Mark Pilgrim has created a clever little piece, The Future of Reading ( A Play in Six Acts), about the inherent dangers of Digitial Rights Management (DRM).Using sources like Steven Levy's Newsweek article The Future of Reading, Kindle's Terms of Service, Jeff Bezos 2002 letter to the Author's Guild and George Orwell's 1984, Pilgrim adequately conveys some of the pitfalls of the DRM approach.The six acts are:1. The act of buying2. The act of giving3. The act of lending4. The act of reading5. The act of remembering6. The act of learningHere is Act 1:When someone buys a book, they are...
New York Booksellers Ask Spitzer to Reconsider Online Sales Tax
Last week, 29 New York State bookstores all members of the American Bookseller Association (ABA), signed on to a letter sent to Governor Spitzer asking him to revisit his recent decision not to "enforce sales tax laws" or more precisely to start collecting sales tax from online retailers (ie. Amazon).Somehow they believe this will help level the playing field in the bookselling world. Do they not realize that many of their customers buy books online too? and that even if they had to pay sale tax the book will still be cheaper when purchased online!Also, the 'independent businesses are vital...
William Blake at 250
Today is the 250th birthday of the Romantic poet, artist and engraver William Blake.How important was Blake. A 2002 poll by the BBC of the 100 Greatest Britons has Blake coming in at 38. Not bad for someone who was pretty much unrecognized during his lifetimeTerry Eagleton honors the occassion with a commentary in The Guardian titled The original political vision: sex art and transformation"Politics today is largely a question of management and administration. Blake, by contrast, viewed the political as inseparable from art, ethics, sexuality and the imagination. It was about the emancipation of desire, not its manipulation."The Tate...
Feds Drop Subpoena. Amazon Does Not Have to Reveal Names of Used Book Buyers
Finally there is some good news coming from the government about our First Amendment rights.U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker has ruled that Amazon does not have to reveal the identities of thousands of people who purchased used books through Amazon Marketplace.At Amazon's request the court documents from Crocker's June ruling have just been unsealed. "The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission," Crocker wrote. "It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting...
Books as Investments. Asia Joins the Fray
This came in a bit late for my previous post Book Collecting Juice which including a link to a recent article in the Telegraph about books as an investment.The Standard, an English language paper in Hong Kong, has a piece by Ronald Chan titled Judging the Fine Print which comes on the heels of the inaugural Hong Kong International Antiquarian Book Fair that will take place from November 30 to December 2Chan, founder and chief executive of the private investment company Chartwell Capital, says:"The growing interest in rare books has finally hit Asia, with alternative investors seeing them as an...