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Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, "The Left Hand of Darkness."

This isn't a new issue. George Kerscher and I wrote a major essay on the topic seven(!) years ago entitled the Soundproof Book. In it, we pointed out the irony that the first generation of ebook readers being inaccessible to blind people. This irony continues: it's a terrible shame that Amazon (and other ebook device vendors) keeps putting out ebook products that are inaccessible to the blind! More on that in another essay. The essence of the Soundproof Book essay was the dueling moral high grounds: author's rights vs. the right to access. Since these are both generally good from society's standpoint, how do you handle the conflict between them?

Amazon's Kindle, the first eBook reader that has really started to catch on with the public, deals almost exclusively with eBooks that have DRM. According to Ian Fried, the vice president of Amazon Kindle, customers don't seem to mind: "We've had very few if any customer responses that the choice we made with DRM was a problem." But DRM could become a problem if the Kindle goes bust - then all those people who bought Kindle eBooks with DRM will have no way to read them because no other device can open the files. Beyond that, not everyone agrees that DRM is a good business strategy. Publishing consultant Michael Shatzkin says it's tough to make the case that file-sharing reduces sales. He cites science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who, he says, "does the best he can to give away as much of his content as possible." And by giving it away, Shatzkin says, Doctorow's sales have skyrocketed.

Unless Amazon embraces open standards, the Kindle's lead will become a very short story.

"Mr. Braben has developed a very small USB stick PC that has an HDMI port in one end and a USB port on the other. The machine, which runs on a version of Linux, is designed to help get programming and the general knowledge of how computers work back into the educational curriculum."

"The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409) which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing. We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world."