Hasta La Gadget!

Google’s lawyers visited the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last week for a polite conversation with three judges and attorneys from the Authors Guild. You remember — the book-scanning thing? Yes, the case is 7 years old and still unresolved. The Circuit Court is just a way station in a longer journey — at issue is whether the Authors Guild’s class action suit should be broken apart, forcing authors and publishers to confront Google individually.

Google is going to win this thing eventually. If that makes Google evil, it is a necessary evil.

The bigger question is about the lawfulness of Google’s digital library quest, and the legitimacy of the Guild’s copyright charges and request for damages. There are points of similarity to the music industry’s litigation saga. And major differences. Google is going to win this thing eventually. If that makes Google evil, it is a necessary evil.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Major publishers are taking wildly different approaches to resolving the woes surrounding e-book lending at libraries: they’re experimenting with both the short-yet-cheap subscription as well as an expensive option to pay only once for perpetual use. Sure enough, we’re now seeing the middle road. Macmillan plans to run a pilot project in the first quarter of the year that will charge libraries $25 per copy for a selection of 1,200 back catalog Minotaur Books titles, but give buyers better than usual lending rights for either two years or 52 loans, depending on the popularity. They’ll only have permission to lend to one person at a time for each copy, although Macmillan’s comments to LibraryJournal leave the door open to changing terms should the pilot struggle to gain traction. As it stands, the strategy could be expensive for libraries if they have to pay over and over again for a perennial favorite. It might, however, be palatable for those book lending outfits already planning to go all-digital.

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Via: Ars Technica

Source: LibraryJournal

Hardbound books, apparently, are soooo 20th century — at least for the upcoming BiblioTech library in San Antonio, Texas’ south side. When the shiny, new public library opens its doors to bookworms this fall, visitors will notice something important missing: actual books. Instead, the facility will be serving up ebooks — about 10,000 digital titles or so — in an attempt to supplement the area’s traditional library system with some new-school cool. To help users partake in its content, BiblioTech will also carry actual e-readers for users to check out. Footage of the media event shows what appears to be a Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch as the facility’s e-reader of choice. Checked-out ebooks are also programmed to be accessible by the borrower for a two-week period. Going the digital route has certainly been a growing trend — 3M recently launched a Cloud Library lending service while one Austrian town kicked off its own unique e-book repository based on stickers equipped with QR codes and NFC chips. As ongoing issues involving Penguin show, however, digital lending sadly still has some hurdles to overcome.

Filed under: Misc, Alt

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Via: Gizmodo

Source: San Antonio Express-News

Now here’s another piece of furniture that book lovers would love to own: the Bookworm. It reminds me a little of the Sunflower Chair, which features a plushy seat that’s surrounded by a roundabout bookshelf.

The Bookworm also features a seat surrounded by shelves all around, but in a different, more modern kind of way. The seat doesn’t look as cushy, but it still definitely looks like a comfortable place to get your read on.

The shelf is supported by a single stainless steel leg that’s attached to one side – presumably that’s all it needs to keep from falling over. The rest of the chair is constructed from thin sheets of MDF and flexible plywood.

The Bookworm is available for purchase from Atelier 010. They’re made to order, so if you’re interested, send the makers an email to ask for the price and make your order.

[via Gizmag]

Penguin will refresh its ebook lending system later today, according to a report from the New York Times. The publisher will start lending out its titles in Los Angeles and Cleveland, mimicking the program that trialled (despite some DRM issues) in New York. Public library users can even expect downloadable audiobooks to join the lending list soon, through a team-up between Penguin and OneClickDigital. Expect the same lending rules, with new books appearing six months after their first release and the bizarre ‘one copy at a time’ system, in which each title can only be rented at one person at any one time. Worse still, at least for libraries, at the end of each year they must buy each title again or lose access to the digital copy.

[Image courtesy Sten Rüdrich]

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Via: The Verge

Source: The New York Times