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Friday, February 15, 2002 |
A round up of interesting links from other librarian sites:
The USA PATRIOT Act and Patron Privacy on Library Internet Terminals
"The upshot is that there will be a great many more surveillance orders, everywhere in the country, and in turn there will be more requests for library records, including Internet use records. Think of law enforcement as needing to enter two doors to apprehend a suspect." [at LLRX, via LIS News]
11:13:17 PM 
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The Death of Digital Rights Management?
“ 'It’s very difficult to sell [digital-rights] technology to companies that are no longer trying to sell content,' observes Schreiber. In a way, it’s a classic chicken-and-egg question: is the digital rights management industry hampered by a failing market, or are e-books floundering for want of better digital-rights technology?" [at Technology Review, via Tomalak's Realm]
How about both are hindered by usability problems and a focus that is decidedly not on the consumer?
"Analysts say the content protection companies left standing, including Alchemedia and SealedMedia, have technologies that may break the usability barrier, finally enabling the serious online sales providers envision. “There are some extremely bright people working in this space who will be able to figure out what the consumer is willing to put up with,” says Letts. Alchemedia’s “Mirage” system, for example, does away with the requirement for special viewer software by making sure the decrypted form of a protected file appears only on-screen, never in random-access memory, where a computer looks for any data it’s trying to print or copy. That way, publishers can put content out in a format compatible with a regular Web browser, and “the fear about the save and copy buttons is neutralized. We don’t have to block those doors because the data in [memory] is still encrypted,” says Schreiber."
"SealedMedia’s system, on the other hand, does require a special two-megabyte browser plug-in, but it stores decryption keys on a central Internet-accessible server, meaning that if you have the right password, you can access content from whatever machine you happen to be using. SealedMedia’s viewer can also handle audio and video content. 'SealedMedia is providing us for the first time with a robust, convenient way to deliver multimedia e-books,' says ipicturebooks’ Preiss."
Here again, I hope they're thinking of more than just B2C sales (business-to-consumer) and that these technologies will work with items circulated by libraries. See why we need to be in on the debate and the development cycle?
10:18:33 PM
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That's What I Want
"No single service has a catalog of music from all of the major record labels. Until there is DRM standardization and a sea change in industry attitudes, users will have to patronize more than one service to get an unabridged selection of artists. That means consumers are asked to pay for a service that might carry only half of their favorite artists, or to pay several monthly bills just to have access to the musicians they like. Not surprisingly, many users are unwilling." [at New Architect, via Tomalak's Realm]
This article is an excellent primer explaining why the online music services are failing, covering everything from Digital Rights Management (DRM) to usability issues.
"According to Pew, in the last year, of the users who were asked to pay for something that used to be free online, 50 percent found free online alternatives. Thirty six percent stopped getting the service online, and only 12 percent paid for it. Subscription service providers need more. They must offer a unique value proposition to keep their audiences from walking out."
What amazes me is how many people take advantage of free online services but then forget about libraries. Granted we're not loaning out digital music yet, but I don't think we do a good enough job of marketing our computers, our video & DVD collections, our audiobooks, our CDs, and everything else you can get for free at your local library. Not to mention the free expertise.
Of course, that's nothing new and we say that every year, but now we have to figure out that digital service and delivery part, otherwise known as "shifting." Similar to the concerns raised in this article, we need to work closely with our vendors to make sure our services based on their products don't have that usability barrier that so many of our online catalogs currently have.
9:36:01 PM
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Whew! Today I finally finished my LibraryU module! It's only been on my to-do list for four freaking months. Actually, I feel bad that I haven't finished it before now because it's a guide to Researching the Events of September 11, 2001, and Terrorism. My original intent was to provide a webliography starting back in October so that public libraries in general could link to it rather than having to re-create the wheel. Unfortunately, various projects at work precluded this from happening. But it's up now, so if your library isn't already providing this type of information, please feel free to link to it. I'll be fleshing out some of the pages a bit more and adding annotations to all of the links, although it will take some time. Here's more about LibraryU, the project.
5:46:45 PM
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Your Phone as Your Wallet, Part 2
"At this time, welcome PayBox, a German company that is establishing itself slowly but surely. To use the system, you register with your bank account and PayBox then acts as a link between your mobile phone and your bank account. If I would like to pay for a cab then I give the driver my mobile phone number, or alias, and he enters it into his system. I then get a phone call and a nice voice tells me that this cab driver is requesting an amount of X EUR. I can then say yes and enter my password and the money is securely deducted from my bank account. For me, the entire system is free. The system is gaining acceptance on the web, at least in Germany, but for paying in stores it is moving along at a slower pace, partly because a POS (point-of-sale) terminal is needed there...."
"Paying for a coke with your VISA card is not really efficient but if you pay with your phone bill then it might work a lot easier. You can already get a coke out of a vending machine with your mobile phone in Finland, and I am sure this will be something that we will be accustomed too fairly soon. An example of this can be what Europolitan Vodafone and TietoEnator are launching a new payment method in Sweden. I also recently learned that you can pay for drinks and subway tokens with your mobile phone in Santiago (Chile)." [InfoSync]
Suh-weet! This is definitely the entry point for micropayments to become widespread. So when can I pay my library overdues using my cell phone?
9:16:36 AM
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Audible Books on MP3
"This almost has to be a e-Book killer for the masses. Don't get me wrong, e-content will still have it's place. I just see the mainstream grabbing hold of *this* digital techology much quicker and in greater numbers than e-books as imagined to date." [LibeTech Weblog]
Eric comments on my Audible post from yesterday, and he seems as enthusiastic about them as I am. I agree with him that MP3 audiobooks are a killer app and that they will be adopted by the mainstream faster than eBook devices will. I've always believed that most Americans will experience new technologies in their cars first, and that this will ease widespread adoption into other areas.
OnStar is a perfect example of this. It's GPS sold as a safety feature, and it introduces the concept of location-based services in a non-threatening, non-techie way. I think we'll see the same thing with satellite radio and MP3s. You can already buy both types of players for your car, but they haven't taken off yet because they don't come pre-installed the way OnStar does. Once they do, however, there will be no going back, and once someone has had the thrill and ease-of-use of listening to MP3 audiobooks in the car, they'll realize they can do this anywhere and the technologies will become ubiquitous and pervasive.
Which is one reason why I really want to see Audible succeed. They're the major player in the game right now, which means we don't have to muck about with a dozen different standards and formats. They also understand the user's desire to own what they purchase, and they're trying to work closely with libraries.
So Eric, "me too!"
8:05:19 AM
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Comments by: YACCS
© Copyright 2002 Jenny Levine.
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