Thanks to a million dollar grant from the Macarthur Foundation, version 1.0 of Sophie, software that allows non-programmers to easily create multimedia documents, will be released in February 2008. Sophie runs on Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems. An alpha version and several demo books created with Sophie are available.

Here's an excerpt the project's home page:

Originally conceived as a standalone multimedia authoring tool, Sophie is now integrated into the Web 2.0 network in some very powerful ways:

• Sophie documents can be uploaded to a server and then streamed over the net
• It's possible to embed remote audio, video and graphic text files in the pages of Sophie documents meaning that the actual document that needs to be distributed might be only a few hundred kilobytes even if the book itself is comprised of hundreds of megabytes or even a few gigabytes.
• Sophie now has the ability to browse OKI (open knowledge initiative) repositories from within Sophie itself and then to embed objects from those repositories.
• We now have live dynamic text fields (similar to the Institute's CommentPress experiments on the web) such that a comment written in the margin is displayed immediately in every other copy of that book—anywhere in the world.

Slashdot reports that the Motion Picture of Association of America has removed the MPA University Toolkit software from the software's website after Matthew Garrett contacted the MPAA's ISP indicating that the software violated the GNU GPL. Garrett had attempted to contact the MPAA directly, but it was unresponsive. Currently, only Toolkit documentation remains on the website.

Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has posted "The Canadian DMCA: What You Can Do," which presents 30 ways that Canadians can fight upcoming DMCA-style copyright legislation. It also includes a YouTube video on this topic.

Lisa Spiro, Director of the Digital Media Center and the Educational Technology Research and Assessment Cooperative at Rice University's Fondren Library, has established the Digital Scholarship in the Humanities weblog.

Here's a selection of recent posts:

• Defining Digital Scholarship in the Humanities: Ten-Fingered Humanists?
• Imagining New Tools for Humanities Scholars
• What Tools Do Humanities Scholars Need?

According to Billboard, Pepsi and Amazon may start a promotion campaign during the upcoming Super Bowl that could give away as many as one billion MP3 tracks. It is also rumored that Wal-Mart will soon drop DRM-protected tracks in favor of the MP3 format. In reaction to these developments and the current availability of MP3s from EMI and Universal Music Group (this is a test), the Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment may consider distributing MP3s as well.

Read more about it at "Amazon 1 Billion MP3 Giveaway Offer; Under Pressure, Labels Warm To DRM-free Format" and "DRM Deathwatch: Sony, Wal-Mart."

The Library of Congress has released a draft of the Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control for comment. Comments should be received by December 15.

Here's an excerpt from the "Introduction":

The recommendations fall into five general areas:

1. Increase the efficiency of bibliographic production for all libraries through increased cooperation and increased sharing of bibliographic records, and by maximizing the use of data produced throughout the entire “supply chain” for information resources.
2. Transfer effort into higher-value activity. In particular, expand the possibilities for knowledge creation by “exposing” rare and unique materials held by libraries that are currently hidden from view and, thus, underused.
3. Position our technology for the future by recognizing that the World Wide Web is both our technology platform and the appropriate platform for the delivery of our standards. Recognize that people are not the only users of the data we produce in the name of bibliographic control, but so too are machine applications that interact with those data in a variety of ways.
4. Position our community for the future by facilitating the incorporation of evaluative and other user-supplied information into our resource descriptions. Work to realize the potential of the FRBR framework for revealing and capitalizing on the various relationships that exist among information resources.
5. Strengthen the library profession through education and the development of metrics that will inform decision-making now and in the future.