When Chandler Bolt acquired The Book Designer blog in late 2020, there were plenty of reasons to dislike the fellow. He had a reputation in entrepreneur circles as a taker....Continue reading
Category: Legal
Big Five Publishers Names as Co-Defendants in Amazon eBook Price-Fixing Lawsuit
It took 3 weeks longer than I expected, but the Big Five Publishers have been named as co-defendants in the Amazon ebook price-fixing lawsuit. Following an amended complaint filed this...Continue reading
Connecticut is Investigating Amazon’s eBook Business
When I reported last Thursday that a class-action suit had been filed against Amazon, accusing them of conspiring with publishers, I apparently had missed that the state of Conn. is...Continue reading
Amazon Sued Over Its Dominance of the eBook Market (Finally)
News broke this week that Amazon is being sued for colluding with five major publishers to inflate prices. The case was filed by the same law firm that lead the...Continue reading
Disney Reportedly Withholding Royalties From Alan Dean Foster Over Star Wars, Aliens Novels
Disney has replaced Amazon at the top of many people’s shit-lists this week when the SFWA publicly criticized the media giant for not paying royalties to Alan Dean Foster. From...Continue reading
The Usual Book Publishing Industry Players Ask Congress to Bell the Cat
It’s hard to beleive that it’s been, what, 5 years since we last played this game, but the US book publishing industry is back to its favorite pastime: complaining about...Continue reading
eBook VAT Has Been Changed in the EU At Least 8 Times This Year
Everyone has heard that the UK reduced the tax collected on the sale of books earlier this year, but did you know they were not the only ones? I was...Continue reading
Copyright Bots Are Now Going After Bot-Written Parody Songs (Well, One Song)
Did you see the story this past week about AI-written parody song lyrics were DMCA-ed from Twitter? I for one don’t think it’s been reported accurately. From Vice: Georgia Tech...Continue reading
Cartoon Network and Star Trek Panels at San Diego Comic-Con Were Blocked by Youtube’s ContentID
It is a truth universally acknowledged that large automated content filters do not function well at all, and the only thing keeping such a system from screwing up is constant...Continue reading
Apple is Turning the Screws on App Developers, Including Your Favorite eBook Apps
For the past 9 or so years app developers have had a quasi-truce with Apple. So long as the developer didn’t sell anything inside the app (or even hint that...Continue reading
Why the Internet Archive’s The Open Library is Not a Real Library
One of the more common arguments made by defenders of the Internet Archive’s site, The Open Library, is that it is a library. They point out that it lends ebooks...Continue reading
Internet Archive is Shutting Down National Emergency Library Two Weeks Early
The Internet Archive is shutting down one of its pirate sites ahead of schedule, and they are also not being honest about the reason. Yesterday IA founder Brewster Kahle posted...Continue reading
Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Takes Pro-Piracy Position on Internet Archive
With one of the strictest paywalls in the news industry (you can’t even view an article if you block adverts), the Washington Post takes getting paid for their work pretty...Continue reading
Four Publishers File Suit Over Internet Archive’s Pirate Site
I can’t beleive it – book publishers have given Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle exactly what he wanted. Today the AAP announced that four US publishers – HarperCollins, Wiley, Hachette,...Continue reading
You Give Up a Lot of Rights When You Post Works on Social Media, New Ruling Says
An interesting copyright ruling crossed my desk today. I don’t think it has been explained very well, so I would like to explain what it means for the average user....Continue reading