Features

It’s not very cool to argue in favour of DRM (digital rights management – basically systems that attempt to stop you copying digital files). The hip libertarian view is that it is an infringement of human rights, a restriction on the spread of art and ideas, an imposition by corporate culture on the freedom of the individual and the criminalisation of innocent youth.  A curious shift in logic marks out what is sometimes called the “freetard” position; because it hard to control (and impossible to eliminate) file sharing, trying to control it is some regressive and oppressive act that contravenes […]

That headline shouldn’t be such a big deal, but if you knew my dad, it would be – and the fact that he self-published is a serious sign of the times.  Though he’s been totally supportive of my own self-publishing ventures, the idea was anathema to him for his own books until this point.  He was just too much of an old-schooler.  And this shows the revolution that Amanda Hocking has unleashed.  Not showing to the world that you can make a million dollars self-publishing, because most people realize that’s an aberration, but definitely making it seem like an everyday […]

On Facebook, Writer Beware linked to this thought-provoking, and pretty depressing, article about ereaders.

The New York Times recently calculated that the environmental impact of a single e-reader—factoring in the use of minerals, water, and fossil fuels along the manufacturing process—is roughly the same as fifty books. At first that sounds encouraging; after all, even the smallest personal library contains fifty volumes. But the real problems come in lifespan. At present, the average e-reader is used less than two years before it is replaced. That means that the nearly ten million e-readers expected to be in use by next