Another Angle on Copyright Issues and Ebooks

First Yahoo!

You could just tell it wasn't going to be long before Yahoo! dipped it's hand into digitizing books.Yet, I always had a soft spot for Yahoo! and even now they haven't disappointed me.

Instead of going head first into the fray, banging whoever is in its way like Google did, Yahoo! chose to digitize public domain books or those books whose copyright owners have given permission. Very different from Google's negative option where all books will be digitized unless authors specifically asked not to digitize their books.

And what's the difference between Yahoo!'s collection and, say, Project Gutenberg?Not much except it allied itself with Adobe and others to perhaps give a better service.

Articles:
Yahoo jumps on the library bandwagon
Yahoo! follows Google into print minefield
Yahoo to digitize public domain books


Second - Digital Music vis a vis Ebooks

I don't know if you heard yesterday, but digital music sales soared in the first half of 2005, up 259 percent compared to the first half of 2004.At the same time, physical media sales went down by about 6%.

Books and music are two different things of course. While music lends itself to being digitized, a print book doesn't (have you ever tried scanning a whole book?)

And yet, we can see by example that the fight against piracy is taking effect and while actual CD sales decreased, digitized media sales increased, offsetting somewhat the decline in CD sales. But more importantly perhaps is that people actually bought digital music as opposed to downloading it online. Could it be that the education helped?

Regardless, I think this shows great hopes for ebooks and for containing piracy in the digital world.

Articles:
Legal music downloads soar as CD sales fall
Digital music revenues soar
Digital music sales triple