Category: News: Arts & Entertainment (Page 24 of 25)

My CBC.ca viewing was interrupted today by a survey request. CBC wanted to know more about how I felt about podcasts. Yippee! A couple of things here to note: the “could you fill out this survey” was a clear question and I was told it would take approx. 15 min, good to know, and when I clicked yes, I got to view the story I was going to before I had to take the survey. Lovely because 15 min. later I would have forgotten why I’d come to the site in the first place. The survey layout was also great. There was a progress bar at the bottom so I could see how far along I was. The questions were phrased in an easy-to-understand way with good check boxes. The only question I didn’t like was one where you pick which programs you’d like podcasts of and you could only pick a maximum of 5. There were at least 10 I wanted, but I guess the survey folks need to narrow things down. Overall it was fantastic and I said at the end that I would be interested in discussing the future of podcasts more so I signed my name and contact info. At the moment I listen mostly to the Radio 3 podcasts and Tod Maffin’s, but I was thinking the other day that those damn leaders debates should be podcasts because I kind of have cooler things to do at 8 pm than sit around watching a bunch of hot headedness. I know CBC has the debates in video form you can download, but I need the podcast version so I can listen to it in the car on the way to and from work. Maybe podcasts of the leaders debates exist and I haven’t found them?

I did find the CBC Blog Report on the election though:
Canada Votes Blog report

The only other dissatisfying part of the survey was a series of questions on whether I’d pay to hear CBC podcasts and how much. I understand there are costs involved for producing new content and that there are permissions and rights fees for using the radio content in a podcast but I don’t want a subscription model (i.e., pay X amount for unlimited downloads during 12 months) nor do I want a per podcast fee. So I said I’d be ok with sponsorship or advertising. I used to be a regular Globe and Mail reader. I looked at the online site every morning and then sometimes in the afternoon if I was following a story. Now, I never go to the site because you have to subscribe to see the good stuff.

I’m very glad that CBC offers podcasts and I hope they continue to be free and I loved taking their survey even though I hate surveys. I guess relevance is everything in surveyland.

The Globe and Mail ran an article today by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Kevin J. Delaney titled “HarperCollins does Net end run: will sell digitized books to search firms”.

I’d like to link to the article but help me if I could find it in the digital edition of The Globe. So here’s my summary. There’s a controversy raging at the moment about the future of book, in particular the future of books as Google and Amazon wish to display them in their digital glory. At the moment publishers send physical copies of their books to Amazon and Google to be scanned and included in Search Inside the Book (Amazon) and Google Print (now Google Book Search). Google does offer publishers the option of sending an electronic scan of the book instead of the physical copy, which for Canadian publishers means no shipping costs and no duty fees.

The big news today is that HarperCollins Publishers is telling the search engine giants and Amazon to forget it. Essentially HarperCollins wants the search engines to back away from digitizing content on their behalf and instead wants to digitize their own books and determine who they license the content to and how it will be displayed.

Quote: Instead of sending copies of their books to various Internet companies for digitizing, as it does now, HarperCollins will create a digital files of its books in its own digital warehouse. Search companies such as Google will then be allowed to create an index of each book’s content so that when consumers do a search, they will be pointed to a page view. However, that view will be hosted by a server in the HarperCollins digital warehouse.

So the digital files will only be on HarperCollins servers. Search engines will have to crawl the HarperCollins website but will not be allowed to index the image of the page. HarperCollins will control the terms of trade, i.e., deciding who they want to partner with as retail partners. There is no strategy for selling directly to the consumer. They hope to have scanned and digitized key titles by mid-2006. And, the strategy is seen by CEO Jane Friedman as a way to “protect our rights and the rights of our authors.”

So what do you think? It doesn’t exactly address the reader’s right to easily find and discover new titles, when they want, where they want, unless HarperCollins has a very clever arrangement with Amazon and Google about how those page views will work. Perhaps nested within an Amazon frame? I don’t think it is in Amazon’s best interest to move people away from their site.

On the one hand, I think HarperCollins is going to engage in a very interesting exercise. I’m keen to see how it all works out. On the other hand, I’d rather see publishers work things out together with Amazon and Google, you know, the subject-matter experts in online retail and search.

I’m confident that there are enough level-headed people to find a way to balance user rights with creator rights, but, it is a big conversation that isn’t easy to have. Again, what do you think?

UPDATE: Quill and Quire reported the following in the OMNI edition. A quote from David Kent, president and CEO of HarperCollins Canada.

Quote: Kent is more inclined to talk about the principles at stake. Maintaining control over digital content reflects publishersí right to be paid for their work. ìWe invested in [the book], we took the risk, we should control it,î he says, adding that at the same time, no publisher wishes to restrict the publicís access to the books. ìIf you want it, come to us, and you can get it.î

Get 20% at Chapters/Indigo this Sunday (Nov 20) — just print out this coupon (link below)– apparently, you don’t have to be an iRewards member.

http://images.chapters.indigo.ca/images/Email/20051114_cad/CAD_irBrowser.html?sssdmh=dm1.169211

Vancouver Comicon is this Sunday from 11 AM to 5 PM at Heritage Hall, 3102 Main Street, Vancouver.

Vancouver Comicon Information Page

I am envious of anyone who gets to go. My dancecard is full that day and I doubt I’ll be able to get down.

Admission is $3, please, someone go on my behalf.

Google launched the Library Print project on Thursday and Amazon.com announced that it would offer online access to any page or section of a book, as well as the entire book. There is quite a bit of confusion, even in the publishing industry, about what these programs are so here’s my cheatsheet.

Google Print and the Google Print Library Project are two different programs.

Google Print is like Amazon’s Search Inside the Book. Publishers sign on to the program and provide a copy of their books so that Google/Amazon can scan and index the work. Google and Amazon offer users limited access to the book based on the user’s search terms–a limited number of pages forward or backward and a limited percentage of the total book. With Google, publishers are able to access site statistics on the number of times the title was viewed, the click-throughs on the Buy the Book links, and other goodies I’m sure. As a publisher you could use that information to optimize your own website pages and the descriptions of the book you provide to Amazon, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, etc. There is no fee to sign on to the program, however, publishers incur the cost of shipping titles to be scanned.

Google Print Library Project is the one caught up in US courtcases. In this program, Google has partnered with key US libraries to scan their entire collections (New York Public Library and the university libraries at Stanford, Harvard, Michigan and Oxford). The portion of the book made available to the user is dependent on the copyright. If the book is in the public domain then the whole book is accessible online. If the book is protected by copyright only the bibliographic data (title, author, publisher, etc.) is accessible plus a small except to provide context to the search term used.

Amazon Pages program allows users to “un-bundle” any of the books in the program. (It’s unclear to me how they determine which books are part of the program or which publishers Amazon is partnering with–maybe they haven’t worked out the details, the services are not yet available.) In the Amazon Pages program the user can choose to buy just the pages or sections needed and read them online.

Amazon Upgrade allows customers buying a physical copy of the book to also have the book available online for reading.

I’m interested in how the Amazon programs pan out because it seems they will run into publishers who have problems with how digital rights were assigned in author contracts and/or publishers who already provide ebook versions, again a rights conflict. The difference in approach will also be interesting to observe. Will Amazon engage with publishers in a different way than Google? For publishers, Amazon is another customer, they are a bookseller and there is an existing financial arrangement in place based on selling books. Not the case with Google. Google is making its money by increasing the number of pages it has indexed so that it can generate revenue off the ads it places on those pages. The unsung point so far in the Google discussions is that publishers in the Google Print program share in the ad revenue.

Congrats to Shawna and Patricia who will be receiving a subscription to the best magazine in the world.

I’ve only just stopped drooling. The latest edition of Geist magazine has landed on the doorstep and I love it. Check out the Geist website. Geist is my favourite literary magazine of ideas and culture. Every issue spends a long time in my hands. And recently, the mag has been arriving with a short note from the editor. This is no regular note. This issue it starts “Welcome (again) to the other side of this piece of paper …”

A couple of issues ago the note went on to explain and apologize for the lateness of the issue. The personal note is very much like a blog post and the humanity of the Geist team is plainly evident.

The note this issue continues with an invitation for readers to think of Geist during the gift-giving season. The Geist Gift Pack included with the issue also includes an opportunity for the gift-giver to receive an archival print from the mag. Here’s the pitch:

“The idea of giving you a gift in exchange for you giving a gift came about after our accountant, whose name is Mindy, demonstrated on a spreadsheet what we had long suspected: that the cost of gaining a new reader for Geist by the conventional methods of direct mail had reached the astronomical proportion of two and even three times the price of a subscription. At the same time, the cost of acquiring gift subscriptions had remained at the level of only a few bucks each.”

Every subscription also draws three times its value in advertising and subsidy revenue. This whole pitch is effective for me because I like when companies explain the cost of their products, the business model; it makes me a better-informed consumer. One of the things I find frustrating is people who think $30-40 hardcover books are too expensive. Someone in publishing should explain the economic factors that contribute to that cost. Maybe I will … but not today.

So do you love new ideas and new writing made in Canada? Do you enjoy a quirky look at the world? Do you live in Canada? Have you always wanted a Geist subscription?

I want to support Geist, and I want to give you a subscription to the magazine.

I’m offering 2 subscriptions. If you would like to be Geisted, send me an email, monique@somisguided.com with the subject line “Geist Me”.

Vancouver Public Library has a series this week called Speak Up: Who Owns Knowledge. I attended the session last night on copyright.

Andreas Schroeder was a speaker on the panel representing the Writers’ Union of Canada and, in particular, writers who make their living from writing. Some of those writers are concerned about the seeming conflict between their right to earn a living from their creations and users’ ideas about the right to pay little or nothing for works available online.

There was a certain amount of heated debate, which I’ll refrain from at the moment. But writers and publishers pay attention. It is no longer just Google trying to “get your horse out of the gate.” [I’m quoting a speaker from the session.]

EdinburghNews.Scotsman.com reported today that an alliance has formed between Microsoft and Yahoo! to challenge Google’s project to digitize the world’s books.

Quote: The group – the Open Content Alliance (OCA) …, unveiled earlier this month by a group of digital archivists and also backed by Hewlett-Packard and Adobe, says it has signed up more than a dozen major libraries in North America, the UK and mainland Europe.

Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Microsoft’s MSN Search, said the world’s largest software maker would fund the digital duplication of 150,000 old books over the next year.

The Association of American Publishers and the US Authors Guild have filed two separate law suits against Google, saying that the Google Print Library Project infringes on their copyrights.

My understanding of the Library Project is that the information displayed about the book is the bibliographic data only. The exact information that publishers spend all sorts of time and energy trying to get out to Amazon, Bowker, BookNet (in Canada) and other data aggregators.

A user searches for book information, maybe using “Battle of Britain” as a keyword, and the Library Print Project screen–for books protected by copyright–will show that search term within a sentence or two to give the user context. The bibliographic information for the book is also shown: title, author, publisher, publication date, number of pages, etc. The full page of the book is never shown.

So why are publishers and authors upset?

In my opinion Google is not doing a good enough job expressing to publishers, authors and the general public that full pages are not shown on books protected by copyright. They are showing less information than what is available on most Amazon listings.

(Google is doing a good job of providing publishers with links to their blogs and newsletters. What I think they need to do in addition is get the traditional media talking about the exact amount of content shown on the Library Project listings. The conversation is drifting into a general debate about copyright and digital copyright and those are confusing issues. Look at the debate about Bill C-60 and the amendments to the Copyright Act in Canada. These topics are less clear than the root issues of the Library Project, which is a user is looking for book on X, Google shows Y.)

On the opposite side of the fence, publishers and authors are not clearly expressing their concerns. I don’t think the issue has anything to do with Google providing users bibliographic information. I think publishers and authors are concerned that a giant corporation will have access to the full text of millions of books. When those books do fall into the public domain, Google will be able to easily profit from having those materials. So the “free” service Google is providing publishers definitely has a labour cost associated with it for Google, who I assume is treating the scanning process as an investment in future knowledge acquisition.

Now why is that wrong? A work in the public domain can be exploited by anyone who wants to repackage it and sell it. In the case of Google they are doing the repackaging (scanning the text) years in advance of when the book falls into the public domain. But, they are not selling it and they are not distributing the contents in any way that infringes on copyright.

In regards to the Google Library Project, you have a company who is providing a service to book readers and researchers. Google is making books easier to find and buy. The nature of the internet expands the audience so the number of users who might be looking for a book on “Battle of Britain” increases substantially from just the folks in your local library to folks around the world. That’s a good thing. Any sales of the book, while it is protected by copyright, benefit the content creator (the author, publisher). Authors and publishers benefit for the entire lifespan of the book, the entire time the book is protected by copyright, 50-75 years after the death of the copyright holder.

Publishers and authors should really reflect on the root of their fears and clearly express those concerns to Google, then Google will have an opportunity to respond. But saying it is the act of scanning the text and equating it to photocopying an entire book is not the same, and I don’t think any court will think differently.

And authors who want to be included in the Library Project, don’t worry about it. It is better to submit your work to Google Print, which offers a similar service but displays the content of the book differently.