Digital Libraries
GOOGLE has a great idea. Its internet library project wants to put all the printed words in the world on the internet and give everyone access to everything. Yahoo and MSN are engaging in the same activity, as is the website for the Open Content Alliance.
This project has been in the works since at least 2004, and has been the subject of copyright litigation in the Southern District of NY, where both the publishing industry and the Authors' Guild sued GOOGLE, Inc. in 2004 to enjoin the scanning and placing of library materials on the internet. That litigation remains active.
But, you say, why would anyone object to the free dissemination of information? After all, you can visit the brick-and-mortar library and take the hard copy out for free, without purchasing the book. Why should the digital library be any different?
This presents a question of copyright. Library hard copies were sold at one point (they may have been donated to the library, but the donor purchased them), thus giving a reward to the copyright holder (since the books were presumably sold under an agreement whereby the sale would generate a royalty). The library copy is one discrete copy of the book. This one discrete copy on which the author's royalty is based is meaningless in the digital world; a file, when distributed, is, by definition copied, which is one of the activities reserved by the US Copyright Act to the copyright holder.
So what's a library to do? While it's true that William Shakespeare can't complain about the downloading of the text of his works (and the text of his works are freely available on the internet), J.K. Rowling certainly can ... and very likely would (and rightly so).
There are several options here that I can see right off the top of my head. First, and obviously, the digital libraries can limit their collections to those works where copyright has expired: William Shakespeare, Thomas Malory, Mark Twain, even some 20th Century authors. That would circumvent the copyright problem altogether.
Second, the library might "lend" the file to the user, just as libraries lend hardcopy books to their brick-and-mortar patrons: this would require that the file expire and self-delete from the client's machine after a certain amount of time has passed since its download, and the library could even limit the number of times any one client can download that file without paying anything.
Third, the digital libraries could be used as scholarly or research repositories and not made available for any other use. Scholarly uses are an exception to the copyright law's prohibition on copying in the USA.
These are just a few thoughts on how to reconcile copyright with digital libraries. Both exist, both must learn to coexist in an ever-shrinking and ever-more-connected and digital world.
Nancy
This project has been in the works since at least 2004, and has been the subject of copyright litigation in the Southern District of NY, where both the publishing industry and the Authors' Guild sued GOOGLE, Inc. in 2004 to enjoin the scanning and placing of library materials on the internet. That litigation remains active.
But, you say, why would anyone object to the free dissemination of information? After all, you can visit the brick-and-mortar library and take the hard copy out for free, without purchasing the book. Why should the digital library be any different?
This presents a question of copyright. Library hard copies were sold at one point (they may have been donated to the library, but the donor purchased them), thus giving a reward to the copyright holder (since the books were presumably sold under an agreement whereby the sale would generate a royalty). The library copy is one discrete copy of the book. This one discrete copy on which the author's royalty is based is meaningless in the digital world; a file, when distributed, is, by definition copied, which is one of the activities reserved by the US Copyright Act to the copyright holder.
So what's a library to do? While it's true that William Shakespeare can't complain about the downloading of the text of his works (and the text of his works are freely available on the internet), J.K. Rowling certainly can ... and very likely would (and rightly so).
There are several options here that I can see right off the top of my head. First, and obviously, the digital libraries can limit their collections to those works where copyright has expired: William Shakespeare, Thomas Malory, Mark Twain, even some 20th Century authors. That would circumvent the copyright problem altogether.
Second, the library might "lend" the file to the user, just as libraries lend hardcopy books to their brick-and-mortar patrons: this would require that the file expire and self-delete from the client's machine after a certain amount of time has passed since its download, and the library could even limit the number of times any one client can download that file without paying anything.
Third, the digital libraries could be used as scholarly or research repositories and not made available for any other use. Scholarly uses are an exception to the copyright law's prohibition on copying in the USA.
These are just a few thoughts on how to reconcile copyright with digital libraries. Both exist, both must learn to coexist in an ever-shrinking and ever-more-connected and digital world.
Nancy
posted by Nancy Delain at
6:10 PM
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