E-book news roundup (a survey of some previous TeleRead stories)

[Bob Russell]

Sometimes we just never seem to get to all the great stories surrounding e-books and mobile computing. One great source of information is the TeleRead Blog, and here's some of the stories you may not want to miss:

<<Oops. Seems the formatting didn't carry over too well to the front page. Mismatched tags in the truncated teaser and all that. But make the jump to the full article, and you'll find it looks much better.>>

• Boing Boing e-store: DRM-free PDFs
  In the coming days and weeks, look for songs, albums, comics, novels, videos, and anything else that can be delivered digitally.
• Eternal DRM as a copyright extender
  What a great compromise this would be, for the consumers at least. DRM that expires after, say, 5 years. That would make a DRM'd e-book purchase a real purchase, it would end the concerns about being able to read the books if technology changes.
• Free Mobipocket Creator software for publishers signing up with Amazon
  Amazon owns MobiPocket now, and wants to make it a primary e-book standard. And they certainly know that the more publishers with content for their unannounced Kindle e-ink reader, the better.
• High mortality among e-book firms
  This is a double whammy for e-book lovers. First of all, the more successful the e-book sellers are, the more content that will be available and the more economies of scale will kick in. Maybe just as important is that a lot of content is locked up in proprietary DRM schemes. When the e-book sellers go out of business, the support of that content on new reader platforms is lost, and the purchased e-books eventually become worthless. Not generally a big problem for novels, but a huge problem for reference works.
• If your library doesn't offer the e-books or databases you want?
  It's not common knowledge, but you don't have to be a New York resident to use the electronic resources of the New York Public Library. For about $100 a year, you can also gain access. Although some resources might be limited a bit - I have free out-of-county access to the Carnegie Library electronic resources, but the online audio and e-book selections seem to be different. Still, it can be a great alternative that is often overlooked.
• Free Creative Commons comic book on public domain issues
  According to the Bound By Law book itself, it "provide[s] a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture."
• What's the point of OpenReader?
  This article continues to champion the OpenReader e-book format.
• What's the point of OpenReader? Part 2
  This is part 2 of the previous article.
• Librarian Megan Fox upbeat on e-books in Computers in Libraries talk
  I'm not so sure that publishers want to continue the library paradigm into the e-book future. But for book lovers, and for the good of the world community, it seems like a no-brainer. Even DRM might not seem so bad for the consumer if it was reasonably implemented across world libraries and if we had some successful standards. With confidence that libraries will continue to provide a wide range of books that are compatible with a wide range of reader platforms and software, it could be book utopia for readers!