Two serious threads this week and one fun one. The first serious story is a look at the attitudes of e-book consumers from the Book Industry Study Group, including a finding that almost half of all e-book consumers would wait for an electronic edition up to three months after the print edition has been released. The second serious story is about a university press starting to sell excerpts from backlist titles as a way to capitalize on existing content. And finally, the fun story is a 12 minute TED talk from the founder of the Improv Everywhere project.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Ongoing BISG Study Reveals E-Book Buyers Deepening Commitment to Digital Formats

E-book sales can be expected to continue growing as readers show increased loyalty to and satisfaction with the digital format, according to Book Industry Study Group’s (BISG) closely watched Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey. Results of the final installment in Volume Two of the survey show that nearly 50% of print book consumer who have also acquired an e-book in the past 18 months would wait up to three months for the e-version of a book from a favorite author, rather than immediately read it in print. A year ago, only 38% said they would wait this long.

- More Than a Passing Fancy: Ongoing BISG Study Reveals E-Book Buyers Deepening Commitment to Digital Formats, BISG Press Release, 8-Nov-2011

Mark Nelson over at The CITE (a blog on Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education) points to this press release from the Book Industry Study Group about an ongoing survey on e-book adoption attitudes. The results of the survey are available for purchase, with the press release and Mark’s post providing tantalizing on what it contains. The announcements of the sharp uptake in interest of ebooks in libraries echoes this data. As you might recall, this interest jumped after the holiday season last year with analysts speculating it was because of the number of e-reader devices given as gifts. Amazon’s recent announcements of new devices is likely to spur the same thing to happen again this holiday season. Our are libraries and service providers ready for another jump in ebook interest in January?

Princeton University Press Enters Digital Market with Princeton Shorts

The Chronicle reports that Princeton University Press will test the digital market with its Princeton Shorts.  Using its back list it will take excerpts and package them as e-books.  Running from 20 to 100 pages in length it will have a price range between 99 cents to $4.99 and unlike Kindle Singles, Princeton Shorts will not introduce new content instead it will take selections and place new titles on them, according to the story. Douglas Armato, director of the University of Minnesota Press, called it “good, savvy publishing on Princeton’s part.” In an e-mail, he said he was “interested to hear what happens—particularly if the market for the ‘shorts’ turns out to be more classroom than general trade.”

- Princeton University Press Enters Digital Market with Princeton Shorts, The CITE

Another post from Mark Nelson in The CITE points to an article behind the Chronicle of Higher Education paywall about the new Princeton Shorts effort from the Princeton University Press. There are a few more details in the blog post from the Press and in a Los Angeles Times article. For libraries, I think the interesting question comes whether these “Shorts” attempt to enter into library purchase plans as new items. Libraries should really not be paying for the same content twice, and if the Shorts are truly unedited excerpts from existing books then hopefully they won’t count as “new” items.

Charlie Todd: The shared experience of absurdity

Charlie Todd causes bizarre, hilarious, and unexpected public scenes: Seventy synchronized dancers in storefront windows, “ghostbusters” running through the New York Public Library, and the annual no-pants subway ride. At TEDxBloomington he shows how his group, Improv Everywhere, uses these scenes to bring people together.

- Charlie Todd: The shared experience of absurdity, Video on TED.com from TEDxBloomington

This one is just for fun. Charlie is the founder of Improv Everywhere. With the tagline “We Cause Scenes”, Improv Everywhere describes itself as “a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents.” It first came to my attention with the Who You Gonna Call? prank in the New York Public Library reminiscent of the opening scenes of the first Ghostbusters movie. The other videos of Improv Everywhere are just as funny.

Dorothea Salo started a conversation late last year that was picked up by Walt Crawford and others about receiving unsolicited “PR spam” with the expectation that the content of the message will be blogged about. In a related matter, I got my first example today of someone scraping DLTJ to send me junk mail through the U.S. postal service.

Now there are several weird things about this. First, the address is indeed my place of work, but DLTJ is not an OhioLINK communication channel. (In other words, “the views expressed here are those of the author and not the author’s employer…yadda, yadda, yadda.”) The only place the address appears, that I know about, is on my contact page on DLTJ. And if one should happen to go to that page to scrape the address, one would see that this blog is written by a guy named Peter Murray, not someone named Tom Wilson. I can only guess that the Tom Wilson in question is the one that is the Associate Dean for Library Technology at the University of Alabama Libraries and former LITA president, but if not that Tom Wilson has a list of other Tom Wilsons it might be.

It will be interesting to see if name/address combination gets sold to someone else; I’ll certainly know by the characteristics of the junk mail received. I guess I’ll also have to expand the disclaimer to say: “the views expressed here are those of the author and not the author’s employer or of Tom Wilson….”

I’ve been collecting disclaimers that appear on the bottom of e-mail messages in a draft post on DLTJ for about a year now — every time I’d get a new one with a different twist, I’d save it anticipating the day would come that there would be enough humor here to share with the rest of you. That day has come. There wasn’t one that disclaimer that finally pushed the publication of this post over the edge; just the accumulation of examples. Identifying information has been removed, but the humor was left intact. If you recognize your institution/company in these examples, please laugh along with me. If you are the lawyer or pseudo-lawyer that drafted these, please do us all a favor and find something else to work on. Like drafting disclaimers for toothpicks and such.

An Institution By Any Other Name is Just a Number

YOU MUST READ THIS NOTICE [And you must do so while suppressing any giggling about it.]
This email has been sent by institution (institution's random numeric identifier). This email (and any attachment) is confidential and is intended for the use of the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient of this email you must not copy, distribute, take any action in reliance on it or disclose it to anyone. Any confidentiality is not waived or lost by reason of mistaken delivery to you. The views expressed in this email are not necessarily those of institution. It is very important that before opening any attachments to this email you check them for viruses and defects. institution does not accept liability for any corruption or viruses or any consequence which arise as a result of this email transmission. Email communications with institution may be subject to automated email filtering, which could result in the delay or deletion of a legitimate email before it is read by its intended recipient at institution. Please tell us if you have concerns about this automatic filtering. The Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (CRICOS) Provider Number is another numeric identifier (institution branch), yet another random numeric identifier (institution branch), and a final numeric identifier (institution branch) for institution.

I don’t have concerns about the automatic filtering, just the automatic insertion of needless disclaimers. Which brings us to…

Disclaimers as a Form of Spam?

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER

Information in this transmission is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed and may contain privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying or dissemination of the information is unauthorised and you should delete/destroy all copies and notify the sender. No liability is accepted for any unauthorised use of the information contained in this transmission.

This disclaimer has been automatically added.

So the disclaimer was automatically added. Thank goodness for that, because I can’t imagine having to copy and paste needless disclaimers into every e-mail that I sent. But does the fact that it was automatically sent to me make it a form of spam? Hmmm — maybe there is a market for software that automatically removes disclaimers from e-mail messages.

Speaking of Spam

The information in this email is confidential, and intended solely for the Addressee. If you have erroneously received this message, please delete it immediately and notify the sender. Any copying or further distribution beyond the original addressee is not intended, and may be unlawful.

This one arrived in a spam message sent to me. I decided to risk breaking the law by posting this portion of the message in a public forum.

Have Your Agents Talk To My Agents

DISCLAIMER: This e-mail is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Neither company nor any of its agents accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of company or one of its agents. Please note that neither company nor any of its agents accept any responsibility for viruses that may be contained in this e-mail or its attachments and it is your responsibility to scan the e-mail and attachments (if any). No contracts may be concluded on behalf of company or its agents by means of e-mail communication. Company in England and Wales with registered number company's random number Registered Office company's address.

I wish I had agents who would act on my behalf that would read through this gobblety-gook so I wouldn’t have to read through the message and decide if I may or may not be entering into some sort of contract by reading the message.

You are hereby informally notified that I could care less about your disclaimer

This communication is for use by the intended recipient and contains information that may be Privileged, confidential or copyrighted under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system. Unless explicitly and conspicuously designated as "E-Contract Intended", this e-mail does not constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment, or an acceptance of a contract offer. This e-mail does not constitute a consent to the use of sender's contact information for direct marketing purposes or for transfers of data to third parties.

Can I imply the inverse of the sentence that begins, “If you are not the intended recipient…”? That is to say, if I am the intended recipient, that I can use, copy and distribute the e-mail in any way that I see fit?

Caveats: Humorless

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Damn — and I was hoping to find out the secret plans for invading Canada. By the way, is it conceivable that there could ever be a russia.army.mil and china.army.mil along side us.army.mil?

From the My-Disclaimer-Is-Three-Times-Longer-Than-My-Message Category…

DISCLAIMER and CONFIDENTIALITY CAUTION:

This e-mail and any attached files are confidential, proprietary, and may also be legally privileged information, and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, please send it back to the person who sent it to you and delete the e-mail and any attached files and destroy any copies of it; you may call us immediately at company's phone number or email us at company e-mail address.

Company and/or any of its sister companies owns no responsibility for the views presented in the e-mail and any attached files unless the sender mentions so, with due authority of company.

Unauthorized reading, reproduction, publication, use, dissemination, forwarding, printing or copying of this e-mail and its attachments is prohibited.

We have checked this message for any known viruses; however we decline any liability, in case of any damage caused by a non-detected virus.

For more details about our company, visit company website.

This one came in a message posted to a mailing list that contained exactly five lines of real content — line 1: greeting, line 2: blank, line 3: a quick question, line 4: blank, line 5: author’s name. Talk about a bad signal to noise ratio!

No Bogosity¹ Here!

READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

It is good to know that there are companies out there that are trying to stamp out needless b*llsh*t². But let me see if I got this straight — by reading your message, I agree to release you from Bogus Agreements because I am able to do so. But what if I don’t have that authority? Should I not read your message? Perhaps you should have told me that before I read it…

There are No Guarantees on the Internet

Disclaimer: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. The integrity and security of this message cannot be guaranteed on the Internet.

There are, of course, ways to guarantee the integrity and security of messages on the internet. PGP-signed e-mail is one such way.

Let the Lawyers Have the Last Say

******************* Disclaimer *******************

This e-mail, together with any attachments, is intended for the named recipient(s) only. This e-mail may contain information which is confidential, of a private nature or which is subject to legal professional privilege or copyright. Accordingly, any form of disclosure, modification, distribution and/or publication of this email message is prohibited unless expressly authorised by the sender acting with the authority of or on behalf of the institution.

If you have received this email by mistake, please inform the sender as soon as possible and delete the message and any copies of this message from your computer system network.

The confidentiality, privacy or legal professional privilege attached to this email is not waived or destroyed by that mistake.

The institution uses virus scanning software. However, it is your responsibility to ensure that this email does not contain and is not infected by a computer virus.

Unless expressly attributed, the views expressed in this email do not necessarily represent the views of the institution.

******************** Disclaimer *******************

So just to be sure, should I run the entire message past my legal counsel just to be sure they do not want to assert some sort of legal professional privilege on the correspondence?

Your Turn

The text was modified to update a link from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_bogodynamics to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Quantum_bogodynamics_%282nd_nomination%29 on January 19th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. Definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_bogodynamics
2. See http://www.slate.com/id/2114268/ if you need it spelled out for you.

You may have given away your right to feel the holiday spirit via some click-through license dreamed up by an over-exuberant lawyer. Don’t believe me? Anything is possible in the world of contracts; read on…

An in-law sent me a flash animation card from a site called “Elf Yourself” ™ — no link love here, guess the URL or find it in Google — that has some cartoon elves dancing with the images of this in-law’s family’s faces superimposed on the cartoons. It was cute, and I contemplated sending a reply with the faces of my family. As I typically do, I scanned through the Terms of Use that one must accept before starting and the word “universe” caught my eye. “Self,” I said to myself, “why would the word universe be in the Terms of Use?” So went back and read the entire Terms of Use, and the good bit is in “Grant of Rights” (my own emphasis added):

By submitting a photograph or any other materials or information to the Web Site (including, without limitation, your name, picture, likeness, voice or biographical information, vocal messages, text messages or text) (each a “Submission”), you hereby grant to Company, its subsidiaries and affiliated companies and each of their respective licensees, successors and assigns (collectively, the “OfficeMax Entities”), the unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual and royalty-free right and license to use, host, cache, store, copy, distribute, display, perform, publish, broadcast, transmit, modify, reformat, translate or otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever your Submission throughout the universe, in perpetuity [didn't they already say that once] in any manner and venue and for any purpose whatsoever, including, without limitation, for the purposes of advertising, promotion or trade in promoting and publicizing Company and its products and services, by means of any and all media and devices whether now known or hereafter devised, which includes, without limitation, the unlimited right and permission to post the Submission on this Web Site. [In case you weren't keeping track, this is the entire first sentence -- we just reached the first period.] The OfficeMax Entities shall have the right, in their sole discretion, to edit, composite, morph, scan, duplicate, or alter your Submission in any manner for any purpose which the OfficeMax Entities deem necessary or desirable (each, a Modification), and you irrevocably waive any moral rights you may have in your Submission, even if a Modification is not acceptable to you. You agree that you have no right of approval, no claim of compensation, and no claim (including, without limitation, claims based upon invasion of privacy, defamation or right of publicity [I have a right of publicity?]) arising out of any use or Modification of your Submission, including, without limitation, any blurring, alteration, editing, morphing, distortion, illusionary effect, faulty reproduction, fictionalization or use in any composite form.

A right of publicity? This must have been drafted by a lawyer from Hollywood. There are other neat bits, too — I had to look up the definition of the term “estoppel”¹ for instance. The irony doesn’t end there, either. I had to Photoshop together small screen-shots of the Elf Yourself ™ Flash applet in order to put together the graphic you see here. The reason for that effort? The text-based Terms of Use on the site does not match the one embedded in the Flash applet! Just think, if one didn’t bothered to scroll through the text in the applet, all of this fun would be missed. It seems like the work of an overly excessive legal mind (who else would use the word “estoppel”?). Or, (“without limitation”) a committee of overly excessive legal minds.

Needless to say, I found this to be way over the top, so I decided not to send an Elf Yourself reply.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.elfyourself.com/termsofuse.php on January 20th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. “a bar or impediment preventing a party from asserting a fact or a claim inconsistent with a position that party previously took, either by conduct or words, esp. where a representation has been relied or acted upon by others.” — estoppel. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved December 22, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/estoppel

57

How did you do?

Long time readers of DLTJ know that I rarely post commentary outside the realm of disruptive library technology to this blog, much less reflections of personal, non-work life. This will be an exception, though, because it straddles that boundary between technology and family. It is called REST for toddlers and it comes to us from the “dive into mark” blog. By way of explanation, REST (as a technology term, not as used in the sentence “parents with young children often which they had a chance to rest.”) is an acronym for Representational State Transfer, a way of constructing URLs so that they are useful outside the context of your current web browsing session (e.g. bookmarkable and/or e-mailable to someone else). REST rides atop the HTTP protocol, of which section 10 of the specification talks about response codes from clients to servers. What Mark has done is offer a real-life explanation of some of those response codes in the context of child-rearing. A sample:

200 OK

“OK.”

201 Created

“You went pee-pee in the potty!”

202 Accepted

“Daddy will do it in a minute.”

204 No Content

“…”

300 Multiple Choices

“Do you want apple juice or do you want milk?”

So, it would seem to me, that I just need to teach my daughter the HTTP protocol, at which point I can make our challenge/response dialog much more efficient:

• Her: Can I go outside?
• Me:Sure! 200

• Her: Do you know where my bouncy ball is?
• Me: Sorry, 404. 302.

• Her: Well, then can I have that bucket and shovel?
• Me: 409.
• Her: Ple-e-e-s-e?!?
• Me: 304, and if you keep asking, 403!