The trouble with digital books
October 5th, 2008 by Tony Doyle
No doubt lots of other people have had the following experience over the last couple of years. You find that, although Hunter doesn’t own the book you’re looking for, another CUNY school does. It turns out though that the only copy available is digital and that, when you try to request it, you’re prompted for a user name and password that you don’t have have. Sorry, but you have to shlep out to Brooklyn to read the thing—or order the bound version through conventional interlibrary loan.
Generally of course the digital revolution, combined with the web, has been an information boon: it has made far more information readily available than anyone would have imagined fifteenish years ago. But the blessing has been mixed, since copyright owners can evidently restrict the transfer of digital versions of their books. What happens as more and more books are available only digitally?
Actually I’m rather cribbing here from Herman Tavini’s “Locke, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Information Commons,” Ethics and Information Technology (2005) 7:87-97.
2 Responses to “The trouble with digital books”
October 5th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Thank you for raising a timely topic. As libraries come to view digital access to a book as a substitute for buying the book in print, access for outsiders can actually narrow. A library has the right to lend a print copy of a book that it owns to anyone. That copy is then unavailable to the library’s other users. This arrangement breaks down when it comes to digital books.
I wonder what other university systems comparable to CUNY are doing, for example SUNY or the Cal State system.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Herman Tavani (whom I mentioned in my previous post) talks about how the so called information commons is being adversely affected by digitization and legislation devised to protect the “rights” of copyright owners of digital material. He’s especially critical of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which restricts access and use of digital information. He adduces interlibrary loan as one example:
“ . . . consider the case of interlibrary loan practices involving physical books. Such practices have not only benefitted individuals, but arguably also have contributed to the public good by supporting the ideal of an information-sharing community. If the books that we were so easily able to borrow in the past become available only in digitized form in the future, it may no longer be possible to access them freely through an interlibrary loan system. By granting copyright holders of digital media the exclusive right to control how electronic (versions of) books are access and used, the DMCA can easily discourage the sharing of information between libraries. So as more books become available only in digital form, the information they contain may be less accessible to ordinary individuals in the future, which will further diminish the info commons” (“Locke, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Information Commons,” Ethics and Information Technology (2005) 7: P. 94).
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