E-Book Currents

Citation

Falk, H. (2001), "E-Book Currents", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918jae.001

E-Book Currents

Library e-book programs

Nashville

The e-book collection at the Nashville Public Library includes 300 titles. This initial offering is viewed as an experiment to see if library users will make use of e-books. Titles that are useful for research, preparing reports, or studying are being offered. The collection is available through the library catalog at its Web site www.library.nashville.org and the ebooks can be located by using "netlibrary" as the author name. Nashville patrons can also access the collection from the netLibrary Web site where e-books can be viewed online or downloaded by patrons who set up a netLibrary Account from Nashville library public PCs. An ebook can be checked out for 24 hours. After that, access to the title will automatically expire and the user must check out the title again to gain further access.

San Antonio

A pilot e-book program at the San Antonio Public Library and five branch libraries allows patrons to borrow e-book reading devices preloaded with titles by popular authors such as Patricia Cornwell, Mary Higgins Clark, James Peterson and Stephan King. Six reading devices are available at the central library plus two at each branch location. Unfortunately, no information on this program seems to be available on the library's Web site www.sat.lib.tx.us.

Singapore

Patrons and Web users everywhere are being invited to access the digital catalog at the e-book Web site of the Singapore National Library Board www.elibraryhub.com. The catalog lists some 10,000 reference books and 13,000 magazine titles. Magazine article downloads will cost about S$1.40 each; the price for journal downloads will be twice as much. Payments can be made by cash-cards, credit cards, or through a debt account with the library. The site is quite attractive in appearance, but is still in development and there do not yet seem to be any e-books available for downloading. To access the site users must sign up by entering extensive information that includes their country and passport number. Plans at the site include free use of e-books for up to three weeks plus 900 educational videos and 700 CD-ROM titles (such as Discovery Channel programs) for viewing over Internet high-speed connections.

Lansing, Michigan

At the Library of Michigan in Lansing, www.libraryofmichigan.org/catalog/eBooks.html patrons can check out Rocket e-book reading devices loaded with titles of their choice. The titles can be located by searching the library's online catalog, using a keyword search for "Rocket eBook". The library also makes a collection of about 3,000 e-book titles, leased from netLibrary, available to their patrons. A netLibrary title can be viewed through the company's Web site from any Internet-connected computer for up to six hours; users must create an account with the Library of Michigan to view these titles. Free workshops are available to help patrons understand how to use the library's e-book collections.

20,000 titles at Project Gutenberg

The huge repository of free e-books at Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org ) is scheduled to reach 20,000 titles by the end of 2001, according to Michael Hart, founder of the project. The project was started in the 1970s but emerged from obscurity when the e-book of Alice in Wonderland was downloaded some 250,000 times between 1988 and 1989. Titles at the project are in plain text and are all out-of-copyright. Hart is concerned that increasing copyright restrictions in the USA are putting a huge number of titles out of circulation and threatening many obscure titles with extinction. He believes that publication of these titles on the Internet as e-books could make them available to all.

Reader restriction news

Dimitry Skylarov, the Russian programmer who is to go on trial for allegedly violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), has a new lawyer. He is John W. Keker, best known as the chief prosecutor when Oliver North was tried during the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal. Keker has taken on the Skylarov case on a pro-bono basis. He is known as one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the USA and is said to be highly intelligent, creative, resourceful, tough, tenacious, a ruthless cross-examiner and totally dedicated to the welfare of his clients. He is also a friend of Robert Mueller, the newly appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The DMCA provides a legal basis for restricting fair use of e-books and other digital materials that are copyrighted. Fair use might include non-commercial uses such as loaning an e-book or copying a CD onto a tape. Fair use also allows copying portions of materials for educational or critical use.

Recently, an encryption expert reported finding a security flaw in Microsoft's reader restriction software. The expert developed a program to defeat the restrictive features and, fearing prosecution, made an anonymous report to the press about that he or she had found. The program converts Microsoft Reader files so they can be viewed by ordinary Web browsers. The expert would like to make this software available to help readers of e-books who are frustrated by Microsoft Reader restrictions.

Overseas, German police have seized the computer and related equipment of a Web site owner who allegedly removed reader restrictions from an Adobe Acrobat e-Book Reader e-book using software of the type developed by Dimitry Skylarov at ElcomSoft in Russia.

Adobe restriction software locks a purchased e-book to a specific computer, preventing it from being transferred to another computer or user. This is not legal in Russia, where users have the right to make back-up copies of any software. According to an article in Scientific American magazine, Adobe may therefore be subject to lawsuits in Russia for undermining the right of e-book readers to make copies.

Researchers feel threatened by DMCA

Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton University, has filed suit against the Recording Industry Association of America after the association allegedly sent a letter threatening Felten with prosecution under the DMCA if he published his findings about encryption methods the industry uses to restrict use of digital music. The association reacted by announcing it has no plans to prosecute Felten. The Internet Society, a major Internet standards group, has warned that efforts to use the DMCA to hamper research efforts are "misguided in the extreme". The Society supports Felten's suit and has also criticized the arrest of Skylarov.

While there are provisions in the DMCA that permit certain security research, many researchers fear that to exercise their rights, they may have to hire lawyers and face heavy court costs. Many security vulnerabilities are investigated and uncovered by individual researchers who do not have the financial resources to defend their activities in court. In reaction to the Skylarov case, several computer security experts have removed information on their research from the Internet. Dug Song, an expert with Arbor Networks, removed all but the first page of his Web site, which now contains only a link to the protest site www.Anti-DMCA.org. Song blames the DMCA for impeding his research efforts. Fred Cohen, professor of digital forensics and a well-known security expert, removed his Forensix software evidence-gathering tool from his Web site. Cohen feels that with researchers being threatened, he is not willing to take the risk that someone offended by his work might try to use the DMCA to legally harass him. Neils Ferguson, a Dutch encryption expert, has refused to publish the details of his finding that the digital content protection system for Firewire connections contains a major defect. Ferguson often travels to the USA and says he does not want to run the risk of being hauled into court when he visits.

Reader restriction hardware

Congress will be asked to pass legislation that would require manufacturers and vendors of computers to build in restrictions on e-books and other digital media. A draft of the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act calls for "certified security technology" built into "any interactive digital device". The act is being put forward by Senator Ernest Hollings (D, South Carolina) and Senator Ted Stevens (R, Arkansas). The legislation is being promoted by movie industry lobbyists. Computer firms including IBM and Intel are working to design the restriction hardware envisioned by the act. The aim is to provide a technology that would allow copyright owners security as they use the Internet for pay-for-play distribution of movies and music as well as e-books. Unlike reader restriction software, built-in restriction hardware might be impervious to circumvention by even the most expert programmer. Violators of the legislation would face five years in prison and a half million dollars in fines for each offense if they sold computers lacking the required restriction hardware.

New MS Reader software

Three new e-book software items are now available at the Microsoft Web site (www.microsoft.com).

1. 1.

   MS Reader Version 2.0. In the past, Microsoft Reader was available in two versions that provided somewhat different capabilities for desktop (or portable) computers than for pocket PCs. Now a new release, Microsoft Reader 2.0 provides similar capabilities for all three types of computers. Key features include a riffle command that allows readers to move quickly through an e-book by clicking on a long control bar. There is also a text-to-speech package that lets readers listen to e-book contents and a feature that provides voice activated navigation through e-books. External content, like music, text and visual materials, can be linked from within e-books and multiple dictionaries can be accessed. Reader restrictions in the new software are relaxed to the extent that secured e-books can be read on up to four different computers (previously the limit was two computers).

2. 2.

   Choose a dictionary. Dictionaries let users look up the meanings of words and other information through the Microsoft Reader Lookup feature. The Dictionary Authoring Kit allows publishers to provide multiple special dictionaries with their Microsoft Reader e-books. The kit provides data files and software tools for making up special dictionaries such as a guide to Latin phrases, a travel guide reference, a dictionary of wine and cooking terms, an old English dictionary or a language-to-language dictionary.

3. 3.

   MS Reader E-books from MS Word. The RMR 1.1Tool for Ebook Creation automatically adds a "Read" button to the toolbar of Microsoft Word. Users can open any Word document and click on the button to create a Microsoft Reader (.LIT) version of the document. Any image included in the Word document will be transferred to the e-book. Word tables of contents are automatically translated into e-book contents listings. Word formatting that is incompatible with Microsoft Reader is automatically removed.

Reading device price cuts

After offering bonuses such as free e-books and periodical subscriptions with REB e-book reading devices, Gemstar-TV Guide Int'l has decided that its devices are too expensive to attract e-book readers. Only about 50,000 users have purchased Gemstar devices thus far. The price of the REB 1100 device, with black-and-white screen, has been reduced (about 60 percent) to US$120. The color screen model REB 1200 is selling for US$350.

New e-book vendors

Yahoo!

By arrangement with four major book publishers, Yahoo! www.yahoo.com/books/ebooks is now offering a collection of over 1,000 e-books that includes many current best-selling titles. The publishers supplying current e-book titles include Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, Random House and HarperCollins. The books division of AOL Time Warner is not taking part. Titles are available in Microsoft Reader or Adobe Acrobat e-Book Reader format. A wide variety of e-books is available for purchase, including mysteries, romance titles, science fiction, reference books, college textbooks, travel and business titles. Many of the e-books being offered are out-of-copyright titles, priced at over US$4 each. Such titles are available at other Internet sites without charge.

WH Smith

The UK book retailer WH Smith has opened an e-book section on its Web site http://ebooks.whsmith.co.uk. Thousands of e-books, including many current bestsellers, are available in a wide variety of categories. The titles are provided by Content Reserve, a wholesale distributor of digital materials with 250 publisher members including Random House, McGraw-Hill, Time-Warner Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Taylor & Francis, and John Wiley & Sons. Titles are available in Microsoft Reader and Adobe Acrobat e-Book Reader formats and are being sold at about 10 percent less than the lowest prices for equivalent print titles in bookstores. Many out-of copyright "classic literature" e-book titles are being offered at over £4 each. Such titles are available at other Internet sites without charge.

Howard Falk (falkho@msn.com) is an Independent Consultant based in Bloomfield, New Jersey, USA.