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Posts Tagged ‘authors-guild’

Amazon’s Kindle device sparked quite some controversy last year over its text-to-speech capabilities. The Authors Guild was up in arms over the feature, identifying it as a threat to audio book sales, and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) had some things to say about the Kindle, too.

In June 2009, NFB and ACB jointly filed a discrimination lawsuit against Arizona State University (ASU) to prevent the university from deploying Amazon’s Kindle DX as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students because the device cannot be used by blind students. Sounds arbitrary, I know, but more on that later.

ASU was one of six institutions of higher education to deploy the Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to assess the role of electronic textbooks and reading devices in the classroom.

The main contentions in the lawsuit filed by NFB and ACB – which also targeted the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) – was that while the Kindle DX has a text-to-speech feature, the menus to select a book or purchase a book are not blind-friendly, making it impossible to select textbooks for download.

The blindness organizations alleged that this was in violation of federal law. ABOR and ASU denied and continue to deny any violations of the law. Either way, the parties this morning announced that they have reached a settlement agreement.

The agreement was reached in light of several factors, according to the press release: ASU’s commitment to providing access to all programs and facilities for students with disabilities, the fact that the pilot program will end in the Spring of 2010 and the university’s agreement that should ASU deploy e-book readers in future classes over the next two years, it will strive to use devices that are accessible to the blind.

Interestingly, the settlement agreement also stipulates that Amazon “and others” are making improvements to and progress in the accessibility of e-book readers. It’s unclear which what these improvements are and when they will be into effect.

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It appears that the plaintiffs in the Google Books settlement fiasco are going back to the drawing board by asking to postpone a hearing that was scheduled for October 7.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice made its intentions clear that Google needed to rewrite the settlement that the company made with the Author’s Guild to make orphan books available on the web. The hearing was to take place to hear from the plaintiffs, which include the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and others, as to what needs to be changed in the settlement.

Last October, Google signed a $125 million settlement with the Author’s Guild to pay authors for copyrighted works it has scanned and made available on the Web through its Google Book Search project. More than 7 million books have been scanned by Google so far, a large portion of them out of print. The settlement, though the site is up and running, is still up in the air, because of the antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice. And the settlement has draw its fair share of critics, including Jeff Bezos.

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We’re running a Back to School extravaganza right now, but one thing that I don’t know if we really addressed is: Who exactly is going back to school? Or, more accurately, who is going to college for the first time in a few weeks? (That’s who these Back to School things are usually for, freshman

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Back-to-School: Who are our new college freshman?

Video Game - E3 2009 - The Pile Strap in for a 50-minute thrill ride! Hit the jump for EA’s press conference from earlier today. Video Games - E3 2009 - Sony PSP

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You can now watch the entire Sony GamesCom press conference

Back when I was in college - nigh on fifteen years ago - I remember reading a book by John Seabrook about his experience on the Internet.

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Back to School: Buying cheap tech stuff

Can EA help make the next Jerzy Altidore?

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U.S. Soccer looks to EA Sports to help develop next generation of pros

We’re starting to see more and more “hate” being thrown Amazon’s way. That’s because, of course, the Kindle is something of a success , and publishers, who already operate a pretty wonky business (more on that in a bit), are becoming concerned that Amazon will soon be able to wield the same kind of power that Apple did over the music industry. Basically, book publishers don’t want Amazon to “own” the digital book market

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Book publishers’ latest hobby? Complaining about the Amazon Kindle’s success

I would say that it’s a good sign for the worldwide economy that Sharp is increasing its LCD panel production by tens of thousands of screens per month. Sharp is after all one of the largest provider of OEM LCD screens which get sold not only under the Sharp brand but many others too. The company is raising it’s forecasted output from 120 million to 127 million as the LCD demand rises in developing nations.

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Sharp is increasing LCD panel production

John pooh poohs Google Chrome OS , just like he pooh poohed the Palm Pre. John’s a smart guy, and has some good insights into the technology world. But on the issue of Google Chrome OS, I think he’s wrong.

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A rebuttal, in which Chrome OS is praised, and no disparaging remarks are made

Launching in conjunction with Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade , Capcom will release Marvel vs Capcom 2 on July 29 for 1200MS Points via Xbox Live.

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Capcom finally dates Marvel vs Capcom 2, hitting XBLA later this month