The current copyright protection allows for libraries to copy “a work in their collections that is damaged, deteriorating, lost or stolen or whose format has become obsolete” three times. As Ars Technica notes, this means that no copying can be done until destruction or damage is actually underway. The Library of Congress [...]

A friend of mine emailed me this past week asking me for information about how to buy her sister a gift of ebooks. Her sister had a Sony Reader and my friend wanted to buy books from Fictionwise because unless you had a Sony Reader, you couldn’t actually buy a Sony Reader compatible book. [...]

O’Reilly, a non fiction technological publication, is going to start selling a “select number of books as a bundle of three ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket) for a single price — at or below the book’s cover price — starting in early July.” These books will be sold without DRM and it [...]

Sony, the last major record label still encoding its songs with some type of DRM, has announced that it is finalizing plans to sell its music without DRM. That means you won’t have to authorize any device and that any song you buy can be played on any players you own.
Basically, it means that [...]

One reason I was so disgusted when Kindle debuted with its super proprietary Mobipocket format was because of the history of companies, both big and small, to stop supporting the proprietary format of the month, leaving its consumers high and dry.
Wal-mart has announced that it will end its video download service after just one year [...]

moar funny pictures
MLB Makes Fools out of Fans
In 2003, Major League Baseball offered game footage for fans to download to their personal computers for $3.95 each. Red Sox fan, Allan Wood, took advantage of the digital offerings and purchased nearly $300 worth of digital video game footage. The video was downloadable to the [...]

It seems like every day we get more and more announcements of companies selling digital content without software locks on it. Last week, eMusic announced its intention of selling its audiobooks without DRM and now Simply Audiobooks, the second largest online retailer of digital audiobooks (behind Audible) will be offering DRM free audiobooks with [...]

Amazon’s new music store is now open and offering over 2 million songs from artists like KT Tunstell, 50 Cent, and the Rolling Stones. Every song and album is in the MP3 format, the most universal format for digital music, and can be played on nearly every device on the market from the iPod [...]

eMusic is the world’s largest retailer of indie music and the second largest digital music provider after iTunes. Starting today, September 18, eMusic will offer audiobooks in an mp3 format without DRM. The collection will include Blackstone Audio, Hachette, Naxos Audiobooks, Penguin and Random House. The costs are $9.99 for one book [...]

Universal, the largest music company in the recording industry, is testing the DRM free waters with a portion of its catalog. From August 21 to January 31 of 2008, UMG will offer mostly its popular content DRM free. The format will be MP3 which can be played on nearly any music device including the [...]

Amazon.com announced that later this year it will open a music store that will sell DRM-free music from more than 12,000 music labels. (I didn’t know that there were 12,000 music labels). Every song and album in the Amazon catalog will be in MP3 format and DRM free meaning [...]

In an interesting move which may have further industry implications, EMI is offering its entire digital music catalog available without restrictions (DRM). These DRM free songs will be at twice the sound quality as existing downloads for a little higher of a price.
EMI tested out DRM free music with the sales of Norah Jones’ [...]

Borders severing times with Amazon is getting alot of play in the business world. One analyst from Citigroup believes that Borders accounts for 2-3% of Amazon sales. I have real questions about the profitability of the digital download centers.
Borders currently buys direct from the publisher at a 40% discount as do most bookstores. [...]

JK Rowling is famously known amonst online book circles as the highest profile author to refuse to allow digitization of her books. This has not deterred individuals from offering a home brew ebook version of every title in the Harry Potter series. In fact, Book 6 was released at midnight and online reports [...]

Remeber the open letter by Steve Jobs about the fact that DRM is crippling the digital music industry? Somebody might be listening to him. According to the Washington Post, Reps. Rich Boucher (D-Va.) and John Dolittle (R-Calif.) have introduced the “Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship” (or FAIR USE) [...]

Steve Jobs wants the music industry to sell music without restrictions. I can’t agree with this idea more. Restrictions on digital media like music and books can only serve to inhibit the growth of e media.
“Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded [...]

There are rumors sweeping the internet that Amazon will be soon be opening an MP3 music store that sells DRM free music. Earlier this month, an article in The Register suggested that ITunes sales were down due to DRM. With Amazon’s partnership with mobipocket and its ereader, the rumored Kindle, I do [...]

Interesting article at The Register about falling ITunes sales. One analyst suggested that the problem is the DRM which prevents the song purchased at ITunes from being played on another device. A complaint I made about Sony’s Reader and its proprietary ebook scheme.
Sales show that more people are buying CDs than digital downloads. [...]

There are two competing factions in the ebook reading industry. No, not authors v. readers or readers v. publishers (that story is for tomorrow ;) ), it’s IDPF v. OpenReader. The idea is to create an ebook standard that would enable customers to buy any book from any online source and view it [...]