Content and Digital Asset Management

Today, StoriesAlive, the largest collection of children's interactive stories and creative workbooks, announced two additions to its library app available via iPad and Android tablets.

Apple Inc on Monday lost its latest bid to put a court-appointed antitrust monitor on hold, after a federal appeals court rejected its argument that the monitor's work was causing it irreparable harm.

In a brief order, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said that monitor Michael Bromwich may continue to examine Apple's antitrust compliance policies while the company pursues a broader appeal seeking to remove him altogether.

However, the court's order addressed some of Apple's concerns, making it clear that there are limits to the monitor's powers.

Amazon's Kindle Worlds, the company's publishing arm for legally-sanctioned fan fiction, is expanding fast. The company announced today that it's adding seven new properties, including GI Joe, Veronica Mars, and the Pretty Little Liars spinoff Ravenswood. That brings the total number of fan fiction franchises available exclusively through Amazon up to 20. The announcement comes on the 50th anniversary of GI Joe, which is owned by Hasbro. "Hasbro now enters a new segment of the business by embracing the concept of open-source storytelling, and officially unlocking the world of GI Joe to our fans through Amazon's Kindle Worlds,"

The digital content industry is infatuated with a paywall pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth, from one extreme to the other. Remember when paywalls were considered a roadblock to achieving the broadest reach possible and all the revenue problems could be solved with advertising?

Millions of out-of-print books and historical videoclips, black-and-white movies, nearly forgotten TV shows and pop songs are all available with a credit card or in many cases for free. It used to be that, for economic and techno­logical reasons, this cultural history was locked away. Libraries and corporate archives kept a small subset of it available, but the rest was in storage, out of reach. The reversal has happened in just the past decade.

Global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced a partnership with Google to deliver K-12 core curriculum for the first time through Google Play for Education. Already established as a trusted resource for students and teachers in the higher education space, Google Play for Education will now provide access to a broad range of HMH's market-leading K-12 education content across multiple devices.

News Corp.'s (NASDAQ:NWS) (NASDAQ:NWSA) HarperCollins, one of the world's largest publishing companies, recently requested that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) remove search engine links to some of its own books on Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes in what appears to be a poorly executed attempt to fight online piracy, reports TorrentFreak. HarperCollins made the takedown requests through Digimarc (NASDAQ:DMRC), a company that provides anti-piracy protection for publishers and authors. As seen in the screenshot above, Digimarc's takedown requests included eight links to HarperCollins e-books offered through Apple's iTunes Store. The eight targeted books are all mystery novels written by Agatha Christie

After two decades operating one of the industry's most aggressive and successful anti-piracy programs, the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, announced today that it is significantly expanding its enforcement efforts.  SIIA will now target a broad range of intellectual property violations on behalf of both software and content publishers.

I love the concept of reselling your digital assets. Bought a bunch of songs you no longer care for? Resell them. Ebooks you've read and have no use for? Resell them. The used CD and bookstore model that works in the physical world will definitely be a vibrant component of the digital content world. 

Despite the fact that Amazon clearly dominates book and eBook sales, a significant portion of the digital book publishing industry makes its home inside Apple's ecosystem. Many of those involved in books within the Apple App Store and iBooks Store come from the tech, design or app development side to things. Here, the book format is blended together with the app builder's mentality - make your book do something, make it flexible, updatable, and discoverable