The new digital era is revolutionizing the way culture is perceived in society. Rather than go to the library to check out books, now people don’t even have to leave their own homes. Because of the first sale doctrine of the Copyright Act of 1976, libraries have been able to exist and check out books to the public. Now libraries are offering the public the option of downloading e-books for free simply using their own computers and library cards. After two or three weeks, the e-book is removed from a reader’s digital account. According to the New York Times’ article “Libraries and Readers Wade Into Digital Lending,” e-books provide a different and easier format for a technology-based society to read books. In order to even get copies for circulation, libraries are forced to pay higher fees than the price that e-books are sold on Amazon and similar sources. Circulation of these e-books is growing, although it currently accounts for a small percentage of book sales and library circulations. Despite the nascent development of e-books, evidence shows that hardcover book sales decreased 15.5% this year as compared to 2008. With this said, the publishing industry that represent authors fear that too much of intellectual property is offered for free.
The growing trend of creating e-books to be bought and downloaded onto Sony E-readers and Kindles is also producing a new type of piracy. Websites such as RapidShare allow e-books to be uploaded to the site for free without the copyright owner’s consent. It seems inevitable that this new digital industry would follow the piracy of music with sites such as Napster and Limewire. Even with the takedown notice of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, pirated material is showing up days after being taken down on sites like RapidShare.
Apple is now in the works of producing a tablet that would be larger than the iPhone but would have similar touch-screen applications with a bigger screen. Steve Jobs in interviews has claimed that he doesn’t see e-book publishing as a major business model for Apple. However, the new Apple Tablet may incidentally become a new device that allows for the spread of downloading (both legally and illegally) e-books. The Apple Tablet is even potentially said to digitally hold newspapers and magazines. This tablet could facilitate even greater changes within the publishing world.
With all of this in mind, it is fascinating to see how the digital age is revolutionizing the way people read. With new mediums of information come new attempts to get this content for free. The increase of e-book sales and the constant improvement of the design of the Kindle and future Apple Tablet are also changing the way copyright is addressed. With colleges such as Princeton University attempting a trial period of e-reader participation, the way education is approached is in the midst of these changes. Our generation is a transformative one that is constantly in flux, and at the center of the debate is how to integrate copyright into these changes.
Free Culture models see the Internet as a medium that creates active participants who should have control over the production and spread of digital content. Is Creative Commons and the GNU General Public License the future of web-based copyright, or will the world of permission society or micropayments such as the current model of iTunes direct the path copyright will take? Can the copyright laws even keep up with the changing technology?
This is pretty interesting, one thing I know for sure is I want one of those tablets, badly, but probably the second or third generation ones.
I always thought that it was interesting that you can “borrow” an electronic medium, like you can rent movies on iTunes and now you can check out e-books… at least there are no late fees because they take it away from you on time! Is that not an invasion of privacy? Consequently, unlike hard copies, there’s that disadvantage of not being able to sell back your copy.
Anyway, schools have had the option of digital copies of textbooks for a while now. I remember my first digital textbook in high school and my teacher just copied it from his digital teacher’s edition for free, as long as I gave him a blank dvd. Is copying discs of a textbook the same as photocopying a hard copy and therefore fall under fair use? Could you say that about other books, or specifically “educational” ones?
When I first read your post, I was extremely excited at the proposition of getting best-selling novels for free without having to wait for another person to return the book I wanted to the library or adding my name to a waiting list that is months long. However, much to my surprise, I was shocked that the Times article states that the same constraints I hated about my town’s public library growing up apply to the digital copies; only one book can be taken out at a time and patrons must wait in line for the most popular reads. Here, again, we can find a new market that cannot seem to divorce itself from its parent sales model. Though copyright holders might throw a fit, at least at first, it seems entirely possible to come up with a paradigm in which libraries pay more for an e-book, perhaps through nominal licensing fees for each download or some sort of subscription service, as the article suggest, which would allow multiple readers to check a book out at the same time. As Robert Boynton illustrates in “The Tyranny of Copyright” through a comparison of the record and phone service industry, people are willing to pay more for a technology that allows them more immediate interaction. Hence, I believe that many individuals, rightfully tired of waiting for books in the age of NetFlix, iTunes, and instant media gratification, might be willing to pay a small yearly membership fee to public libraries to offset any costs of e-books services not covered by their tax dollars.