via Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why file-sharing is still so popular.

A great discussion on the future of ebooks in libraries.

The latest version of Microsoft’s browser has finally overtaken Internet Explorer 6, now accounting for 22.3 per cent of the global browser market in January 2010, according to market share measurements carried out by NetApplications.

Interestingly IE8 only took 10 months to become the global browser leader. However, its recent boost can probably be attributed to many people moving away from IE6, after Microsoft admitted that Internet Explorer was the weak link in recent hacker attacks on Google's systems in China.

via Internet Explorer 8 becomes the most popular browser in the world – Telegraph.

This has not been the greatest start to the year for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Days after news of the latest security flaw in Internet Explorer, Google is adding fuel to the fire by phasing out support for IE6 for two of its Google Apps products, Docs and Sites (which recently got an aesthetic upgrade).

via Google Twists Knife In IE6, Pulls Support From Docs And Sites.

If there are any libraries still restricted to IE6?  It’s been outdated for years but some IT departments have been dragging their feet upgrading.

Less than a week has passed since Apple unveiled the iPad and its new e-book reading software, but it seems that the device is already disrupting the publishing market. This past weekend, publishing house Macmillan and online retailer Amazon sparred over the price of e-books.

The dispute began in behind-the-scenes conversations between the two companies, then spilled over into the public on Friday evening when Amazon removed the ability to buy all of Macmillan’s titles—both electronic and paper versions—from its site. Third-party vendors who operate through Amazon still had the titles for sale.

via Amazon and Macmillan fence over e-book pricing | Entertainment & HDTV | Playlist | Macworld.

For the Love of Culture, Google, Copyright and our Future. Astute and moving commentary by Lawrence Lessig, a love letter to the real-space library.

Whatever your view of it, notice first just how different this future promises to be. In real libraries, in real space, access is not metered at the level of the page (or the image on the page). Access is metered at the level of books (or magazines, or CDs, or DVDs). You get to browse through the whole of the library, for free. You get to check out the books you want to read, for free. The real-space library is a den protected from the metering of the market. It is of course created within a market; but like kids in a playroom, we let the life inside the library ignore the market outside.

This freedom gave us something real. It gave us the freedom to research, regardless of our wealth; the freedom to read, widely and technically, beyond our means. It was a way to assure that all of our culture was available and reachable–not just that part that happens to be profitable to stock. It is a guarantee that we have the opportunity to learn about our past, even if we lack the will to do so. The architecture of access that we have in real space created an important and valuable balance between the part of culture that is effectively and meaningfully regulated by copyright and the part of culture that is not. The world of our real-space past was a world in which copyright intruded only rarely, and when it did, its relationship to the objectives of copyright was relatively clear.

We forget all this today.

via Lessig on Copyright and Culture: “Things could have been different” Boing Boing.

I’ve been having a hard time not linking to everything Jessamyn has posted while she’s been guesting on Boing Boing.

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

via After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday’s Web Site | The New York Observer.

So much for that theory.

Instead, expect to hear DRM apologists (either DRM vendors or technologically naive people in publishing who believe what DRM vendors tell them) now saying, “Oh sure, it works for O'Reilly, but those are tech books. Regular trade books can't possibly work the same way!”

via O’Reilly drops ebook DRM, sees 104% increase in sales Boing Boing.

via Chertoff needs to get paid Boing Boing.

Can you say conflict of interest?