Open Media Review

Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading

Wired has a short editorial from Clive Thompson. It is another thoughtful consideration on the future of the printed book. What I like most about this is how he points out several existing examples that he believes point the way.

But only if publishers adopt Wark’s perspective and provide new ways for people to encounter the written word. We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading.

The example set by Wark is one of opening a work up for annotation, commentary and discussion. I am a big fan of an idea, the unbook, that considers this to be a valuable emerging model not just for after a book has been published but through its formative process and especially for books that in more traditional models would have gone through several editions.

While Thompson focuses in on the dialogue and discussion, I do like that the question he really is posing is the future of reading. I agree that this is far and away the more useful question when contemplating what is going to thrive as digital technologies disrupt the status quo in publishing.

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Amazon Buys Maker of Stanza eBook Reader

There is not much detail about this story beyond what reads like press releases.  According to the NYT article, Amazon has no intention of changing anything about Stanza.  That includes its ability to download free books and purchase books from participating services.  One of those services, Fictionwise, was recently purchased by competitor Barnes and Noble.

I am excited to see competition in the field of electronic books but I am worried that consolidation is happening so quickly.  Usually consolidation spells an end to innovation.  I am hugely concerned that the fledgling, and open, eBook format, ePub, is going to be a casualty of this first round of shakedown.  While Amazon is allowing books without DRM into its closed Kindle eco-system, unlike its audiobook counterpart Audible, their overall commitment to open formats and supporting the choice of the creator is not encouraging.

Innovators like Stanza, Feedbooks, and Fictionwise have been establishing toeholds on a wide variety of devices while the larger players like Amazon and Sony slug it out with their proprietary devices and formats.  ePub had the potential to emerge as a de facto standard much as MP3 did.  At this was true so long as the heavy weights remained ignorant to the proven market power of being as widely compatible as possible.  Unlike the MP3 format, about which the best feature is just that it lacks DRM, ePub is an open format without, as far as I know, patent encumbrances.  It is morally more closely related to Ogg Vorbis in that respect.

Unlike Ogg Vorbis, which has been well adopted by those interested in freedom from intellectual monopolies, ePub has been gathering potentially effective market forces to help drive its acceptance.  My worry is that Stanza’s acquisition may dissipate enough of that momentum to olbiterate any such potential.  I remain open to being proven wrong.

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Doctorow’s Law

I just watched the video of Cory Doctorow’s talk on eBooks and DRM from the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference.  In it, he expressed the desire to have Doctorow’s Law, if ever a thing is coined, to be that if anyone puts DRM, locks, on your works, as a creative, they are not doing so in your best interests.  Pretty obvious to consumers and advocates of open media.  It is nice to have a shorthand for this idea, though, and I wholeheartedly endorse this coinage.

The rest of his talk does an excellent job of explaining how Audible has turned the tables on publishers.  DRM started as a condition required by publishers before they would enter into electronic distribution in many cases.  Now, though, Audible is enforcing DRM even in cases where authors and publishers wish to release digital audio editions without locks.

As usual, Cory makes his point with eloquence, charm, and plenty of examples.  This talk is well worth a watch.

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DIY Music Manual Has Been Released

In my past interviews with Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan, they mentioned a rework of their fantastic book, “The Indie Band Survival Guide”. The new edition would allow them to expand on their research and would be targeted primarily at musicians in Europe. That book, “The DIY Music Manual”, is now available. I’d say even if the local specific legal chapters don’t apply, this is probably work checking out for the extra time the guys have had to further hone this fantastic book. If you are in Europe, then you are in luck because I can think of few other people I would trust to have done their homework and get the details you need to know as an independent creator correct.

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Bookworm, O’Reilly Supported Free and Open ePub Bookshelf

As a techie I have used O’Reilly’s non-free bookshelf for technical titles, Safari, on and off over the years. The appeal is understandable, being able to access a virtual book shelf of technical references from anywhere there is internet access. The only reason I do not use it consistently is cost. My technical reading tends to go in waves as I tackle new challenges. During the plateaus I let my subscription to the service lapse because I don’t find myself accessing it enough to warrant the cost.

Regardless of my own cost-based decision, there is a lot else to like as the service has evolved, such as search and PDF copies of chapters and titles. And now O’Reilly Labs is helping to bring a similar offering for our own e-books. The project, Bookworm, was actually developed by Liz Daly who spoke at the recent O’Reilly Tools of Change conference. O’Reilly was apparently so impressed with the tool, they invited Daly to bring it into their R&D space.

Bookworm specifically supports the open ePub format which has been adopted by a number of publishers and is supported by a variety of other tools. One of my favorite free e-book sources, Feedbooks, has an option get download their titles in ePub format. Bookworm offers similar search capabilities to Safari and you can always re-download your ePub files back out of it, a nice option if you want to use it as your main bookshelf but might want to copy books to devices that are not always connected.

Bookworm supports OpenID which is a nice touch as I registered to give the service a try. You are greeted with a free copy of “Pride and Prejudice” to get your shelf started or reminded that O’Reilly now offers ePub as the format for the electronic edition of 30 of its technical titles. There is a tour and an FAQ which helped make getting started pretty simple. The progress through a book is at the level of a chapter, which is better than nothing but arbitrary bookmarks would be a nice future feature. There is a mobile interface that is surprising usable though it does require net access.

For the iPod touch and iPhone, the mobile interface offers a link to open the ePub file in Stanza, a bit of software I have also discussed before. Unfortunately, while Stanza offers a superb disconnected reading experience, it does not sync your place back to Bookworm. Stanza seems to be under pretty active development, so maybe that will change. Hopefully its developers will consider adding direct support for Bookworm. I will say that downloading a book to Stanza via Bookworm is a bit simpler than using the Stanza desktop client, so even without sync between the two tools, this is worth taking a look.

What I really hope is that popularizing the ePub format and supporting such great tools for it, like Bookworm, will put pressure on Amazon and its competitors to give authors and publishers the choice to use ePub if they desire. This sentiment was apparently also pretty strongly expressed at the same ToC conference during one of the morning keynotes by none other than Cory Doctorow.

If someone takes something that belongs to you, and puts a lock on it that you don’t have a key for, that lock isn’t in your best interests.

Doctorow’s Law, I’m going to have to remember that.

Technorati Tags: ebooks, free

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Advice from a Published Author on Negotiating a CC License

One of the questions I get when I speak and participate at events discussing the Creative Commons is from creators working with traditional publishers. I can rattle off a few facts and examples but to date have lacked a particularly coherent answer. I remain convinced that such creators can and should pursue traditional outlets to support their creativity. I would suggest they diversify, though, considering some of the experimental models others have tried as well as developing their own.

I was very pleased to see a link to Michael Mandiberg’s post on the subject on the Creative Commons blog. Michael has a new design book out for which he successfully negotiated a Creative Commons license for the print edition (from a very large publisher as it turns ). He has distilled his experience down into ten recommendations. He provides a good number of links to substantiating material useful in answering questions and concerns publishers may have about public licensing.

I especially like:

2. Know that your publisher is scared

Publishers saw what happened to the music industry. Sales of print books are down across the board. Publishers know things are going to change, but they don’t know what that change is going to be. Know that your publisher is willing to experiment. “Inspire them to be leaders.” (ironic, but serious)

And:

4. Pitch it with facts

…

And explain the the 75/22/3 breakdown:

“David Blackburn, a Harvard PhD candidate in economics, published a paper in 2004 in which he calculated that, for music, “piracy” results in a net increase in sales for all titles in the 75th percentile and lower; negligible change in sales for the “middle class” of titles between the 75th percentile and the 97th percentile; and a small drag on the “super-rich” in the 97th percentile and higher. Publisher Tim O’Reilly describes this as “piracy’s progressive taxation,” apportioning a small wealth-redistribution to the vast majority of works, no net change to the middle, and a small cost on the richest few”

I encourage you to read the rest if you’ve been asked this question or are a creator considering it for yourself. I plan on keeping this link handy and trying to retain as much of the post for off the cuff sharing as I can manage.

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Happy Public Domain Day!

Mike at the Creative Commons offers a bevy of links celebrating a day dedicated to the most open of open media, works in the public domain. He points out a couple of blog posts considering the importance of the public domain, many projects contributing to or building on it, and James Boyle’s recent book released on the very subject.

It must be an even sweeter celebration for CC given that they succeeded at reaching their very ambition fund raising goal for 2008. They could not have done so without individual donations in addition to the corporate contributions and grants they receive. If you haven’t already contributed think about adding the Creative Commons to your charitable giving in the coming year. Better yet, consider setting up a modest, ongoing monthly donation; that’s what I do.

Regardless, take some time today to enjoy open and public creative works.

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Massive Media Donation to Wikipedia from German Federal Archive

Wikipedia just announced a massive contribution to their Commons.

Starting on Thursday Dec 4, 2008, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive upload of new images. We are anticipating about 100,000 files from a donation from the German Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to the history of Germany (including the German Democratic Republic) and are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive.

The Federal Archive is making the photos available under a CC BY-NV-SA 3.0 Germany license and has apparently cleared its rights to do so. The photos are not of the highest resolution, about 800 pixels on the longest side. Regardless, this is an enormous addition to the commons. Flickr’s collaborations with US museums was on the order of a few thousand, maybe it is up to ten thousand or so. The Federal Archive submission is an order of magnitude or two beyond that.

I think this gives greater cause for the Wikimedia Foundation to exercise the GNU FDL window granted them in a recent updated by the Free Software Foundation to move their content to a Creative Commons license. I have to imagine that the CC license on these photos at a minimum bypasses some of the reuse issues for images in wikis presented by the particular conditions of the GNU FDL.

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Creative Commons Questionnaire on the Meaning of Non-Commercial

The Creative Commons opened a survey a few weeks back to help them investigate how people understand the non-commercial condition of their licenses. This aspect has been one of the more difficult to define and explain. Attribution, no derivatives and share alike are relatively easy to follow by comparison.

I’ve already taken the survey and encourage you to do the same if you are a creator or consumer of works using a non-commercial license. They’ve extended the deadline to December 14th so you still have about a week to participate. The questionnaire does take some time and thought. The questions are not simple by any stretch. Many require you to express a judgement of how much you agree with some non-trivial statements and scenarios.

I very much look forward to the findings. The more folks that participate, the better the analysis. Regardless, I am very pleased to see the Creative Commons tackle this question to help better define, explain and document the non-commercial license choice.

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New Site Offering Open Case Law

Kevin sent in a link to Open Jurist, a site offering court opinions free of charge. The site itself is licensed under an attribution only CC license though I also found a traditional copyright notice. I am also not sure what the limitations on the original source material would be and whether the re-licensing under a CC license or exclusive copyright is correct in this case. So far the offering is limited by both browsable and searchable. It is also unclear what their plan is to expand their data, or even how they acquired and processed what they already have. They have an RSS feed which I suppose is for notices of additions to their database.

I have not fully investigated this site but the premise is awesome. So far they have opinions from the Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals and they are asking for volunteers to help expand their database. And it’s released under a Creative Commons license.

While the court opinions have always belonged to the public domain, being authored by a branch of the government, copyrights on the published opinions have been held by the companies who publish and distribute the opinions because of the publishers pagination and summary system. Courts and lawyers are totally dependent on the pagination for citing their caselaw so the court can reliably find them. And that made the bound reporters valuable and too expensive for your average person to access. I love the idea of having solid case law posted for free on the web and available to the public.

Now, excuse me while I test it.

Open Case Law Access – Thanks Kevin

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