E-books are read on computer, and greatest thing about them, as I've discovered myself, is that one can enlarge text so it is easier to read. For those who find even that too difficult, it is possible to get software in your computer which will read text to you. I'm not sure how digital it sounds, but I believe in many places that software is free to any who are legally defined as blind.

What shocked me about exchange was that a number of writers had admitted a bias against e-books when this other member first asked who all offered their books in this form. The mindset still seems to be, a book is not really published until it comes out in paperback or hardcover.

I confess I've learned too, that fiction doesn't sell as an ebook yet, though all kinds of marketing manuals and self-help books do.

Fortunately, when this writer explained herself, others rallied around with offers to help out. One said she'd gladly offer her books to be read on tape if anyone could be found to do it. Another urged that we all consider producing our books in digital at same time as in print.

Thinking about all this today, I suddenly see wide open doors of opportunity for ministry and perhaps a business.

Latin kidnapped word "plagion" from ancient Greek and it ended up in English as "plagiarism". It literally means "to kidnap" - most commonly, to misappropriate content and wrongly attribute it to oneself. It is a close kin of piracy. But while software or content pirate does not bother to hide or alter identity of content's creator or software's author - plagiarist does. Plagiarism is, therefore, more pernicious than piracy.

Enter Turnit.com. An off-shoot of www.iparadigms.com, it was established by a group of concerned (and commercially minded) scientists from UC Berkeley.

Whereas digital rights and asset management systems are geared to prevent piracy - plagiarism.org and its commercial arm, Turnit.com, are cyber equivalent of a law enforcement agency, acting after fact to discover culprits and uncover their misdeeds. This, they claim, is a first stage on way to a plagiarism-free Internet-based academic community of both teachers and students, in which educational potential of Internet can be fully realized.

The problem is especially severe in academia. Various surveys have discovered that a staggering 80%(!) of US students cheat and that at least 30% plagiarize written material. The Internet only exacerbated this problem. More than 200 cheat-sites have sprung up, with thousands of papers available on-line and tens of thousands of satisfied plagiarists world over. Some of these hubs - like cheater.com, cheatweb or cheathouse.com - make no bones about their offerings. Many of them are located outside USA (in Germany, or Asia) and at least one offers papers in a few languages, Hebrew included.

The problem, though, is not limited to ivory towers. E-zines plagiarize. The print media plagiarize. Individual journalists plagiarize, many with abandon. Even advertising agencies and financial institutions plagiarize. The amount of material out there is so overwhelming that plagiarist develops a (fairly justified) sense of immunity. The temptation is irresistible, rewards big and pressures of modern life great.