I received an Amazon Kindle over the holidays, and I like it quite a bit. I’ve downloaded lots of free books and reference materials, in addition to some current reads. One disappointment I have is that many legal books I would like to download, such as Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography, are not yet available. Something else I have yet to find is a handy collection of Supreme Court opinions to download, either in combination or individually. I know I can transfer them myself individually, but this is less convenient. Perhaps LII or Oyez or other institution will take this on. I’d certainly subscribe to Supreme Court opinions on my Kindle, and I’d likely purchase some historical and topical collections too.
Manne Guye says:
It will be amazing when all text books for college/gradschool/lawschool are available on a Kindle or Kindle-like device. It should significantly cut down on the outlandish prices currently charged to students; I once spent around $500 for books in one semester. Of course, so many vested interests – publishers, book manufacurers, paper companies – would probably stand to lose by such a system that schools will drag their feet in implementing a change like this.
January 26, 2010, 12:09 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Manne Guye –
Case Western Reserve University has actually been part of a pilot program to use large-format Kindles for coursework and text books. Here’s a story the WSJ wrote about it.
JHA
January 26, 2010, 12:21 pmDave N. says:
Manne Guy,
I can see that happening, but you will still pay $250 a book even on the Kindle.
January 26, 2010, 12:23 pmSteve Jobs says:
Apple is about to unveil its tablet tomorrow, which I’m quite sure will leave the likes of Kindle in the dust. You’d be able to access Westlaw or Lexis on it, read and download SSRN articles, listen to audio recordings of Supreme Court oral arguments, and surf pr0n while at it. Can your e-reader do that?
January 26, 2010, 12:43 pmBRS says:
The American Bankruptcy Institute says it is working on making its books available for the Kindle, but I looked at their online bookstore yesterday, and it looks like they need work. Right now, I think having a Kindle is like having an iPod before the iTunes store really took off. You can get brand new stuff, and you can get poor quality copies of old stuff, but if you want to read Graham Greene on your Kindle, you are out of luck.
January 26, 2010, 1:11 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
BRS –
Actually, you can read Graham Greene on the Kindle, albeit not much Graham Greene other than this.
JHA
January 26, 2010, 1:17 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I don’t see why “vested interests” would oppose it anyway. Kindle textbooks may cost less — but it’s a lot harder to re-sell used Kindle textbooks.
January 26, 2010, 1:24 pmHercules says:
Although I don’t own a Kindle, I have read many Amicus Briefs and several SCOTUS opinions that are linked from VC and chicagoguncase.com in PDF format and am able read them from my Pocket PC.
Hopefully the Kindle can read PDF’s.
Good Luck
January 26, 2010, 1:34 pmCrunchy Frog says:
I fail to see why someone would pay $300 for a Kindle when you can get the Kindle app (as well as the Barnes & Noble app, et al) for free on the iPhone and Blackberry.
Plus, afaik, the Kindle is only useful for books in the Amazon online store, which is not all-inclusive by any means (eg Atlas Shrugged is not there, although other Rand items are).
January 26, 2010, 1:34 pmmikeyes says:
I am a new kindle user, but I found that there is a software upgrade for the Kindle 2 (go to the Amazon kindle site, it is iteration 2.3, I think) that allows you to read PDF files with no problem. You have to down load them from your computer (you plug the Kindle in via the USB port) and they show up on your home page. You don’t have the ability to change the size of the fonts but you can read the file in a landscape mode. I suspect that all the SCOTUS opinions are available in PDF format.
BTW, I think you can transfer Kindle books to your iPhone, etc and even synch them with the Kindle so you can continue to read them from where you left off even if you have the book on three different machines. (I suspect that you can transfer a book to another person’s Kindle. I have not tried that.)
Ereaders will continue to get more sophisticated and there will be more offerings. While books are a mature technology and need no batteries, the convenience of one object holding 1500-4500 books (depending on model) is pretty nifty.
My big problem is that the kindle (which downloads books via the Sprint network for free and is available all over the world) encourages impulse buying. I used to have to go to a bookstore for that to happen.
January 26, 2010, 2:04 pmChris Bell says:
Crunchy,
The Kindle uses an e-ink screen, which does not strain your eyes. (It does not “refresh” constantly like an ipod or computer screen.)
It’s wonderful.
January 26, 2010, 2:09 pmPete Freans says:
You should check out Calibre, an e-book manager you download to your PC or Apple to acquire books, magazines, and newspapers, many of them for free. First you download your choices onto your system, then upload them to your Kindle via USB port.
http://calibre-ebook.com/
January 26, 2010, 2:21 pmCJColucci says:
Does anyone have experience with the competing e-readers? I’ve been staying out of it, but I have an opportunity to get a “free” SONY reader, using accumulated credit card points. Does it have any problems that might justify paying for either kindle or B&N?
January 26, 2010, 2:36 pmAk Mike says:
CJ – get the Sony. I’ve had one for two years. Its screen is the same as the Kindle, and it has access to a very broad range of books from many sites. Prof. Adler could download the PDF version of US Reports from the US Supreme Court web site (using the excellent Calibre program) onto the Sony (he might be able to do that for his Kindle as well).
The negatives for the Sony are no search capability, no annotation capability, and no built-in dictionary. The pluses are better ergonomics, and the ability to use more formats (epub, rtf, pdf, etc.).
January 26, 2010, 3:03 pmVader says:
Supreme Court on the Kindle
To be followed by a political firestorm.
——————————————————–>
January 26, 2010, 3:39 pmDavid Sucher says:
In time. In due course.
January 26, 2010, 4:16 pmYou won’t see a dead-tree casebook in ten years, if not sooner.
TLA says:
I love my Kindle, but I have a hard time seeing things like law texts on it given the issue of resale that was already mentioned. Although, I still have a lot of my law texts, I am a rare duck in keeping them, I think.
Also, to Crunchy Frog, there are people that own the Kindle (e.g. me) who do not have a Blackberry or iPhone (or some other type of smartphone).
January 26, 2010, 5:25 pmSenator Christmas says:
The lack of search capability in and of itself would seem to make this a non-starter.
January 26, 2010, 5:30 pmCato The Elder says:
I like my DX, but I’ve noticed the Kindle Store’s books seem to have significant transcription errors including problems with diacritical symbols, spacing between sentences, poor formatting, and even in the worst cases omissions of entire chapters. Moreover the typefaces they employ in these books are often not pleasing to the eye and of low quality compared to a typical hardcover. As a result I’m finding that I use the device for mainly my technical readings, which are on PDF, and have been stingy with money I’d otherwise deploy in their store.
January 26, 2010, 8:03 pmloki13 says:
I’m going to add in my two cents.
Tomorrow will be the unveiling of Apple’s new device (the JesusSlate(tm)). While I am sure the Kindle is a nice toy, I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for this. It almost makes me wish I could re-do law school, just so that I could have e-textbooks, access to Westlaw and Lexis, and streaming Netflix (*ahem*) on one device. But I wouldn’t look forward to having to take the bar again. *grin*
Seriously- I don’t even know if I can sleep tonight.
January 26, 2010, 9:53 pmDavid Sucher says:
It’s not merely that an ebook reader — not just Apple’s iTablet but many different brands of reading devices — as a casebook will be cheaper, lighter, and with bigger type.
But Professor’s will be able to change the casebooks in real time as the Appellate Courts create new law (even Republican new law.)
January 26, 2010, 10:20 pmAndrys says:
There are someting like 3 million books available to the Kindle. It is much repeated by people who don’t have Kindles that the Kindle reads only Amazon-purchased material.
ANY non-DRM’d PDF, TXT, MOBI, PRC file can go directly on it. HTML, WORD, and ePub files can be converted to Amazon-compatible format in about 3 minutes, the first two by Amazon for free if you want and sent back to your Amazon email at no cost – all of them by Kindle users with simple free utilities that automate the conversion.
Kindle users can download direct to their Kindles from places like Project Gutenberg, feedbooks.com, manybooks.net (as mnybks.net), fictionwise.com (owned by B&N), something other e-readers cannot do because they cannot download onto their devices books from any sites but the ONE store they are allowed to access via wireless.
ALL e-readers can get books by downloading from websites to their computers and then moving them to their e-readers as long as the ereaders can recognize the file format or the file can be converted (just about always now).
Only the Kindle has cellular wireless to the web along with a web browser with no restrictions on sites Kindle owners can access, 24/7 at no added cost. For now, it is the only e-reader in sight that will allow this. It’s slow but it’s doable. GLOBALLY, any Kindle owner can be reading a book and then look up a word or phrase at Wikipedia, live, at no extra charge, after which they get back to where they were in the book with the press of a button.
But in the U.S., and in places with less expensive wireless network costs (Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico), web-browsing anywhere is enabled. Not ‘just’ Wikipedia.
But, as I said, no other e-reader will allow that kind of access even, at no added cost, despite the bad rap that Amazon has for ‘control’ allowing access to only their store.
That’s how distorted the ‘word’ about Amazon and its Kindle is though.
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January 27, 2010, 5:30 amPeter says:
I have been experimenting with this, and thus far have a small number of cases converted to .epub format. I am interested in sharing these, even making them availiable for download on the web, perhaps hoping that others would do the same. A possible problem is that the web pages
February 2, 2010, 11:30 amI use are copyrighted, most likely because of the internal links which are irrelevant to the ebook. It appears some only ask credit, but others are more daunting. But credit is easy, and I am intersted in the possibilities.