Ahhhh the LIBRIé, as you probably know there has been a lot of conversation here

Teleread Blog
(http://www.teleread.org/blog/2004_06_20_archive.html)

And here

Yahoo group dedicated to enhancing the Librie
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/librie)

The Librie is an e-book powered by an organic display, this means low power, and superb viewing angles… It’s as good as newsprint to read.

Sony have excelled themselves again. Hey hang on, I can hear you say this is supposed to be a rant… well it is. Sony have excelled themselves yet again in slapping the most god awful DRM solution known to man onto what is would be a market leading device.

1) Books last for 60 days then they vanish
2) It’s a rental model, you own nothing ever in terms of books
3) Wait for it; you cannot publish your own material onto the device.

I have shown this device to a few guys in the office and they would all have one, if it had the ability to accept documents published to it from say Guttenberg (http://www.promo.net/pg/) for instance.

Sony has concocted a format called BBEB which allows them to publish books to the device, the details of which are not published.

In all other areas Sony got it right with this device

1) Great Screen
2) Great Form Factor
3) Great Battery Life
4) Open Source OS (Linux)

In its current form , the device will not sell, which means unless Sony do a huge about turn ,this device will probably never see light outside of Japan.

We are urging both Sony to act and also for users to join the Librie list and work with us in turning this device into something useful.