Now, a larger problem. Books in their digital format look vastly less ‘finished,’ less genuine. And we can vary their font and type size, making them resemble all the more our own word-processed manuscripts … . All the e-books I’ve read have been ugly — books by Chang-rae Lee, Alvin Kernan, Stieg Larsson — though the texts have been wonderful. But I didn’t grow up reading texts. I grew up reading books. The difference is important.
The Agence France Presse v. Morel legal case and the issue of the use, by news agencies, of images from social networking websites such as Twitter
1854: The Blog of the British Journal of Photography questions whether there is “a blatant lack of respect for a photographer’s work and copyright” particularly among news agencies which now scour social networking sites for eyewitness images to use.
Demand dips for online films
According to The Financial Times: “Hollywood’s hopes for a future built on digital film downloads have been severely undermined by research showing cooling consumer demand for movies online… . US revenues for 2009 were substantially lower than forecast at $291m. ‘The market just cooled off,’ said Arash Amel, a research director with Screen Digest. ‘This wasn’t caused by economic factors . . . the level of interest in digital downloads just isn’t there.’”