[Ankh]

The new threat of digital piracy and the impact on publishing industry is all over the MR these days.

Although we are still in the beginning phase of the conversion to digital publishing, delivery and consumption, the day will come when availability of ebook editions and backlists will cease to be an issue.

And while the spotlights are on agency model, pricing of the ebooks, DRM and copyright protection, our public library system is quietly undergoing its own transformation to the digital content delivery. The DRM protected delivery systems are in place, the collections are growing on a daily basis.

But there are no practical limits for the size of library collections. No brick and mortar buildings needed to store and preserve thousands upon the thousands of pbooks, no transportation costs when a book is borrowed from another branch of the library, the investments into books are permanent (you can't "lose" electronic version, it expires)... What is left is a limitation of how many copies can library lend out. And that's it.

So, the day will come when a public library will acquire a copy of the book few years after its publishing... and will continue to offer it forever.

What I don't understand is how is copyright protection going to work for copyright owners in that climate. A new edition can offer illustrations, a more up-to-date foreword... but how much is that worth to a customer who can legally obtain (albeit time limited) access to the original through the public library? The effective duration of the copyright, the time when a title can be obtained ONLY through the purchase will drop down to a couple of years?