There is something nice about being able to flip through and feel the pages of a good magazine. I subscribe to such titles as Wired, GOOD and a few others but I often see them piling up on my coffee table. Mygazines might offer a solution to help me get to read magazines while I am online with its community approach to magazine sharing. Mygazines enables its users to upload and share magazines with the rest of the community like the YouTube for magazine publishing.
Mygazines offers a slick overlay which enables users to easily flip through and interact with magazine content. I searched and found Wired and was able to bookmark, email, rate, search and tag the content. It offers a couple of different paging views too. Users can also customize the content by saving your favorite pages and then create your own mashup magazines.
While I love the concept of creating a magazine community, I do not understand how this is legal. Until recently with the creation of MagCloud and others, creating magazines was left to the publishing companies which copyright the material. Therefore, uploading copyrighted content and sharing with the community seems like the quickest way to get sued. I think Mygazines might have thought about this too since it has worked in language into its terms of services attempting to place all the onus on its users. I just do not think its terms of service totally protects mygazines since the objective of the site is clearly inviting its users to contribute copyrighted content. What do you think? Offer your SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion in the comments section below.
