Notes from the Tuesday morning keynotes at O'Reilly TOC

What appears in [brackets] are my thoughts (as with all of the posts that being with "TOC:"). Otherwise everything is from the speakers.







Bob Stein

A Book is a Place...

What is a book?

Webster says pages bound into a volume

Stein: user driven media (Producer driven media transforms to user driven media)

Stein started Criterion Collection as a "publishing company" when that was a term for paper, but Stein saw it differently. When you put a movie into a theatre its broadcast, when you put a VHS into someone's hands, that's publishing.

Stein published some of the first ebooks (Maus cd-rom)

Internet separates "book" from object (no longer paper or CD in your hand)

Stein: books are what humans use to move ideas around time and space.

The idea 10 years ago was push the data out to everyone, but not that the people would bring data to the world (internet).

"they told me it'd be slow... I'll just continue... unless you all want to get off the network" <-- Stein's presentation couldn't load Flock page Stein got an author (without gods) to blog about his writing, and then gam3r 7h30ry was written with note cards and user comments along side it [this is authors doing group work. maybe this brings extroverts to writing or are introverts actually extroverts on the page?] The internet "has completely changed the bounds of the classroom" the conversation follows them elsewhere "The Golden Notebook" was an experiment in public reading. Text on the left and comments on the right. Stein wanted to encourage a cultural of commenting in public reading. It was a failure, but the 7 readers who participated and commented loved the experience. Asynchronous reading group is what Stein calls it. It used Comment Press. [it was a failure for spectators, but not participants -- common theme?] Book writing process can now be a discussions in a blog while producing it and then Comment Press after the book comes out. extends boundaries "Books are much more social experiments than we realize" Stein: "a book is a place where readers (and sometimes author) congregate." "World of Warcraft is the best proof that a book is a place" The participants are paying money to write a fiction book together "Our great grandchildren will think of reading as a social experience -- something they do with others." "The principle role of publishers in the future is to build and nurture vibrant communities for authors and their readers" [should we be archive WoW for future generations? is hosting a world what we do? a place for the conversation?] Marginalia in old texts is a conversation. We used to converse with the book in the margin, stopped for a long time, and now can start again with the digital age. There were no page numbers in books for 70 years (1400s). Book technology evolves. [if reading is such a social activity in the digital world, where will the introverts go?] Peter Brantley Literature as a (web) service

We still think of books as objects. Sometimes works of art. There are still some beautifully made, but they are typically machine made industrial, quickly made. A Torah is way outside what we think of as a book. We have a limited definition. IA Richards: "A book is a machine to think with". Reading is a secluded, private, activity. Reading is a social product. "Our analog cultural is being digitized". What is a book is about to be redefined. Flickr "This is no Barnes and Noble". A book has a new set of relationships, they are networked commodities. Reading is becoming a social act. [The extroverts are taking over the introverts turf?] "What is published will be less about the book than the people who read them" We need to move mentally from books to people. digital words can be joined across books.

The Gemeinschaft book, the book for itself is become the geim___ book, the book for the community. Moving towards an environment of participatory engagement. A book is a passageway into a world of thought and the books can work together.

"The Skin Project" a short story written in tattoo one person and word at a time.

HOMEWORK

1 If you machine translated all the worlds non fiction books into all languages you would at least preserve the "knowledge tokens". you have made the awareness of knowledge available as it is accessible to a huge portion of the world. just knowing the knowledge exists is worth a lot

2 wikipedia is linked into print books. linked data. new awareness and knowledge that's machine generated - google does this now

this is now a service world, not a product world. rights about the text are not the world, but its about the connections. services generate renewable revenue.

"books are empowered in the digital age by words and the people who read them" google book search has figured this out

literature is a catalyst



Corey Doctorow

Don't Get iTunesed with your eBooks

The music publishers built a moral case for people ripping them off with their practices. For instance searching people at movie theaters for cameras. If you're going to treat me like a felon, I might as well act like one.

eBooks have the worst ratio of hours in meetings to profit

the lawsuit against google is the only place where publishing has gone against itself (google was offering a way for users to find books they want to buy and publishers attacked it). [there was a audible tone of disapproval from the audience when Corey said publishing shouldn't have attacked google]

DRM is a futile errand in general. Books can be retyped and scanned. Harry Potter was proofed and translated into German in 24 hours. Publishers do everything they can to offer non-DRM products (paper) and then work to encrypt the digital version

video game called Spore. had the most draconian DRM ever and was the most pirated video game in the year it was released

in Russia they stopped piracy by making day and date release. it needs to be released in Russia on the same day it is released in america (game makers of HAL said this)

if publishing has one good thing to offer against piracy, it's that they're not the record industry. the deals artists get from publishers is so much better than musicians. the moral argument for pirating music is that music companies are jerks

vendors want DRM because they make publishers pay for it

the message from overdrive about DRM is that if you pay for your books you will lose them someday. if you steal your books you get to keep them forever.

DRM locks you into the DRM provider. the law requires the customer to repurchase the product. You can't offer them your version of DRM after encrypting your product with their DRM. you lose control of your destiny when you use another's DRM the company that controls the licensing controls the future

DRM is all cost no benefit. Kindle and audible require DRM

any time someone puts a lock on something you own and won't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit

"while you were worried about google amazon came in and clobbered you"

amazon's unboxed product has terms that allow them to remove files from your hard drive and to copy the contents of their drive to amazon.

"don't break copyright law" should be your ULA. A 12 year old buying Harry Potter isn't prepared to agree to the legalese of a ULA and much worse he'll grow up some day and see what you asked him to do and feel exploited.

If you look at a ULA, you do not own a product. Purchasing a product that the ULA tells you is not your product (or worse that you'll be infringed on by the company just for agreeing to the ULA) is a moral case for ripping off the company that issued the ULA -- a moral case for piracy.

Brewster says they used to spend a lot of time back in the day copy protecting software products. The company that offered all the copy protection was Microsoft. Delfina FTP bought into this and then Windows became the number 1 platform and shipped a free FTP and Delfina was dead.

DRM platform is this kind of thing. wave about DRM with one hand and take control of the platform with your right hand

to safegaurd the future of publishing say to amazon that you will not sell another product without the choice to include DRM or not. it's a terrible notion to allow amazon to dictate the future of DRM