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Jason Griffey explains ebooks and DRM

jessamyn — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:47:00 +0000

Ebooks aren’t just electronic books. They are a combination of certain file types, certain readers and certain software designed to keep people from migrating away from the approved file type and reader combinations. Confused? Jason Griffey explains.

sony reader works with ebooks and libraries, sort of

jessamyn — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:22:18 +0000

The new Sony Reader, the biggest competition to the Kindle, is supposedly going to be able to check out digital books from libraries that use the Overdrive service. I guess this begs the obvious question: why go to the library for this service at all? I guess that Overdrive just bulk offers the checkoutability service to libraries (hello restrictive DRM!) which is something but man I just wish their service were better and easier to use.

two posts on michigan library tech

jessamyn — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:08:57 +0000

Two worthwhile stories from Ed Vielmetti’s blog Vacuum.

Sony rootkit music off the Ann Arbor District Library’s purchase list – a story about Ed’s librarian telling him of their decision to not buy music from Sony that installs “rootkit like” technology. These music CDs install nefarious software on a user’s system, ostenisbly to prevent illegal copying, and DRM circumvention and is highly controversial.
Interlibrary loan system MiLE in Michigan irrecoverably hacked – hacking is malicious vandalism, granted, but this is a confidence shaking security breach. Electronic ILL service in a good deal of Southeastern Michagan is broken beyond recovery until the roll-out of the next version of the software, at least a month away. This is a large-scale failure that should have been avoidable. Disasters sometimes happen. Are you preapred for yours? Joyhn Blyberg from the Ann Arbor District Library outlines steps libraries should take to secure their system, not later, now.