Linked List: February 29, 2012

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

Who Decides What Gets Sold in the Bookstore? ★

Seth Godin:

I just found out that Apple is rejecting my new manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and won’t carry it in their store because inside the manifesto are links to buy the books I mention in the bibliography.

Quoting here from their note to me, rejecting the book: “Multiple links to Amazon store. IE page 35, David Weinberger link.”

And there’s the conflict. We’re heading to a world where there are just a handful of influential bookstores (Amazon, Apple, Nook…) and one by one, the principles of open access are disappearing. Apple, apparently, won’t carry an ebook that contains a link to buy a hardcover book from Amazon.

Would Amazon carry a book that linked each book in the bibliography to the iBookstore? I don’t know, maybe they would. But would Barnes & Noble carry a book that contained coupons to buy additional books at Borders? (Pretend Borders is still in business.) Why not link to iBookstore versions of the books from the iBooks edition?

Keep in mind that Apple isn’t blocking Godin’s book from being read in iBooks — they’re simply not selling it in their e-book store.

‘Fabricado no Brasil’ ★

Apple is now selling Brazilian-assembled iPhones in Brazil.

Verisign Seizes .com Domain Registered via Foreign Registrar on Behalf of US Authorities ★

Mark Jeftovic, writing on the EasyDNS blog:

But at the end of the day what has happened is that US law (in fact, Maryland state law) as been imposed on a .com domain operating outside the USA, which is the subtext we were very worried about when we commented on SOPA. Even though SOPA is currently in limbo, the reality that US law can now be asserted over all domains registered under .com, .net, org, .biz and maybe .info (Afilias is headquartered in Ireland by operates out of the US).

This is no longer a doom-and-gloom theory by some guy in a tin foil hat. It just happened.

This is just awful.

New ‘MLB at Bat’ App Is Available ★

Clayton Morris has the details on the various subscription levels available. So great.