Universities and Justice Department settle Kindle on Campus
The AP (which is now hosted on Yahoo while it negotiates contracts) reports that 3 more universities testing the Amazon’s Kindle have agreed to stop testing or using ANY eReader until support for the blind is incorporated.
The legal settlements were made with Pace University in New York, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and Reed College in Portland, Ore.
The agreement takes effect as soon as the spring semester ends — giving the schools time to finish the pilot project with the Kindles, but preventing them from continuing or expanding their use until the blind and visually impaired can use them as easily as students who can see.
All of this makes zero sense to me. The spread of eReaders helps blind students. If they start blocking development it hurts them and everyone else.
Also the little ‘until the blind can use them as easily as students who can see‘ is unrealistic. That’s never going to happen.
Is the Wisdom of the Crowds acting in Self-Interest?
Next, let’s consider a NYTimes article by John Tierney that’s sure to ruffle a few feathers.
It talks about how the wisdom of the crowds might end up being dangerous.
It quotes someone named Jaron Lanier -
“The basic idea of this contract,” he writes,
“is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.
Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.”
Mr. Lanier might have a point.
The best point the article makes is -
In theory, public officials could deter piracy by stiffening the penalties, but they’re aware of another crucial distinction between online piracy and house burglary:
There are a lot more homeowners than burglars, but there are a lot more consumers of digital content than producers of it.
The fact that there are a lot more consumers of content than creators means it becomes very easy to use ‘the greatest good of the majority’ arguments to hand content creators a raw deal.
Of course, consumers don’t want to feel bad about it so they create endless delusions around how free sharing is legitimate i.e.
“An intelligent person feels guilty for downloading music without paying the musician, but they use this free-open-culture ideology to cover it,”
The more guilty the person feels about not paying the more intricate and intelligent the argument for not paying for it.
Google takes on a country, and not just any country
This statement by Hillary Rodham Clinton is interesting.
There’s nothing I could write here that hasn’t already been written. It’s just unbelievable that anyone would take on China.
2010 Trends to Watch – eReaders
It should be no surprise that eReaders are making their way into ’top trends of 2010′ lists of all sorts.
The EFF has this as their #2 trend -
2. Books and Newspapers: .TXT is the new .MP3
A cluster of similar battles around user control are also gathering around e-reader products like Kindle and Google Book Search, many of which rewrite the rules for book ownership and privacy wholesale.
Mobile Health News finds a #3 spot for eReaders in its 10 technologies at CES wrap-up -
eReaders everywhere. Baby boomers like eReaders such as the Amazon Kindle — so let’s see more of them — gasp, but this many?
The Que and Alex made their way into various ‘best gadgets at CES’ lists. Everyone is getting a kick out of referring to the Alex as ‘what the Nook should have been’.
Filed under: kindle Tagged: | kindle news
