Anonymous Picks Wrong Target

Anonymous DDoS Takes Down The United States Copyright Office

This is bullshit.

Here’s the Comment I left there (where I have Commented before on other matters aligned with their interests):

No, I can’t get behind this. The Copyright Office are friends of creators. They can’t be blamed for the crap Congress shoved down their throats in order to give Mickey Mouse eternal property status. Just earlier this year the Copyright Office made several rulings favorable to device owners. Go back after the MPAA and RIAA sites and their lawyer stooges if you must, but not the CO. Know who the enemies really are.

Anonymous should be ashamed. Marybeth Peters knows her stuff and the Copyright Office takes intellectual property matters seriously.

See: God Bless Marybeth Peters Of The Copyright Office! and Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works.

If Congress had not been the craven bitches of the Walt Disney Company (whose major stockholder today is Steve Jobs!), we wouldn’t have had the perversion of Copyright that we currently have.

As far as I’m concerned — and I’ve said this more than once — Mickey Mouse should be in the public domain, period.

I am entirely in favor of creators being recompensed. Creators are not your enemy. Those who enslave creators are.

I repeat: Anonymous picked the wrong target and should be ashamed.

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Kobo Reader Vs. Mass-Market Paperback

Let me indulge my size fetish.

Click = big

Click = big

I took those screensnaps from a YouTube video available after the break.

Borders Redesigns Its Website

Unfortunately, I didn’t do a screensnap of the original home page (which was still up as late as last night, when I visited), so I have to do a Before and After based on a book listing screensnap I do have.

Free PDF Book: The Lights In The Tunnel

The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future

This new book takes an in depth look at current trends in technology and globalization and examines what the likely economic impact will be in the coming years and decades.

Will There Be A Flood Of iPad Fanzines?

This is impressive:

It’s too bad the Adobe suite of tools costs so much.

Seriously, what I’m seeing there is just made for people to do fanzines with for the iPad.

It makes me wonder how many temps will get all their files together on their home Macs and then use the software available at work to create a zine. Don’t laugh — it happened in the DTP days of the 1980s!

I don’t think Adobe would be amenable to hugely cutting the price of their tools, so we’ll probably see the Baker software refined and used for fanzines for the iPad.

My god, had all this been around in the 1970s when I did zines, the things I could have produced would have been breathtaking.

Attention lawyers: Put away those C&D orders. Fanzines are your employer’s free promotional friends. Ask the damn Marketing Department.

Agents Can Be Parasites Too

Lampack Loses in Suit Against Former Author

Lampack claimed that, since he was Grimes’s agent in 2005 when the option clause was initially issued on the work that was to become The Black Cat, he retained financial rights to proceeds from that book.

Maybe she left you, numbskull, because you couldn’t get rid of any damned option clause in her contracts.

And then for you to come along four years later and demand a cut — that’s insult added to injury, you swine.

Any writer with any business sense is going to steer clear of your agency. Thanks for that favor, Darwin.

In Praise Of Hard Case Crime

Can Hard Case Crime solve the mystery of digital era publishing?

So when someone like Hard Case Crime comes along, it’s a cause for celebration. This publisher seems to be doing everything right. It has those gorgeous covers. It has a smart logo (“smart” in the sense that it looks good and also in that it explains exactly what the brand is about). It has a really strong sense of direction and quality, backed up by a good roster of authors. Established greats (like Stephen King, Donald E Westlake, George Axelrod) sit alongside intriguing unknowns (like Jack Clark, a Chicago cabby who sold his first 500 books to passengers in his car) and the books are all dressed in the same knowing, arch, beautiful clothing. They almost give off an aura.

I am soooo glad to see this article.

He was introduced to Hard Case Crime and got it immediately.

This is the kind of thing Harlequin could have had too, but they screwed it up royally.

It’s too bad there’s no way to revive The Do-Not Press in e.

Previously here:

Hard Case Crime To Do eBooks!
The Internet Death Star

Previously at The eBook Test:

Hard Case Crime To eBooks!

Using Adobe Digital Editions With A Sony Reader

Although this video is for a specific bookstore, these steps still work if you buy eBooks from Sony, Kobo/Borders, or most any place else that uses “classic” Adobe DRM (that is, the kind not used by both Apple and Barnes & Noble). These steps will also work with public library loans.

It’s interesting that she doesn’t suggest using Sony’s own Reader Library software.

These steps will work with a Kobo Reader too.

This is just a 101 video. I’m not up to doing any sort of post comparing Adobe Digital Editions to the Reader Library — and don’t even ask me about Calibre (which I find thoroughly confusing).

Previously at The eBook Test:

Sony Reader 101: For Mac Users
Sony Reader 101: Borrowing Public Library eBooks
Sony Reader 101: If You Insist On Buying One…

Romance’s Savage Holds

Tuphlos is a librarian who acquires books. Dig this:

so 9 of 12 “new arrivals” on our homepage are romance books. Between the 9, there are 164 holds.Wed Nov 03 13:39:24 via webRobin Bradford
Tuphlos

I would think this would bring an end to the “we don’t need to buy so many romance books” nonsense, but I bet it won’t.Wed Nov 03 13:39:47 via webRobin Bradford
Tuphlos

What We Are Waiting For As Of 11/03/10

Not in any order:

1) Blio Reader (supposed to be arriving 9/28)
2) Google Editions
3) Barnes & Noble PubIt
4) Kobo Reader WiFi
5) Something else I am NDAed about
NEW: 6) Sony’s iOS and Android Reader software

Possible Myths:

1) Nook II And it’s the NookColor
2) 7″ iPad (despite what Jobs says)
3) Palm Pre II (it exists!)
4) KindlePad
5) BlackBerry PlayBook (which now seems to exist, based on new demos)