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EU plan for research to hit publishers
July 17, 2012

The European Union, which controls one of the world’s largest science budgets, said on Tuesday it would give free access to all research funded by European taxpayers, in a move that could hit the profits of scientific publishers such as Reed Elsevier, Wiley and Springer.

Plans by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to release for free and to a wider audience articles usually held by expensive academic journals would benefit innovation, but would force publishers, which currently generate about $8bn in revenues, to revolutionise their business models, analysts said.

Publishing Still Has Problems DoJ Suit Will Not Fix
April 18, 2012

Here are a couple more interesting points of view on the DoJ’s anti-trust lawsuit against some publishers and Apple.

On ReadWriteWeb, Joe Brockmeier points out that for all the noise around the suit, it really isn’t going to change the major problems with the e-book industry right now. He points out three such problems: the rampant proliferation of DRM and platform lock-in, the perpetual copyright implemented by Congress and backed by the Supreme Court, and Amazon’s problematic relationships with publishers (including those who aren’t the Big Six).

How to Build a Successful Marketing Platform
March 2, 2012

Actors use a physical platform to raise themselves above their audiences, focusing the attention on themselves so that they can more easily be seen and heard. The concept of building a marketing platform is not dissimilar. Publishers generally assume that if their authors’ platforms are significant enough, potential buyers will either buy their book upon its publication or spread the word about it to others. But this is often not the case. Simply because people have heard of you or have befriended you on Facebook does not necessarily mean they will buy your book or support its introduction.

Marvel Entertainment to support Stop Online Piracy Act
December 29, 2011

Marvel Entertainment is to actively support the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).The US House Of Representatives has released a list of organisations in favour of the anti-piracy bill, which includes the publisher and its parent company Disney.No other comic book firms appeared on the document, though DC Entertainment's parent company Time Warner did feature. Book publishers such as Hachette, Macmillan, Harper Collins, Penguin and Random House are also in favour of the controversial legislation.SOPA aims to allow service providers to tackle websites deemed to be in violation of copyright infringement. Opponents of the bill warn that it could be

6 Big Internet Trends to Watch for 2012
December 13, 2011

Amid the press of daily news, it sometimes helps to step back a bit to examine the larger Internet trends driving a lot of what we see crossing the tickers and newswires. At the AlwaysOn Venture Summit today in Half Moon Bay, AlwaysOn Founder and Editor Tony Perkins is outlining the big trends he sees with Kelly Porter, managing director of Woodside Capital. Here are the big ones they’re watching: Big Data + Cloud: More data has been created in the last three years than the previous 40,000. And with services such as Amazon Web Services, using that data is

Forbes: The Battle For The Clouds
October 20, 2011

The launch of iCloud this week introduced a new phase of cloud computing: the battle for dominance of the consumer cloud. iCloud is a comprehensive service that puts most (eventually all?) of your data in a personal cloud that syncs across your desktop and mobile devices and archives in the cloud. In best Apple fashion, it requires (or allows) almost no set-up.