Penguin Group Sues Writers, That's One Way to Promote Self Publishing

Penguin Group is seeking repayment of nearly $577,000 paid to writers in advance for the promise of books.  The odd part that most are noticing is the low amount they are looking to recoup, all under $100,000 and one around the $12,000 mark.

Now, I know that to some of you that sounds like a ton of money.  Hell, that last amount alone could change my way of life significantly (Hint: I'd buy top shelf bread rather than the day old stuff.)  But as the article linked below points out, think about the professional writer who looks at that money not as a boon, but as half to a year's salary while he/she toils over their manuscript.  

So why is Penguin Group trying to get that cash back?  Are they doing the literary equivalent of checking under the seat cushions for loose change?  Do they have a book deal on the horizon that may just change their budget?  Say, how's that new Rowling book doing...  "I wonder if she'd do another Harry Potter," he implies pointedly.

Penguin Group Sues Writers Over Book Advances - Businessweek

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

Update Thursday: Cause We Do That

Update:  A mother who went to trial after being asked to leave an Atlanta library because her baby was laughing too loud was found guilty of obstructing a police officer by the jury after a two hour deliberation.  Police had video of her altercation with officers outside the library where she is clearly seen causing a public disturbance outside the library.  She was sentanced to 12 months probation, anger management classes, and parenting classes.  The mother, Donnetta Foster, had this to say:

"I definitely feel like I stood up for myself today... I spoke out against what I felt was wrong." CBS Atlanta

While I sympathize with Ms. Foster feeling wronged, I have the feeling she was led astray into going to trial.  This all seems like she and her lawyer somehow felt this would shift blame and put the library on trial like a Hollywood movie twist when in fact all that was in question for the courts was if she did or did not yell at a police officer.  There were many avenues she could have taken both on that day and after, but instead she chose to act rashly and now has a criminal charge on her record.

Update:  In other news, the Author's Guild is getting many fingers waggled at them for suing universities for allowing Google to digitize their library's "orphaned" books.  Orphaned books are books where the copyright holder cannot be located, and the universities felt that it had an obligation to keep these items in the public mind through digitization, many belonging in the HathiTrust.  So far the Library Copyright Alliance has stepped up to call the Guild's lawsuit 'deplorable" while the Author's Guild has fired back that many of the claimed 'orphaned books' are not orphaned at all but the author's can be tracked down with a simple Google search.   That's ironic in that many if not all of the items in the HathiTrust were scanned during the rocky Google Books project.

Author's Guild Sues Universities

With the suit against Google about digitizing libraries on hiatus, Google has pushed forward with various libraries to continue digitize certain media.  The Author's Guild will have none of that and has now also sued the universities participating over digitization rights.  arstechnica

Can't we all just- Ow... Okay, who threw that cliche shoe?  What the hell?!  So here we go again with the law suits and the blah blah over digitizing libraries.  Honestly, I don't see what all the fuss is about.  It's just copyright and intellectual property.  That stuff's for nerds.  Let's see 'um try to digitize the defensive line at [big'um football school], right!  That's what matters!  Go [mascot]!

Obsolete Technology News: It's a Week Old

Like I did in yesterday's book news, today I am playing catch up with a little tech news.  Here we go.

Fox, the TV station not the animal, delayed presenting its programming on Hulu for 8 days causing a massive spike in piracy of those shows.  Let it be known that if the nerds can not pay for their digital entertainment through affordable means, they will just take it.  Torrentfreak via boingboing (real sources, I swear)

When presenting their case that they were not ripping off the iPad with their Galaxy tablet, Samsung used the "it was in a movie" defense.  The movie in question "2001: A Space Odyssey" does indeed have tablet devices as well as a computer that freaking kills people!  WSJ via Geekologie

The Videogame History Museum is running a drive on Kickstarter to save/fund their project. The museum can be seen as an important item in the further expansion of humans to waste time dicking around without using their actual dicks.  Mostly.  Kickstarter via Kotaku.

Apple Sued Over eBook Pricing and Kindle Gets Advertising

The face of evil.

Apple and five publishing companies have been hit with a class action lawsuit by the firm Hagens Berman over ebook price fixing.  The lawsuit claims that Apple, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group Inc. and Simon & Schuster Inc. conspired to illegally fix prices of ebooks and shut down the competition created by Amazon's lower priced ebooks.

Anybody feel like this is just a big advertisement for Kindles?  Oh, Kindle ebooks are so cheap that the big boys had bring us down.  Why can't we all be friends?  Those big meanies are trying to stop us from giving you the best prices around.  So cheap in fact that we feel crazy.  We must be crazy.  We are giving the site away!  So come on down to Crazy Larry's Amazon eBookland and we'll have us a good old time.

Also, you know the folks over at Google Books are loving this.  Their main completion are having a slap fight while they just put out their first eReader. Of course, they could feel left out.  This is the first major ebook court battle that they have not been apart of.

AppleInsider
ZDNet
DetNews
Wired

Should Library Employees Be Held To a Code of Silence?

A Michigan library employee is suing for wrongful termination after being fired in 2008 for writing a book about her experiences in the library with unpleasant patrons. This brings up a question: do we, as librarians, have the right to talk about our job experiences in public?

I have not read the book in question.  I have, however, seen many books, blogs, twitter accounts, and videos that discuss both the joys and hardships of being a librarian.  A great deal of these librarians hide in the anonymity of the Internet.  I myself stay relatively hidden as I make my snarky comments.  Do I fear losing my job?  Not really, but I do worry about undermining the integrity of my position and the confidence of my patrons, which is ironic considering how much trouble a few of them can be.  I protect you so you can yell at me.  Heart swells.

At the same time, I do not remember ever taking a vow of silence.  Sure, I will protect your secrets to the best of my ability, but you don't get to walk into a public building and expect privacy.  If I say something dumb to the guy at Walgreen's and it shows up on NotAlwaysRight the next day, then I should have watched what I was saying.  The basic law of librarianship is the same as medicine, "Do no harm."  I will give you the best information possible from the best sources possible.  If you act like a jerk about my help, I need to have some place to vent or I might as well hand in my library decoder ring before I go crazy and start chucking bestsellers at people.

Now, what I promise to always do is vague it the hell up.  The problem with "ole-miss-write-a-book" seems to be that she allegedly did not cover up her patrons enough when she wrote her "fiction."  Again, I have not read the book so I can not give judgement on the matter, but crazy don't have color or age.  You can spin that person who stole the first page out of 20 books around to look like your eighth grade math teacher and nobody would know the difference.

So that's what I have... I reserve the right to write.  I like it.  I can, on occasion, be good at it.  I promise not to embarrass anybody that is not directly related to me.  I cannot do anything more than that.

Here's her book
[ChicagoTribune]

What's in Your Google Wallet?

So yesterday Google announced their new service, Google Wallet.  The no-touchy hands-off payment system works like a credit card but instead of getting frustrated because your card will not swipe you can get frustrated waving your phone at check out line.  I image a scene where a dozen people are in front of the Wal-Mart check out waving their hands like they are trying to Jedi mind trick a damn machine.  "Seriously, these are the Doritos I was looking for"  The service will also send you coupons, finally turning spam emails into those annoying newspaper-like things in my mail that I use for wrapping paper.

Also, Paypal sued Google over this service.  Yep.  Apparently when you leave one company to go work at another that oddly starts making nearly the same product, that's grounds for a lawsuit.  But do you think Paypal will win?  I doubt it.  The idea is pretty common and Google's been looking to break in to this market for years with services like Google Checkout and attempting to buy Groupon.  As long as I can get my BOGO coupons for my Zima, who cares?

Sue-A-Thon 2011: Sony Vs LG

In this corner, Sony in the black

In this corner, LG... also in black... Dammit..

The contenders:  Sony and LG

The conflict: two competing companies in the BluRay ring that are suing and counter-suing the pants off each other over patent rights.

The battlefield:  The courts, duh.

Why should you care:  Possible removal of some random products like cheapish Blu-ray players and the PS3, depending who wins.

Really, why should you care:  Um... I guess patents are kinda library thing, plus, it's all about media players, which could effect your patrons.

Where are you going:  To read something interesting or possibly watch TV.

This seemed interesting at the time:  Not really, unless you are a bit of a tech geek.

What's on TV:  There's a new ep of Glee... Did you see the one after the Super Bowl?  I think the Thriller mash-up thing was forced.  They should have just done straight Thriller.  I mean, come'on, they did Rocky Horror sort of straight but not freaking Thriller?  Prisoners in the Philippines did a better job.

Dude, why do you care so much about Glee:  I was just rambling on, can't think of anything interesting to say about this.

Why don't you just put up the Prisoner Thriller thing then?  Okay, hit the jump.

Prisoner's Thriller from College Humor

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Real Thriller from Youtube



And My 2nd Favorite Queen Song


Sony VS LG article here