Archives
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Lawyer Exposes RIAA’s Legal Bullying
Recording Industry vs. The People
The Judges’ Journal, the quarterly publication of the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association, invited the author of this blog to write an article for its “Equal Access to Justice” edition.I of course accepted the invitation, and submitted an article, entitled “Large Recording Companies vs. The Defenseless : Some Common Sense Solutions to the Challenges of the RIAA Litigations”. In it I describe the RIAA litigation process and the challenge it represents to our adversarial system of justice, and make 15 hopefully constructive suggestions as to how the Courts can help to level the playing field in these cases.
The article has now been published, and is available in the current edition of The Judges’ Journal.
The ABA has graciously granted permission to reprint the article, for the benefit of those who are not recipients of The Judges’ Journal.
Copyright — laura
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Accessibility Checklist I Vowed I’d Never Write
The Accessibility Checklist I Vowed I’d Never Write | Web Builder Zone
I have said on numerous occasions that there is no simple checklist that, when followed, will give you an accessible site without fail. There are simply too many variables. But, what do you do when you want to create accessible pages and you have dozens or even hundreds of developers who (like most of their peers) have little to no experience with accessibility? What do you do when it just simply isn’t practical to have someone review all of your pages? In short, how do you insure that a very large organization creates pages that can be accessed by the largest audience possible without drastically increasing your budget? This is one of the questions we have been (and continue to) struggle with.I believe that in order to solve this problem, we will need to take a multi-faceted approach. However, one element which seems inevitable is training for our designers and developers. I don’t think it’s reasonable (no matter how much I would like to try) to make our devs and designers into accessibility experts, so what can we do? If we can’t yet achieve excellent accessibility, what about simply doing better than we are doing now?
Website Design — laura
Friday, July 11, 2008
Neil Gaiman: giving away ebooks sold my print boo
Neil Gaiman: giving away ebooks sold my print books - Boing Boing
Neil Gaiman and his publisher have published the results of their free online release of his novel American Gods earlier this year — the conclusion? Giving away ebooks for free sold books:
Copyright — laura
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Simply Audiobooks webstore to carry DRM-free Random House Audio downloads
Simply Audiobooks webstore to carry DRM-free Random House Audio downloads - Boing Boing
Simply Audiobooks — an excellent audiobook retailer in Toronto — has launched an online store selling all of Random House’s DRM-free downloadable titles. Random House is one of the many audiobook publishers that wants to give up on DRM, but they’ve been thrwarted by Audible (the exclusive supplier of audiobook downloads to Amazon and the iTunes Store) because the company won’t sell DRM-free titles even when the publisher and author wish to make their work available without technological restrictions. The good news is that DRM-free formats are much easier to sell and support, which is clearing the way for new entrants into the marketplace like Simply Audiobooks and Zipidee, to compete with Audible.
Copyright — laura
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Audiobook downloads with no DRM or watermarks from Naxos
Audiobook downloads with no DRM or watermarks from Naxos - Boing Boing
Naxos produces fantastic, professionally read audiobooks of contemporary and classic lit — and they distribute them on CD and as DRM-free, watermark-free MP3s. Basically, this is a company that assumes you’re a valued customer, not a dirty thief. They’re pioneers in the growing field of DRM-free audiobook providers, who, unlike market-leader Audible (a division of Amazon) allow publishers and writers to decide whether or not they want to their books crippled with DRM.
Copyright — laura
