Technology

Microsoft And Barnes And Noble Team Up On eBooks And Education?

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If you haven’t heard for a legitimate reason, like a coma or temporary death, Barnes and Noble has teamed up with Apple in a ‘strategic partnership” involving e-Books.

Yeah. Process that one for a bit.

Basically there’s a new B&N subsidiary that rolls the Nook and college/educational businesses together. Microsoft invested in it. The results are this could be a separate business, an adsorbed one . . . or one, say, sold to Microsoft. Think about that for a moment.

We just saw two of Apple’s competitors team up with a “daughter” company in powerful markets.

Heree’s your takeaways:

  • I’ve suspected something is up with B&N’s plans in education, and I think this was coming for awhile. Protip: don’t write B&N off, they’re obviously working quietly behind the scenes.
  • This is to Apple’s disadvantage of course, but also note this settled B&N vs Microsoft patent litigation. Apple’s still facing plenty over ebooks, while this clears the air.
  • Lots in all of this is Amazon’s reasonably-priced 300 pound gorilla. A Microsoft-B&N partnership or spinoff is also a challenge to Amazon.
  • B&N supports the more universal ePub format. Just saying’ this could give it a shot in the arm.
  • Job opportunities will clearly come of this. Take a look at the opportunities (if you’re lucky it’s near B&N’s offices in Palo Alto, which is an awesome city).
  • Microsoft can probably leverage this partnership for their e-devices, which are needless to say behind the market.
  • If this is done as a spinoff company it could be huge. Imagine a company created just as a rival to Apple/Amazon, backed by these two. Imagine a company using a universal format. Imagine a company, say . . . I dunno, buying Lulu . . . .

Things just got a lot more interesting in the eBook world.

– Steven Savage

Steve’s CISPA Roundup

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OK, a lot of us at FTP have been insanely busy, so we didn’t do any really good job covering CISPA, which some see as a bastard child of SOPA.  Here’s what I’ve dug up.

CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing And Protection Act) came onto the scene pretty quick earlier this month.  It seemed to be an odd mix of overly broad language, added some privacy reviews, and troublingly, let people off the hook for sharing data with the government.  It also had a lot of sponsors.

The odd thing with the bill is it seemed “less” SOPA-like than I’d expect, but then had some huge back doors and odd language revolving around security.  It seems broad enough that it could be massively misused.  The EFF has a roundup here, including amendments.

I’m not sure this is so much the “return of SOPA” as it is “general broad powers.”

It didn’t seem to cause nearly the kerfluffle that SOPA/PIPA did.  That was kind of worrysome.  Heck, *I* should have been more aware.

The bill got amended like crazy later, which the EFF found pretty lame.

It passed the house on April 26th.

It’s now on to the Sentate to do their own bill, and there’s at least two competing ones: The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (Leiberman/Collins) and  The SECURE IT Act of 2012 (McCain).  There’s a nice roundup here.

The Obama Administration is backing the Leiberman/Collins Act, though there’s obviously plenty of concern about it (though from what I can tell it has some legitimate ideas which may be good).  The White House issued a veto threat against CISPA.

So that’s where we stand.  I can’t say this is “son of SOPA,” its’ broader in a way, which is probably why we didn’t get as much of a firestorm.  It’s bad enough (and CISPA supersedes some past law) that I’m concerned.

– Steven Savage

Hands Off The Passwords

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Well here’s a refreshing breath of rationality: Two representatives, Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced a bill to make it illegal for employers and educational facilities to ask for passwords to social networks.

I don’t know how widespread the practice is, as we have isolated reports, but this seems to be a relatively sane thing to make a law out of.  I’m glad to see something that looks savvy like this being done, though I’m sure there’s at least some bandwagon-jumping here.

The good news is that some respect for privacy in America’s IT laws bodes well for the other fights, like CISPA.  Yeah, I know we didn’t touch on that like we did SOPA, I’ll try to rectify it.

– Steven Savage