Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
The public library comparison confuses me. I know they pay a fee but it isn't the same as if I bought the book myself, is it? So that book I checked out and read is a lost sale, right?
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As could be borrowing from a friend, buying from a used bookstore or church rummage sale, or fishing an old book out of a garbage bin.
IANAL (nor is anyone else here, AFAIK), but I believe in the US (other jurisdictions, I don't know) library activities would fall under the doctrine of first sale.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
I'm not talking about entitlement, I think. But I see a discontinuity in how the ethics of public libraries map onto e-books.
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Consider this: prior to the digital age, it was impossible to disseminate intellectual property (in our case, the contents of a book) apart from some physical medium. A pbook, thus, consists of two parts: the physical medium -- the pages, the binding, the cover, etc. -- and the intellectual content. When you buy a pbook, you are
not buying the IP, only the physical medium. In effect, the book is "co-owned" by both you and the copyright holder.
Much of the resulting law has been a balancing act between the rights of the two owners. I own the physical book, so first sale doctrine says I'm allowed to dispose of it in any way I choose -- resell it, loan it out, give it away, burn it. I don't own the IP so I am not, unlike other items I may own, legally free to, say, photograph the book in its entirety.
The problem is, we have all become accustomed to having certain rights with respect to our books. But in fact all the rights we have apply to the physical medium only. About the only rights we've ever had with respect to the IP in our books are the right to keep a permanent copy (meaning the copy already in the book, not make a backup copy) and to dispose of that copy as we see fit. But in fact even those rights are derivative of the fact that the IP is inseparable from the medium.
Along comes the Digital (and, in particular, the Internet) Age. Suddenly it becomes possible to distribute intellectual property separate from any physical medium, and us ebook readers are screaming for all our old rights based on nothing at all. An ebook is pure, distilled IP, over which we have no rights, not rven of first sale.