News about books and ebooks from around the web:
- A small but growing group of Kindlers is boycotting any Kindle books priced above $9.99. I get it, but why not protest Kindle’s inability to borrow library books? Kassia Krozser, in the link above, says that “treating customers with blatant disrespect is the path to rampant piracy.” I think it’s more complicated than that, but I’ll have to delay my response until after this semester. Meantime, here’s analysis from GalleyCat, MobileRead, and O’Reilly.
- Kindlers, take note: a Calibre-port called “Savory” has been released, according to MobileRead. Direct link here. This is outstanding news for readers of ebooks everywhere. However, I give Amazon a week or so before they jerkily invoke DMCA, just like the last time.
- Anti-filesharing laws are popping up alarmingly all over Europe. France has passed a law that might require ISPs to block certain websites such as The Pirate Bay; ISPs blocking websites is a very worrying precedent to set. In addition, IP addresses might be used to prosecute filesharing offenders; the same IP addresses you can mask as easily as hopping on your neighbor’s unsecured wireless network. In Sweden (the home of The Pirate Bay), a similar law caused a drop in Internet traffic of 30%, despite the fact that only 10% of Swedes are thought to use P2P sharing. Last month, you might recall, a similar law was finally thrown out in New Zealand.
- Quick takes: Beckett play found (?); a prototype for a video ereader called a Vook; EA releases a DRM-stripping tool for their games; reports of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated; two Michael Crichton novels will be released posthumously; a contest in the Guardian that coincides with America’s National Poetry Month; the importance of authors’ photos (and again) and the problem of proofs; and a horror story for Kindle users.
- Random of the week: trouble with escalators. Nothing’s made me laugh so hard all week, especially the guy in the gif. (That link is SFW, but I can’t vouch for any links you find once you’re over there.)
