|
Hmm.. I always like to consider things I bought or aquired (e.g. as gift) as "mine". I like to thing "I own this" and connect certain rights to it.
Of course, those are not rights to everything. Making a private backup for myself is one thing, when putting such a copy on the internet for everyone to enjoy should trigger a "this doesn't seem right"-feeling.
But among the rights I consider "fair" is the option to lend it to another person, sell it to another person or simply give it away completely. Although modern media industries want to tell me that I'm wrong in this, but passing books on to another people is part of our culture.
Having the physical medium ensures that I am able to do this even if the industry doesn't want me to. Without a physical medium containing the un-drm-ed information, people often are surprised that the industry voids them of the rights they take for granted (from knowing the physical medium).
On the other hand: with physical media it's rather difficult to go beyond "fair" usage (it still takes time to copy a book), with digital media, a copy is rather easy and "hard DRM" quickly becomes "no DRM".
I've read books that my parents read and I suspect that the same (physical) book has also been read by my grandparents. Should the media industry be payed twice or trice for that issue? I've read some of those books several times. Should I have to pay several times? As said: One of the great advantages of having a physical medium is that I can do this without having to worry about media industry. I "own" it and don't have to report to anyone how often I read it or lend it to other people - because "Here, try it out. I think you'll like it" is far more likely to interest people in an author's works than "You should probably buy this book from this author. I guess, you'll like it".
If they like it, they probably will buy it at some point. Maybe I'm wrong or I'm the only one but if I like something, I want to "own" it. I love reading on my Kindle but I wouldn't trade "all ebooks on the world" for the physical books on my shelves.
Some books are not available new anymore. In those cases, used bookstores and flea market are the only way to retrieve their information. Even if a book is still available new, I'd still probably want another edition. Even if the used bookstore has the same edition, I like my right to choose between a shiny new expensive copy or a copy "with history, tears and pencil marks from previous owners".
So used bookstores really are harbors: Harbors of information and harbors of history - but not harbors of piracy. The industry likes to put the "piracy" on everything they don't like and that doesn't make them money (there's been a german study on how many people download books without paying and they immediately tagged all this as piracy, gently forgetting about Gutenberg and such). They already tag copies of stuff piracy (and probably right) but labeling the same (physical) book as pirated because it switched owners is just wrong.
I understand that they don't like "their" stuff (you may note that I never speak of the author's penny for books sold) being used/read without them getting money from it, but trying to forbid "voyages of books" as they've been part of our culture for generations just to get more money is just plain wrong.
There's another point that somehow seems to be missing from the discussion: waste.
I don't like throwing stuff away. I always prefer it to get a new owner. It took ressources to create "stuff", it will take ressources to create it again if another person needs it and by throwing "stuff" away, I'm making it fill up the (limited) space on trashyards.
Double this for books, a.k.a. "dead-tree"-versions of texts. I respect books and I always feel as if I'm disrespecting the work of an author if I throw his book away (yes, it really fills bookshelves when you're buying books and never throw them away). You may argue that books can be printed on recycled paper but it still needs toner, it still needs to be printed. I think that between "passing on the same book to someone" and "letting the book be recycled and recreated" there's still a large difference in CO2-imprint and everything. Re-usage almost always is even better than recycling.
I've heard of a study on what PC is recommended if you want to leave the least possible CO2-imprint. Result: If it still works, keep using for old PC for some more years - because the imprint in creating the new PC is higher than what your old PC does (even if not that energy-efficient).
I'm no tree-hugger but if the industry wants me to throw away still-usage stuff just so they can sell new one, I like to choose the environment over their money.
TCC
|