Peter Brantley is the Executive Director for the Digital Library Federation, a not-for-profit international association of libraries and allied institutions. His background includes significant experience with research libraries and digital library development programs. He has served as the Director of Technology at the California Digital Library, New York University, UC Berkeley, and UCSF. He was the first IT Manager for Rapt, a private SF firm providing pricing optimization for online advertising delivery, and eons ago worked as a systems analyst in the mass-market division of Random House. Peter is a member of the Board of Directors for the International Digital Publishing Forum. He was first introduced to computing via the CDC Plato system.
by Peter Brantley
| 28 November 2007
In the c|Net blog, The Iconoclast, Declan McCullagh recounts that Amazon successfully resisted an effort by federal prosecutors in Madison, WI to obtain 24,000 customer records. As c|Net notes, libraries and bookstores have recourse to special protections against the forced release of their users' data, and Amazon -- to its great credit -- has utilized that entrust of law to...
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by Peter Brantley
| 26 November 2007
I'm pleased to bring the commentary of a couple of the publishing industry's most experienced and respected voices to conjecture on the economic ramifications of Amazon's Kindle. First, Jason Epstein has kindly agreed to share a back-of-the-envelope analysis of the Kindle in light of the common "razor and blades" analogy, in which some observers argue that Amazon would be better...
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by Peter Brantley
| 25 November 2007
Many of the conversations over the release of the Kindle have focused on its features, or perceived lack thereof; there has been some discussion of what reading might become, or how authorship might change. I was impressed with the rather complimentary review of Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. And, meanwhile, the Kindle is popular enough (despite a rating...
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by Peter Brantley
| 19 November 2007
With the launch of the Kindle, I have little desire here to add to criticisms (e.g., the lack of support for the IDPF's epub standard, or PDF for that matter), or the whims of "service" designers who decided to charge for Kindle email services and blog subscriptions. Or even the size, shape, or aesthetics of it as an object (gee,...
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by Peter Brantley
| 18 November 2007
Last month, I wrote here about the death of the music file sharing system Oink, in a post called "Libraries or Pirate Places", which made note of Jace Clayton's observation that the high quality, finely described and deeply curated collection of Oink could just as easily have described a library as a conventional file sharing site. Through Alan Wexelbalt's mention...
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by Peter Brantley
| 14 November 2007
CC-0 is a brand new Creative Commons license, whose official launch is expected in December, that signals the absence of any copyright or related rights associated with a work. The creation of CC-0 is heralded by the release into the public domain of a free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the...
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