Blinklist, a new non-fiction book summary service. I tried the timely Spillover (scientific look at the history and future trajectory of plagues), and got a clear and well structured 4,800 word summary.

The free trial lasts for three days, then it’s $5 a month for a three-month lock-in. I noted:

* You can’t use their save-to-Kindle button, except via the paid version.
* No RSS feed, to alert you to newly added books.
* A moderate amount of dubious bestseller fluff (Jared Diamond, Naomi Klein, Malcolm Gladwell, etc).
* Currently only 40 new books added per month.
* Strong in ‘the latest business buzz’ and popular science books.
* A very noticeable liberal/leftist bias in selection.
* Really ugly line breaks on the text of the website’s catalogue cards.
* No spoken-word versions of the summaries.
* No rider that similarly digests and impartially evaluates all the pertinent criticisms of the book, from the various reviews.

But it’s certainly an interesting business model, and delivers what it promises.

Spain has legally mandated financial compensation to content owners, for online use of even snippets of content. This is an “inalienable” right and applies to every content producer, which appears to effectively void Creative Commons licenses and ‘fair use’ in Spain. Since even if you want to give something away free as Creative Commons, the law won’t allow that: you will always have the “inalienable” right to suddenly demand payment for a CC-licenced work in Spain, any time you choose. It even forbids linking to content without payment, for anything beyond a hyperlink + minimal anchor text. Given the Spanish-speaking world’s outstanding lead in publishing open access academic journals, this seems a rather perverse position for Spain to take.