The future of books in the world of digital copyright is something I find to be an interesting topic. Slowly but surely, we are starting to hear about book piracy along side movies and music. The amount of stolen books isn’t even comparable to other forms of media yet, but the moral and ethical side of stealing books is interesting. People tend to defend piracy based on the concept of “shared information is more power.” While I agree with this concept in terms of things like open source software, I tend to see it more as an excuse to steal media more often than less. Sharing Miley Cyrus’ new album isn’t necessarily the equivalent of sharing basic knowledge and tools to educate ourselves. However, a history book is of value to our society, and it is true that copyright maybe be holding it back. While I do believe it is wrong to pirate copyrighted books of a creative nature, I wouldn’t feel morally wrong downloading an educational book, as it is my intent to utilize the knowledge acquired from the book, and hopefully recycle the knowledge back into society. I understand the concern of writers stopping writing if they aren’t awarded copyright, but if a divide between creative and educational books could become a reality, than I believe people wouldn’t be concerned about the decline of writers. After all, writers didn’t stop writing when libraries first came around. But then again, the importance of public (by that I mean free) education isn’t necessarily something on our nations mind…
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