Ebook News: Apple May Get Sued and Price Wars: The New Hope

A Random Newspaper (link below) reports that the Wall Street Journal reports that the US Justice Department may sue Apple and five major book publishers for conspiring to raise the prices of ebooks.

Google Play (Google's new media outlet) and Amazon are involved in a price war on ebooks that are creating great deals on titles.  

In an effort to stay balanced and fair, this librarian has decided to present the following argument:

These two stories have been included to show that commerce is good and Apple is an evil, Borg-like organization that feeds on making you not think like a fat man feeds on super duper triple chunk mocha fudge brownie Rockie Road Ice Cream.  

My iPhone's battery went to crap so I got an Android.  Who loses? Me, I'm still on AT&T.

US Justice Dept may sue Apple, publishers on e-book pricing -WSJ

Google Play And Amazon Involved In Price War Leading To Amazing Deals On EBooks

The Onion Starts Online Subscription Fee called "Donate or Fuck Off"

Joining the ranks of other online news agencies such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, satirical newspaper The Onion today announced they would begin a donation policy called "Donate or Fuck Off" for the use of their website after the reader has read nine and three quarters articles a month.  The media hobbit has tested online subscriptions in other markets and has maintained a print subscription fee, but this is the first time they have attempted this particular method in the U. S. of 'Merica.

Onion, Inc. chief technology officer Michael Greer explains the new plan: 

"We know our readers will read us. It's what they do. Hell, most of them expect to pay something anyway. So in a way, we are giving them what they want. And people keep throwing around buzz words like 'subscription' and 'newspaper.' That's not what we do here. We just offer internet content for free in an Internet fashion, with ads. All we are asking is a little kickback now and then or maybe we stop giving you content. That's all. We even got a nice JPEG that tells you to fuck off. It's not really funny."

Long time reader of The Onion, John 'Whiplash' Williams had this to say: 

"Eh. If they start making me pay, I guess I'll try it out. Maybe I'll get a deal for the print and online. Bird's gotta shit somewhere, right?"

The Onion was not contacted for comment. 

Library of Congress Makes Baseball People Happy

The Library of Congress will receive some 10,000 recordings of baseball commentator Patrick Rispole says the Wall Street Journal (or WSJ if you are "street").  The recording include many memorable baseball moments such as the Brooklyn Dodgers last game, Sandy Koufax's first no hitter, and that time he spilled coffee on himself on air.  The LoC plans to digitize the collection and have them available online.

So, baseball...  The National Pastime.  The Big Show.  Ole Hardball.  Yep, nothing like sipping a brew, eating a 'dog on a hot July day and watching a game.  Yep.  Good times.  I have no idea what I am talking about.

Wall Street Journal Learns of "eBooks" and "Interwebs"

The Wall Street Journal published this article today, making it one of the last publications in America to put their two cents in about ebooks.  To show I am not here to bash the Wall Street Journal as being old and stodgy, a quick search of their digital domain network e-page site that is possibly hosted by Angelfire or Geocities shows that they have been reporting on ebooks as far back as NOVEMBER of 2010.  Yep, right on top of that, Rose.

Update: I had to review their convoluted search feature to find out the first reported mention of ebooks on the Wall Street Journal webberpagenets was MARCH of 2009 by using their "2 years" search button.

Continued Update:  Seems I have gone deeper into the online vestige of the WSJ online rabbit hole.  You can also set your own dates, which is independent of the whole "7 days," "30 Days," "90 DAYS" and the aforementioned "2 Years"  I set mine back to the turn of the century and received an article from December of 08.  At this point I stopped caring and went back to playing Dragon Age.