians. The deal would give Amazon an 18 months exclusive "option" on the work and although filmmakers and screenwriters may not like the idea of now cash for their options it is bound to appeal to those aspiring ones who want to make that first rung of the ladder. However, the highest rated material will get monthly and yearly cash prizes which to the end of 2011, the prizes will total $2.7 million. Amazon take options to Warner Bros. and if they pass to other studios. Successful writers and directors whose option is turned into a theatrically released film by a studio would get paid $200,000 by Amazon.

Amazon claim that Amazon Studios is not a vanity publishing or a project to get low budget movies made to support Amazon’s businesses.

The second is Amazon's acquisition of small literary publisher ‘The Toby Press’.

Amazon in acquiring The Toby Press to secure publication rights of some 120 works of 61 authors. These will be republished as print editions under Amazon's own publishing imprints, AmazonEncore and AmazonCrossing and also publish Kindle editions for Kindle devices and Kindle apps.

So is the Toby Press a purchase to establish the issues involved in running a publishing operation so that they learn small with low risk. If so will their next move be more consolidation of smaller presses or to bite off a far bigger house with what will be chump change? Some would suggest the the move is more to do with posturing and showing the market that it is capable of moving swiftly and vertically very fast. Some suggest that it is genuine move to pick up small and attractive publishers such that they can offer exclusive content, after all you can’t see Apple or Google lining up to buy publishers.

It is interesting to look back at prosperous 18th century London booksellers such as Robert Dodsley who were all large copyright owners we quote from, The Life of Robert Dodsley, “… for the real money lay in ownership of copyrights, not in the retailing… booksellers were the entrepreneurs who purchased rights from authors, and, binding to others, merchandised and finished the product through advertisement and trade distribution.”

Amazon is certainly turning into a vertical force in publishing and one that is clearly capable of using its brand to do the same across 'media'.


To read the press release on the acquisition of Toby Press http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1498303&highlight=

To read about Amazon Studio from LA Times http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/11/amazoncom-going-into-movie-producing-with-new-website-first-look-deal-with-warner-bros.html

So What Is Social Reading?

We read a lot today about social reading which itself is somewhat of a challenge to understand and some would suggest nonsensical because of the multiple interpretations that can be applied. However it appears to be 'the' digital buzz phrase and so will probably take time to get a common understanding.

Is social reading about one reading out load to a group or individual and if so what new about that? Perhaps in a digital world the text is dynamically converted to speech and read out aloud but again what’s new about that?

It appears that social reading nothing to do with reading and more to do with commentary. It is described by some, as the ability to share, thoughts, insights and opinions on a work and to do this interactively with others. We may have got that wrong and expect some digital thinker to correct us.

So is social reading about having an interactive reading group, who share their thoughts in flight over whilst reading the work over the internet? You get to see others comments and links at a paragraph level and have grammatical commentary offered on the fly. Perhaps it’s like students sharing a textbook online with suitable annotations, links, bookmarks and highlighted excerpts, but would this really work outside of reference works and textbooks?

Perhaps social reading is like the readers comments or substitute blurbs one finds against works on Amazon. Blubs used to be referred to as publisher’s puffs and it would be brave of anybody in today’s politically correct world to refer to these new readers comments as 'reader’s puffs'!

Shelfari offers 'social reading' but looking at the comments it seriously begs the question exactly how much it is taken seriously. However its mission is to, 'enhance the experience of reading by connecting readers in meaningful conversations about the published word'. It was started in 2006 and surprise surprise was acquired by Amazon in 2008. Last month is was integrated within Kindle as “Book Extras”.

'Book Extras are curated factoids by the Shelfari community that provide readers with helpful information while they’re reading or deciding if they should read a book. These Extras include character descriptions, important places, popular quotations, themes, book-specific glossaries and more.'

It is interesting that when one reads a novel you are already being drawn into a plot created by the author and seen through someone else’s eyes. This immersive experience is what make a lot of reading special. Recommendations are always very useful and drive many sales but these are often from friends whose taste is know or reviewers whose authority is respected. Would you read a book just because an unknown person gave it a rave review?

People may be happy to comment in their closed network with the option to a move these to a public and open space. Comments made within a closed group may be more provocative, less accurate and even extremely negative, where they may be more watered down in public.

Finally we must respect the ‘fire mail rule’, which suggests that you think twice and count to ten before you send an email which may feel good at the time but that looks bad and inappropriate later. Academics are understandably cautious about commenting reactively on others, as they often earn from their own writing and their comments unless sound, may come back to threaten their own reputation and livelihood.

So is social reading a real possibility or just a fad dreamt up to try and extend the reading community, create a social network and to connect to the digital world?

Colour or Black and White Madam?

E Ink are launching ebook readers with colour screens. The eInk Triton is a 9.7” screen that can displaying over 4,000 colours.It consists of a standard E ink display, as used in the Kindle, Sony Reader and Nook, with a colour filter over it. The makers claim that the electrophoretic display is up to 20% faster to refresh than the monochrome version, can display images with 4 bits of depth and offers 4,096 colours in addition to the current 16 shades of grey.

The first colour E Ink ebook reader is from Hanvon will be available in China in March 2011. It will have a 9.68” touchscreen, 2 GB of Flash storage, 128 MB memory, and a 800-MHz Freescale ARM Cortex A8 processor. The e-reader will run Microsoft's WinCE 6.0 operating system and include a USB 2.0 port and a slot for a MicroSD card for up to 32 GB of external storage and is expected to sell for about $440 in China.

However, the Hanvon e-reader can only display 4,096 colours compared to an LCD’s 6 million, will only be some $100 cheaper than an iPad and will not support video. Amazon has said it's going to stick with the black-and-white eInk display and remain a dedicated reading device, whilst Barnes & Noble has already released a colour Nook using a LCD screen.

It is very likely that the black and white eInk screen will continue to dominate the eInk world but that increasingly colour will be the domain of the tablet world. Those trying to cover both camps are likely to suffer the biggest disappointment offering neither one nor the other.

Tablet Divisions

A lot of the debate between the Galaxy Android tablet is to do with whether you are a Apple fan, or sceptic looking for options and alternative deals. Steve Jobs has a knack of creating iconic devices, but at the same time an equally annoying knack of alienating many with his moral high ground approach. Some sits on the other side of the fence to Apple and suggest that Jobs lacks the ability to compromise, but then others love him for the same reason.

The Galaxy Tab is smaller and lighter than the iPad, has two cameras, runs Flash, offers multitasking and is cheaper. Apple are likely to address the camera issue in their next model and what new benefits the Galaxy has today may be short lived. Apple are expected to enable multitasking under iOS 4.2 and are dismissive, in the way they only can, of the smaller screen form and of course of Flash.However, there's a lot of Flash content out there today and anyone who thinks differently, should browse the Web with an iPad and see just how much there is!

Some believe that apps are the clear difference between Apple and the Android offers. However all the major apps are available in multiple platforms and one has to question just how many of the more niche ones actually matter. It is also interesting that iPad buyers don't appear to buy many apps as opposed to the number they buy on the iPhone. There is new rumour that Apple now are about to change their app policy again and restrict applications that are mere content ‘wrappers’. This could be an issue for publishers who have started to create single title apps. The issue maybe that there may be a danger of there being just too many apps! The question if this were to happen is how apps for 'enriched' titles will be treated. Those who believe that it would not impact them should note Apple's latest stand on moving music unilaterally to 90 second samples on iTunes, irrespective of what anyone said.

So as we await the next new tablet the world looks to be polarising and reminds us of those early PC versus Mac, OS2 versus Windows days when you either liked the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

EMI: Another One Bites The Dust?

How often do we hear the cry to learn from the digital mistakes of others? The finger often rightly points to the catalogue of mistakes that the music producers have made and the mess they have created in their wake. But it appears that it’s not just digital moves that some have got wrong and a close look at EMI today should certainly send out many warning shots to those who think they can walk on water.

EMI has struggled with the decline in record sales, reading digitisation trends and repositioning itself and also a general slump in the music industry. EMI owners Terra Firma had sued Citigroup for its advice during his acquisition of EMI in 2007, but admitted in court that EMI was only worth half the £4.2m he paid for it. The court ruling now brings into question whether it can meet the £2.6bn of debt repayments to Citigroup and whether it has to be sold or broken up.

On top of the loss of their high profile legal battle of last week with Citigroup has come the news that the British band Queen have parted with EMI after 40 years and signed to Universal Music Group. A label is only as good as its artists and since the EMI group was taken over by private equity firm Terra Firma in 2007, it has lost the likes The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Radiohead. EMI Music still is home to artists such as Pink Floyd and Coldplay and the back catalogues of artists like The Beatles, Beach Boys, and Frank Sinatra, but is that enough? Queen's Universal deal covers the world outside North America, but they will loose a the wealth of re release opportunities of the group's global hits like "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," and "We Are The Champions."

The usual suspects are lined up waiting to pounce on EMI. Warner Music Group and BMG Rights are thought to be hovering awaiting the potential pickings from what will be a fire sale. If this happens the music business will have shrunk even further.

The Queen Goes Social

Facebook now boasts more than 500m users but can now boast royal patronage and the Queen to its list of subscribers.

The Queen is launching British Monarchy Facebook page and this follows her Flickr account earlier this year, joining Twitter last year, the establishment of a Royal Channel on YouTube in 2007 and the Queen has reportedly fully embraced the web and sends e-mails.

Buckingham Palace says that its Facebook page is not a personal profile page and users will not be able to add The Queen as a "friend", but are abler to "like" the service and receive updates on their news feed. The page will also feature the Court Circular, recording the previous day's official engagements and information about royal events and ceremonies, all searchable on a UK map.

We wonder if Stephan Fry will be upset at now being only second in line on the technology front?.

Microsoft Out To Spoil The Rise of Android

Microsoft has reportedly come up with a new way to compete with Google and that is to charge royalty fees to prevent the likes of Acer from adopting Android and Chrome OS in their netbook and tablet offerings. Interestingly, Microsoft has chosen to charge the manufacturers and avoid a direct fight with Google.

Microsoft plans to impose royalties of US$10 to $15 per handset "for using its patents in e-mail, multimedia and other functions." HTC is apparently paying the fees and some suggest that is because it was cheaper than a lawsuit and that could retrieve the money from Windows Phone 7 licensing deals.

So why is the open source market so upset by this latest move by Microsoft? The answer is that the royalty is claimed against patent usage not the software used as the software is open source and has not licence fees!

Today everyone is patenting the future, and then suing when everyone makes it to the obvious next step. Microsoft has already been found guilty of predatory practices in violation of anti-trust law and some would suggest it's patents could become unenforceable if they are found to be abusing them. Some suggest Microsoft is aiming to head off what seems a tide of manufacturers adopting Linux OS on mobiles, netbook and tablet devices. If Microsoft loses this new market it will be severely restricted to the PC segment and their operating system monopoly.

Microsoft’s big problem is that they have to support layers of legacy. Today nobody needs to upgrade their OS to the latest Microsoft offer except when they buy a new computer. This breaks their old model and significantly dilutes the opportunity to pull through an Office upgrade sale.

So we now have Windows 7 and importantly Windows Phone 7. Will Microsoft succeed in thwarting the Google movement or are we starting to see the real demise of a technology giant of yesterday?

Lost Book Sales Dot Com

Often what you don’t know is more important than what you do know. Finding out why people don’t do something may be more informative than reaffirming why they do. Every minute of everyday someone wants to buy a book but doesn’t. It may be the price, it may be the book itself, they may not be able to find it in the format they want. The reasons are many but he result is the same – a lost sale.

Yesterday we were alerted to a hidden gem of a site lostbooksales.com which was inspired a comment at the Dear Author site on the topic of geographical rights.

‘If I had the time and computer savvy, I’d set up a lostebooksale.com site where people could submit each book they didn’t buy, and why. After the first three or four hundred stories about “I didn’t buy Book X because it’s not available in my country, so I got a pirate copy”, maybe somebody in publisher with the drive, imagination, and ability could prod the industry into action.’

Jane of Dear Author saw the need, understood the problem and reacted with speed and today we have.’

The information is captured predominantly in a structured form with drop down options and supplemented with free text entry. So against an entry you have details about the originator, their region, the book, the author, the publisher, the reason and even what they did next! The information can obviously be sorted , analysed and individual entries can even can be responded to by authors and publishers. It is independent and a very logical step to engage with readers.

The question is how will those who need this information react? Will they adopt a not invented here approach? Will they view a consumers mistake flippantly and move on ignoring the consumer? Will they look to search their titles and respond to each and every one proactively? Will they look at their competitors lost sales more than their own?

Some would suggest that the site is a little too publisher centric and should be more author and reader centric. After all many of us haven’t a clue who publishes what and who has territorial rights to what where and nor should the consumer be bothered. If successful it could have thousands of entries and being able to search and discovery similar issues may help the originator as well as the other interested parties.

The resource section may be obvious to all, but wasn’t to us.

Our main concern is that the individual appears to have little future protection and if emails are collected there needs to be some clearer statement on privacy protection than exist today.

Just think there could be a whole Lost Sales family of sites; LostSales clothing, LostSales music, LostSales restaurants, LostSales supermarkets.

LostBookSale.com is a great innovation and if widely adopted by the marketplace could help everyone understand those lost sales more objectively.

SkyFire Addresses Flash on Mobile

Sometime someone comes along and demonstrates where the consumer demand really is and show those who ignore it, or think they know better, they have got it wrong. We all know the video platforms of today are dominated by Adobe’s Flash and that some believe that HTML5 is the real answer other that Silverlight will prevail. The real fight started when Steve Jobs declared Flash would not be supported on his iPad, iPhone and even withdrew the built in plug in on Macs. He started a crusade to rid the world of what he saw as proprietary and bad code and like it or not, force HTML down the market’s throat.

When he was forced to back track on one of his other mantras which stated developers could only use Apple tools the door started to open to Flash and wasn’t going to shut close again in a hurry. Not only have Adobe stuck their foot in the door opening but so have others such as Skyfire.

Skyfire have developed a mobile browser that not only enables users to follow links from Facebook,Twitter, iGoogle, but also play the videos shared across social networks. Skyfire success on Android demonstrates that users want all the Internet content to work on their devices and not be dependant on a WiFi connection. When Skyfire launched on Android it added over 500,000 new users in just six weeks and also reached the top 0.7% apps on the Android Market.

It has now become the first Flash playing app to get Apple’s approval. Such was the flood of downloads when it was released in the US that it quickly became the top grossing app and the third highest paid app overall. However their success came at a price in the demand overwhelmed their servers. Skyfire is now officially “sold out”. Robert Oberhofer on their blog said “The user experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade. We are working really hard to increase capacity and will be accepting new purchases from the App Store as soon as we can support it.”

What a nice problem to have!

Skyfire plays Flash video by dynamically coding video files into HTML5 in the cloud and optimizing them for mobile delivery. Skyfire’s cloud technology should make videos play faster and smoother, with less buffering and better battery life of the device. Skyfire’s cloud ensures that each video is adapted to the right bandwidth, as well as the right format.

Yes they still migrate dynamically to HTML5 but Mr Jobs they recognise the demand out there and also have adopted an innovative way to meeting it. The one clear message is that Flash and demand for Flash aren’t going away today.

UK Copyright Review Must Listen To All Sides

Nearly a decade ago, I received an invitation to a big BBC lunch to look at the digital world. I turned up to join a group of teenagers and geekie characters in sneakers and hoods, feeling somewhat over aged and out of place. We were all allocated to sit at tables with top executives and over lunch discussed the digital world known then only to my fellow guests. I walked away realising how little I knew and wondering if the BEEB could absorb the wealth of information and advice. To their credit the BBC learnt and applied a lot in some of their subsequent ventures.

Now David Cameron has announced that the UK’s intellectual property laws are to be reviewed over the next six months and this could lead to them being relaxed to allow greater use of copyright material without the owner's permission. He appears influenced by Google’s founders who had apparently told the UK government they could not have started their company in the UK. He certainly is impressed by the US fair use laws and ‘to encourage the sort of creative innovation that exists in America.’

The previous government’s review produced The Digital Economy Bill which was welcomed by some but raised many objections and clearly was a rushed job with many dots not being joined up.

Larry Lessig gave a really interesting and thought provoking TED presentation on copyright. The most salient statement was when he said that the older generation watch TV and listen to music but the that the younger generation now make TV and make music. However, the law often views the sampling and representation of material as wrong and makes criminals out of people for the wrong reasons. We have to find ways to change how we view and respect copyright material. Yesterday’s laws and rules that work in the physical world fail in the digital one.

The challenges for the review are significant with copyright owners on one side wanting to maintain tight control and revenue streams and the public on the other wanting more freedom to share, express themselves and exploit digital opportunities. The interesting question now is, who the review will consult and whether it is brave enough to accomadate those that the BBC learnt so much from? It must listen not just to industry bodies, publishers and technology corporations but also to authors and consumers and those who we may regard as 'pirates' today.

Shaken and Definitely Stirred?

We are starting to see a shift in backlist authors and agents now starting to take control of their digital rights and separate these out from the print ones. Rights reversals are going to be a significant battleground as publishers on one hand try to shoehorn them into their POD and digital programmes and savvy authors demand better terms, or separation.

Today, the Ian Fleming estate acted and declared that they will publish the digital rendition of his 14 James Bond titles under Ian Fleming Publications. The brand is strong enough to make this route sensible and also to ensure that it isn’t exclusive to any one party. The reported response from Penguin in today’s Bookseller was that they would walk away from the print licence renewal in two years and would not renew the relationship without digital rights included. The estate has taken a wise gamble, knowing that there will probably be a number of players hungry enough to acquire the print licence and they may not be the obvious major trade houses.

So a big book brand has declared its intent, but who else has the brand and clout to be so bold? Also who else hasn’t been digitally tied up already?

We read that JK Rowling, the author who once declared a hatred for ebooks could be a contender and that could be a real digital winner and is definitely a brand. Are: Tolkien, Christie, Dahl, Dr Seuss, Blyton, Robbins, Miller, Kerouac, Authur C Clarke, Vonnegut tied up or digitally free today?

The question also is also whether today’s contracts separate out the termination or reversal clauses for digital and physical or lump them together and whether print is local whilst digital is world rights? Some would suggest that a term contract term makes sense for digital whilst inventory, sales or royalty may work better with respect to print and POD.

As we said only yesterday in our article ‘The World is not Flat – it’s Digital’ there is a need to revisit rights in a digital world. It’s now important that everyone can benefit from this new and exciting channel and has the opportunity to revive back list works perhaps to a new audience.

Hello The World Is Not Flat - It's Digital

We will once again state the obvious, ‘Publishing is a Rights Business.’
This has always been the case, but as we move into the new digital age there is a clear need to review the rights that governed the business in the physical world and ask what needs to change.

Digital is different. Imposing the old rules in this new digital world, is like straight-jacketing the business and restricting its growth. It alienates authors and agents, it also alienates the consumer. Over and over we see publishing tectonic plates colliding as the new paradigm crashes into old one. We see many busy plastering up the fault lines and somehow pretending that they don’t exist. They do and pretending digital and physical are the same is madness. The consumer doesn’t care today and probably tomorrow about DRM, territorial rights, permission rights and we should realise that we need to make things simple and less complicated. The rules that exist in the physical book world have been honed and adjusted over many years but they don’t transpose themselves easily, if at all, to the new global and connected digital environment.

However, how do we separate the physical and digital paradigms and recognise the need to manage their associated rights both collectively, as well as separately? How do at one end will they relate to and support authors and at the other end serve consumers?

We spoke to an Australian friend in Frankfurt who had just bought an ebook in the US but couldn’t access it in Europe. We all know that this is an exception but highlights the consumer muddle we all create in trying to apply yesterday’s logic. How can ebooks by their nature not be world rights?

We have publishers who didn’t acquire digital ebook rights assuming them as volume rights. We have rights reversals written into contracts based on physical inventory and sales but now living in a print on demand world. We have the ability to fragment works and build multi media renditions but wrap these still in yesterday’s rights. We have orphan works which everyone wants to land grab but nobody knows who owns. We have illustrations and others rights associated in the original work but whose licence is often restricted or unclear. All this is without the issue of social reading and moral rights.

Today a digital sale happens in real time but the reporting and reconciliation and payment to all parties is still living in the physical world. Why can’t an author be rewarded instantly or at least see the digital counter? In a world where there is no physical inventory exchanged who can effectively audit who?

We now need to establish a rights framework fit for the digital world. We need to jettison the baggage from the old world that will not make the transition whilst still protecting the business and physical world. The question is who is going to step up to the challenge, apply fresh thinking and above all build solid consensus?

NBA = Net Book Agency

We don’t welcome back the Net Book Agreement in the UK and especially through any backdoor and have written before of this somewhat valueless move.

We now have three major trade house setting or ‘fixing’ the prices of their ebooks in the UK. Anyone now wishing to sell their books must sell at the price the publisher sets and the commercial terms are on a fixed commission basis. We also now have two major retailers refusing to play and even after publishing an open letter objecting to the practice, Amazon have understandably capitulated. As Amazon's commission is now guaranteed on all ebook sales, some will suggest Amazon is secretly rubbing their hands at the move.

The statement from HarperCollins in yesterday’s Bookseller states, " Experience has shown in the US, where the market is more mature, this is the best way to stimulate competition by offering good value to consumers and maximising the number of channels to market."

However, some would suggest that ‘good value to consumers’ is illogical as value is determined by price. In this case the price goes up and will no doubt go up again with 20% VAT in the New Year. Some would also question just how it maximizes the number of channels to market if two of the UK’s major retailers channels aren’t playing and Amazon was clearly taken there against its will. Finally, the US experience matters little, as it is a very different market,is covered by different laws and different business relationships. Some would suggest that once again the US parents are probably demanding their UK children step in-line.

So why are we not going whole hog and bringing back fixed retail pricing for all books? After all its deep discounting fears that is driving the latest hysteria. We now have a consumer muddle with a wholesaler pricing model for physical books and an agency fixed price model set by publishers for ebooks. A reseller can't offer a discount even if they wanted to. Yes the recent poll in the Bookseller came out in favour of the agency model, but that is hardly consumer based research and some would suggest that is like asking communists party members in China to vote against the state.

When America's book publishers wrested control of e-book prices from Amazon earlier this year and established this new agency model, the results where predictable prices went up. Amazon started to make money on loss leaders and it was hardly consumer orientated, but there again it was hardly done by consumer facing people.

So where is this all leading? If ebook sales are only expected to capture some 15% to 25% of market share over this next 5 years, will authors really benefit from this dual market? Will it favour best selling front list and penalise mid and back list authors? Will mid and back list authors vote with their feet and go for the higher prizes available for going alone and price point at a level that earns them more whilst clearly differentiating themselves for this non value pricing?

If publishers set the price then they become effectively the reseller and in some cases liable for more than just setting the price. Under agency, publishers can experiment with prices as much Amazon did before agency agreements were established but can they react and change prices as effectively across the market? How will they bring prices down or will they simply stay at the original price set. Publishers are once removed from consumers and this is only going to demonstrate how big that gap is.

If agency pricing is aimed at creating a level playing field for all retailers to compete evenly on ebooks, we would suggest that no one wins a beauty contest in an ill fitting one piece standing next to a stunning Amazonian in a cute bikini. Levelling price is not the answer and some would suggest not why we got into this net ebook agreement.

MySpace Going One Way And It's ....

MySpace was the social network and then came along Facebook. Some would suggest Murdoch bought the wrong one, others that he bought the right one and that is why today its in different position.

It looks like MySpace has finally realised that it has lost the battle with Facebook and now seeks to reposition and redesign itself from the world's largest general-purpose social network to one focused at musicians and music lovers.

Artists with flare and some design can visually convey their personalities more on MySpace than through Facebook's corporate colour and presentation and as long as the artist is there the fans will be there too. Artists will get three choices of design; the old- MySpace design, a magazine-like format, or a video format with mobile versions to follow later this year.

Meanwhile, Facebook still has its growing user community which in true social trems creates even greter growth. So the question is whether musicians want to live in a ring fenced social network or project themselves to a bigger community. If the later then MySpace is going only one way and that isn’t up.

The interesting question is what MySpace will do with all the user information from those who drop of their new site?

4 Glimpses Into Today's Technology

RadioHead?

Why not reduce those mobile phone base stations that blot up our landscape and give everybody a wearable sensor that could make people base stations?

The research programme by engineers at Queen’s Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology on developing body-centric communications is based on small sensors being integrated into items such as smartphones. These sensors could communicate with each other to create human to human networks and interact to transmit information and mobile network connectivity.

Source http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article857174.ece

Our Good friend, author and futurist Ray Hammond shared with us some more interesting developments this month.

Video Your Life



We have all seen the rise of the Bluetooth enabled mobile with people seemingly talking to themselves whilst a blue light flashes in their ear. We lso remember well how this potentially harmless development was taking a sinister step forward in the recent Dr Who TV series but now we have a Bluetooth-enabled camcorder that is attached to the earpiece to give always available Video on the go.

The Looxcie camcorder features dual processor technology that allows simultaneous or independent video and talk modes and its 4GB of storage can hold over five hours of MP4 HVGA resolution at 15 frames per second through an f2.8 lens.

Users simply have to switch the unit on to start to document their lives and upload the images to social networking video sites and comes with software to help optimize power use, automatically correct for light and colour, and format video for mobile devices. The Looxcie claims a wireless range of some10 meters and is compatible with most Android 2.0 smartphones. It also has a micro-USB for direct upload of clips to a computer and an auto share mode where live video feeds can automatically be sent to pre-configured friends and family.

It seriously could provide not only novelty and fun but could be used to document incidents, concerts, talks and provide yet another headache for those wishing to fight bootleggers.

Looxcie is available now for a suggested retail price of US$199.



Divabot The Answer to the X Factor

A new humanoid, singing robot, the HRP-4, has been unveiled in Japan.



The robot, nicknamed 'diva-bot', has learned to sing by mimicking a human singer, enabling 'her' to sound natural and to sing with more expression than any previous robot.

A research team from the media interaction group at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tokyo used a new technology called VocalListener to observe a real singer in action and synthesize the appropriate notes of the song with the help of Yamaha’s existing voice synthesizing software, Vocaloid

The video shows just how far robotics have come and how close they are to mimicking everything human.

Nano Gyroscopes For All

Researchers at Tel Aviv University's School of Physical Engineering have developed nano-sized optical gyroscopes that can fit on the head of a pin without compromising the device's sensitivity. These gyroscopes will have the ability to pick up smaller rotation rates and deliver higher accuracy. Nano-gyroscopes when integrated into common mobiles could provide much improved tracking function over existing GPS systems and enable you to track your exact position even without the GPS signal. In medicine they could be used inside camera capsule to improve the doctors ability to control and move it precise locations within the body.

Is Time Up On The Wrist Watch?

Do you wear a watch today and is it seen as mere decoration and jewellery or a practical tool? Some people today go without the previous obligatory wristband and instead use their mobile to tell the time, be an alarm-clock and tell them where they are. So do you need a compass, watch, MP3 player, camera, video recorder, clock, sat nav, radio? The smartphone is clearly redefining gadgets we previously saw as standalone.

Mintel, now claim that in a survey of more than 1,500 people in the UK, 14% said they had no need for a watch. If that were applied across the UK it would amount to some 7.2 million watchless people. Between the ages 15 to 24 the figures even doubled.
Its interesting that the wristwatch came from the World War 1 trenches where soldiers tied their pocket watches to their wrists with leather straps. It then became ubictious with self winding mechanisms. Then came the designer must have at one end the Swatch and the other the Rolex.

Personally we like the Approach of Pravan Mistry’s projected hand watch.

LimeWire Dealt a Bitter Blow

A US federal court has issued a "permanent injunction" against LimeWire one of the world's most popular peer-to-peer filesharing websites with some 50 million monthly users. In doing so it has ruled that LimeWire intentionally promoted a "massive scale of infringement" by enabling the sharing of thousands of copyrighted works by its 50 million monthly users. The legal battle witj the US music industry has taken some four years to conclude been shut down after a four-year legal battle with the US music industry’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Mark Gorton, a former Wall Street trader, founded LimeWire in 2000 and it is claimed by the RIAA to have cost the music industry hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. The site was claimed by the NDP Group to be used by 58% of people who have downloaded music from a peer-to-peer network in the year from May 2009.

The level of damages faced by the site's New York-based parent company, Lime Group, will be decided in January 2011.

Automated Library Book Dispensers

Six months ago we spoke at the Seoul International Book Fair in Korea and wrote about a automated library book dispenser (see above) 'Korea Technology Book Showers and Dispensers.’




Today we read in the Wall Street Journal about a dispenser that is being used in the suburbs of St. Paul (see above). The library is a new branch with no librarians, no card catalogue and where the members merely collect their choices.

Library Express is based on the same concept as the Korean dispenser. Members select and order online and then pick up there books and DVDs from lockers outside city hall. This first Library Express installation is to be followed by similar offers in Arizona, Florida and the original installation is adding some 20 more lockers next month.

Its fitting that at a time when people are debating the future and cost of the public library in a digital world, some are now taking positive steps to offer extended services and embracing change for the physical book.

Amazon Start To Teach Us How To Share eBooks

Imagine you want to share a book with a friend. Today you simply give them your copy and hope that they will both enjoy it and give it you back. This summer we were introduced to the infamous ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ by a friend who lent us the book for a holiday read. However, same doesn't work in the ebook world.

Amazon once again breaks new ground and starts to connect the dots.

They have announced that this year, they will be introducing ebook lending on the Kindle platform. A user can simply lend a book to another Kindle device or app user. The loan can be only made once and for a restricted period of 14 days. During this period the access will be restricted and lender will be unable to read it.

The key here is the kindle platform and the ability Amazon has to control access but this clearly starts to open up many opportunities down the road and give ebook the potential to offer the same flexibility of rights given physical books. The restriction will be the service today but there is no technical reason why it can’t be extended across services. It is not difficult to start to see the opportunity to resell ‘used’ ebooks!

The new service will be dependant on the rights holder agreement for individual titles to be loaned. There is no mention of a fee for the service so it is assumed it will be free.

Finally we must also recognise that Amazon will soon have a secondary source of valuable information on not only who lends what but what books are starting to catch that elusive word of mouth take off orin this case being recommended to a friend.

We believe that this move has significant potential and is certainly one to watch.

What Mobile Heavyweight Suits You?

So you have to buy a new PC but the old one has still got life in it and could be retire to the office if you had the flexibility to work on the go without needing glasses or extra large thumbs. What do you choose and why?

The solution will almost certainly viewed differently by everyone.



Today the UK’s largest supermarket placed the Samsung Galaxy Tablet on pre-order at £529. It is just 99p cheaper than the offer from Carphone Warehouse and Amazon. Will that turn your eye as it clearly is the best equipped tablet out today with that 7” form, Flash support and Androd 2.2 all of which Mr Jobs doesn’t like. It has twin cameras and phone capabilities and will start to make an impact on Monday, November 1st. If you want a tablet with legs look no further.


HP have just announced more on its long awaited Slate tablet which to the surprise of many is to run on Windows 7 not Palm’s WebOS. Its only a surprise given the ticket HP paid this year for Palm and begs the questions why and where is it going? The price on the tin is $799and will weigh in at 700 grams, with a 8.9” 1024x600 screen and with not only no 3G connectivity but the unproven Windows 7 fanfare. However it does have some impressive feature such as an intuitive Wacom digitiser. If you want a high end netbook with touch screen and tablet form look no further.

So what about the new updated 13.3” Mac Air or or its new 11.6” brother? Both come with no hard drives but instead use flash storage built into the motherboard. Both models are thinner being only some 0.68” max and tapering to just 0.11” some 0.10” less than previously. The same applies to weight with the 11.6” model weighing in at 2.3 pounds and the 13” one at 3 pounds. The Macbook Air has a full size keyboard and trackpad. The real difference is the flash storage which reduces weight, is more rebust gives more space for a bigger battery. The result is the claim from Apple that the 13” model can give some 7 hours and the 11.6” some 5 hours of battery life on a single charge. The flash storage also gives a near instant switch on and its claimed that you can leave the machines in standby mode for up to 30 days!

The MacBook Air certainly is packed with many new and improved features and if you are a Mac man looking for that portable solution it will be hard to beat. The price of the 11.6” is £849 rising to £999 for the 128GB model, whilst 1.86 GHz 13” with 2GB of memory and 128GB of flash storage starts at £1,099.00 rising to £1349 for the 256GB model.

Another interesting consideration is that of operating systems with mobile battles raging whilst the rest mainly divide between Mac and Windows. However Apple has now previewed its next major OS version called Mac OS X Lion and positioned it to arrive in summer 2011. Jobs claims that Lion is about "Mac OS X meets the iPad." Lion will deliver a Mac App Store , similar to the App Store for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. This will enable users to purchase and download apps as they do today with a one-click download and automatic updates. Apple now plans to open a Mac App store this year for use on Snow Leopard.

So would you buy an iPad, a Galaxy, a slate or a new MacBook Air or something else?

Coffee Latte and eBook to Go Please

When Starbucks signed up Paul McCartney and others to release their latest albums through them, it was interesting and some would agrue it made sense. They then went on to their work with iTunes through Hear now. However,‘the latte to go’ company is now teaming up with Yahoo and aim to go one step further by adding free ebooks, movies news and entertainment to its in store Internet offer. It will also offer free access to sites, such as The Wall Street Journal that are currently behind pay walls.

So is the coffee shop becoming a media retailer where previously media retailers have become coffee shops? This move is about redefining who the reseller is and who has the brand and eyeballs to capture sales. Its fair to say that tomorrow anyone anywhere can sell media and ebooks and where we see supermarkets today we could see anybody tomorrow. Who has the biggest captive audience and can they make a viable proposition tomorrow?



The one reality is that the coffee market is getting crowed as more chains compete and fast food chains start to go after the same market. Starbucks WiFi is already attracting some 30 million logins a month, so extending its offer to their captive market makes commercial and loyalty building sense.

Starbucks customers will be able to access the network via their smart phones, computer or tablets, as soon as they connect. A splash page presents the various options which include entertainment, wellness, business, careers, and "my neighbourhood." With partners such as iTunes, New York Times, USA Today, Zagat and advance book copies from publishers such as HarperCollins and Penguin, the aim is to create a compelling community portal. This by itself then becomes a pull to get customers to keep coming back and to build and extend the brand.

Interestingly the content is designed to last as long as a cup of coffee and a muffin. Five to twenty minute content chunks are being sought to consume in house or they can buy the content and download it to go. The content in store can also be book marked such that it remembers where you left off next time you visit.

Starbucks makes additional revenues on taking a share of all sales.

So are coffee shops for socialising or for playing games, reading, watching movies and other more singular pursuits? Its an interesting concept but you may have to have a serious caffeine addition for it to seriously alter your lifestyle.

Public Libraries: PA's Plan Fails to Join the Dots

We are pleased that the issue of free to lend from a public library, versus a fee to buy from a reseller has been brought out into the open today. This problem is one we have written about all year. The debate is long overdue but today’s Bookseller story ‘PA sets out restrictions on library e-book lending’ was quickly countered by a further one titled ‘Librarians worried by publisher e-book restrictions’ The stories cover the latest position adopted by the PA ( UK Publishers Association) at the CILIP Public Library Authorities conference in Leeds.

Stephen Page, CEO Faber and Faber, announced the new guidelines, telling delegates that "all the major trade publishers have agreed to work with aggregators to make it possible for libraries to offer e-book lending". However, users would only be able download an ebook from within the library's physical premises and via a computer terminal.

The plan would extend the fee paid by a library to buy a book and give them the right to loan one digital copy, to one individual at any given time.

We believe bringing the issue to the table is both timely and correct, but question whether the decision was forged in consultation with the libraries, or came down the mountain on tablets of stone. The problem is far from solved by the PA’s plan as it tries to shoe horn tomorrow’s digital world into yesterday’s physical practices.

Were the libraries consulted?

We fully agree that it doesn’t make sense to expose the reseller to a free offer from the libraries that they can’t compete with. However, it is equally ludicrous to tie the libraries hands behind the backs and pretend that ebooks are no different to pbooks and place restrictions on them. We now find that, one day after the big spending cuts were announced that the PA has clearly got their own way of cutting back on libraries. Some may feel that this move makes a mockery of all the support the industry has recently given libraries.

What is needed is a bit of common sense and above all communication between all parties.

This move will almost kill off the public library as a digital lender and further hasten its demise within these austere times. It is impossible to understand the logic of why downloads have to be via a library terminal. Hello, hasn’t anyone at the PA worked out what WiFi and 3G is yet? This tethering of the ebook download to the physical library building and terminal makes no sense at all. Even the much derided Margret Hodge offered more sense than this.

The answer is not easy but is not born out of a one sided perspective of life. Tying individuals to local public libraries is not an issue, it is done in many countries and systems today. Access and authorisation can be governed by the library system so that registration is maintained and auditable. It doesn’t matter where anyone is, it only matters that they are authorised. The only potential issue is with respect to inter library loans which may have to be restricted for ebooks, or incur a further fee payable to the rights owner.

So what about the thorny issue of ‘free.’

We are moving towards an online mobile and 'rental on demand' world. So why not allow libraries to ‘rent out’ as opposed to ‘loan’ to their members and charge a rental fee for any download. We have operated such a system in Denmark for libraries and similar systems are being proposed in other countries. Does anyone look outside of the UK and other than the US? The download can be easily protected, restricted to a specific time window and copying prohibited. This would allow libraries to rent out anything to an authorised member, at anytime and they simply pay a fee for the service and availability over the internet. Title rents can be collated and even contribute to improving the PLR deal to the author.

We realise that this a significant shift, which basically says pbooks are free in libraries and are restricted by the physical need for members to collect and return them, whilst digital ebooks offer added value and can be virtually rented, but for a fee. The beauty of the model is that is could also be offered to anyone including resellers, societies, institutions etc . Libraries then can use their communities and collective power to grow their service, whilst resellers and others can compete with online subscription and rental models as well as offering outright purchase of downloads.

This may appear far fetched to many who believe that libraries must remain free. There may also be other issues that need to be addressed. However, it could actually enable libraries to coexist and grow membership within a new wider commercial digital environment.

The question now is, whether all parties have the will to co-operate in order to find a solution that works for all.

This is a Rights Business

This weekend saw an interesting letter published in The Daily Telegraph ‘Books on Demand’. The letter focused on print on demand and claimed that, ‘Publishers appear to be selling material that is freely available online to extract money from unsuspecting book buyers.’

The complaint was against ‘publishers’ and was in danger of tarnishing all with the same brush. Ruth Allen was rightly annoyed to discover that a $15 Print on demand book in the US which she claims was a copy of four of her articles, which were largely her work and made freely available over Wikipedia under their Creative Commons licensing copyright agreement. She objects to her altruism being used by others for profit but as we were unable to find the material under her name on Wikipedia, it is almost impossible for us to validate her claims.

We fully support Creative Commons licensing and its fair use, but respect that its unfair usage may be difficult to control in this digital age where exploitation is merely a click, or a short ‘low risk’ print run away.

We recently discovered a more traditional book work that had been republished as a print on demand rendition by its publisher, even though the contract did not permit that, reversal conditions had been met and the request for a reversal had been ignored. We only discovered the infringement by accident and the situation has been now resolved. The question is, how much infringement is now creeping back under the print on demand long tail.
We wonder if we will all be spending more and more time monitoring and searching for infringements in the future, with more and more take down notices being issued retrospectively. The Scribd and Wattpad platforms have demonstrated how easy it is for some to infringe and also how difficult it is for all to proactively manage content. In addition to the online threat we also now have a growing print on demand environment which itself is creating ‘low risk’ opportunities to publish first at little risk and be dammed.

We now talk about term licensing of digital rights but who will know when the term has expired? We openly dispute to volume of orphan works out there with the numbers often varying according to the position taken on their adoption. It is becoming easier to scan and copy books and torrent sharing is here today. There has always been serious book piracy, it is not new but just getting easier.

Some would suggest that a rights business without a rights registry in a digital world is an open door for those who wish to exploit it and a nightmare for those who want to protect their property and rights. We are no experts on copyright but would suggest that there must be a better way than expecting the owner to spend their time ensuring that the rights have not been infringed

French Government To Organise A Giant Music Sale

At what level is government subsidy in the arts acceptable and where is the line? The protesters current demonstrating in France against the French government austerity measures and raising the of the pension age must be somewhat perplexed to hear that the government plans to state-subsidise the buying of music!

The plan is an attempt to convince young people that it is better buy music rather than ‘steal’ by file-sharing and involves selling pre-paid cards with a face value of 50 euros at a cost 25 euros. The French government will stump up the difference and estimates that over two years the plan will cost about 25 million euros and result in the purchase of some one million cards.

Restrictions will apply in that consumers will be limited to one card each per year and music download sites will be asked to cut the price of downloads, extend subscription periods and contribute towards the marketing campaign for the cards. Individual sites will only be allowed to receive a maximum of 5m euros from the scheme. The European Commission has approved the plan and said that it would not be anti-competitive.

Is it any different to the UK subsidy of arts such as the opera? Government already spend hard cash to support reading, libraries, schools and PLR (Public Lending Rights payments to authors) so is this any different?

Whether we agreed with file sharing music or not offering users financial subsidy isn’t going to change anything but merely further highlight the practice and opportunity. It also starts to devalue the product as the consumer sees 25 euros not 50 and is still more than zero. Finally what happens when the 50 euro card has been used? Are consumers expected to not buy anything more for the rest of the year or simply say ‘I have learnt my lesson and will now pay full price…until the next year.’

Borders US Rushes In To Join The Self Publishing Offer

It appears anything Barnes and Noble can do so following B&N’s launch of PubIt, Borders follows them into the self-publishing beauty contest and joins the likes of others such as Amazon, Lulu and Smashwords with their new Borders Get Published program for eBooks. The program will be driven by the BookBrewer publishing platform.

Authors will be able to publish and sell eBooks through the Borders eBook store, as well as other partner eBook retailers. The author can pay $89.99 for the basic package, which assigns an ISBN and make it available to major eBook stores at a price set by the writer. Alternatively the author can pay $199 and buy a package which gives them an Pub file, that they can share with friends, family and press and submit to other eBook stores.”

However it wasn’t clear to us on visiting the site exactly what you got and the quality of the delivery. With time this could improve bit today it looks like a rush job to join the party and the wording certainly would not instil confidence if we were to want to self publish.