Categories
Book and Reading News

Pirated e-books now readable on pirated e-reader!

founder-intl-ebook-reader.previewFrom China comes the Kindle 2 clone, a $210 rip-off of Amazon’s hot-selling e-reader device that will ship in China latter this year or early in 2010. Made by the Peking University Founder Group Corp, which changed a few features of the Kindle 2, using “Page Up” and “Page Down”—in English—to label navigation buttons (when cadging designs, it is always a good idea to look to the IBM PC keyboard for UI inspiration), for example. And the keys are a slightly different shape than those on the Kindle. The device’s name was not disclosed, apparently, though the pictured unit is labeled “WeFound.”

It will likely display e-books in a proprietary format developed by the Peking University Founder Group, called “Apabi.” Hopefully, the company will respect the rights of authors in making e-books available in the format and not simply copy a file and call it their own.

It has a roughly 6-inch E-Ink display (the company is reported to have described the size as “unclear”) and uses some form of wireless cellular data to transfer purchases to the device, according to Nikkei Electronics Asia. The reporter could only find out that a “SIM card” is required, so it is hard to say what the connectivity actually is, though readers will purportedly be able to make purchases and download e-books to the device itself, just like Kindle.