Electronic Publishing

Trying to expand its book sales, Amazon.com Inc. released a free application Wednesday that lets iPhone and iPod Touch users read electronic books purchased at the e-commerce giant's Kindle online bookstore. The software performs many of the same functions featured on Amazon's $359 Kindle 2 reading device released last month, including bookmarking, noting, highlighting and adjusting the font size, the company said.

Three powerful technology companies have banded together to oppose Google Inc.'s proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers over the Internet search giant's book scanning project. Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have signed on to a coalition being assembled by the Internet Archive and Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer, said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit that is trying to build a free digital library of Internet content.

The century-old Christian Science Monitor said Tuesday that it would discontinue its daily print edition in April and move almost exclusively to online publication, becoming the first major national newspaper to abandon a daily paper-and-ink format. The move, which had been expected by industry professionals and the Monitor staff, will cut annual costs by millions of dollars for the money-losing newspaper, which is subsidized by the Christian Science Church.

Christopher Paolini's "Brisingr," Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy and Peter Matthiessen's award-winning "Shadow Country" are among the dozen-plus books coming to the iPhone and to iPod Touch from publisher Random House Inc. "We are pleased to be making this initial list of outstanding books by some of our top-selling authors available to a groundbreaking group of readers," Matt Shatz, Random House's vice president for digital books, said in a statement this week.

A U.S. appeals court has rejected a bid by Internet activists to roll back federal laws that extended copyright protection over "orphan works," or books and other media that are no longer in print. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision to dismiss Kahle vs. Gonzales, which argued that legal changes made in the 1990s had vastly extended copyright protections at the expense of free speech rights.

A federal judge in New York gave websites a partial victory by acknowledging that when documents are published on the Internet, they take on a life of their own, an existence that cannot be reversed by a court. Senior U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein issued a mixed decision in the closely watched case involving documents relating to the drug Zyprexa. The case pitted opponents of the drug against its manufacturer, Eli Lilly & Co., and both sides claimed at least part of a victory.

For actors, it's a little like an electronic casting call. The Screen Actors Guild on Tuesday unveiled an online casting directory called iActor for members to upload their head shots, resumes and video and audio clips to create their individual profiles. The service will allow casting directors to search the profiles to find the right actors based on various criteria such as gender, skills and physical characteristics.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch mused aloud about the advantages of eliminating the print edition of the Wall Street Journal just as he was hammering out a deal with the paper's parent company to protect its journalistic independence if he were to become its new owner.

new york -- Media mogul Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday that he was leaning toward dropping the online subscription fee for the Wall Street Journal in a gamble to increase visitor traffic and website advertising revenue. Murdoch made the comments at a media investment conference, a few months before his News Corp. is scheduled to complete its $5-billion purchase of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Journal, wsj.com, Barron's and Dow Jones News Service.

Three weeks after the release of Amazon.com's Kindle 2, Sony Corp. -- the first major company to introduce an electronic book device, the Sony Reader -- said it would offer customers half a million public domain books that have been optimized by Google Inc. These books, which will join the 100,000 or so available for purchase at the Sony bookstore and other sites, will be free and searchable by title, author and topic.