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A post by this title was published
on The Signal: Digital Preservation blog of the Library of Congress. It is a very important topic for
genealogists. As more and more resource
material gets published in e-format, what are the limitations on sharing,
bequeathing, etc this wonderful library we may have accumulated? I remember when music first became digital, I
let my husband deal with all the issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM)
stuff as it just gave me one big headache!
I
love that when I have a book or a CD or a DVD, I can share it with my family or
loan it out to friends. I have quickly
learned that this is frequently NOT true with digital items (e.g. book, music,
movies, etc). If we try to share out “digital”
collections – it might be considered illegal! Ack, I don’t want to do anything illegal and
yet if I’ve “paid” for something, I want to ultimately be able to pass it along
to someone else to enjoy!
And,
as more and more of our personal “stuff” becomes digitized, we are also
digitizing or accessing digitized documents, books, lectures, videos, etc that
are part of our “library,” though in digital format. What happens to those when we die or want to “share”
them with our family?!?!?!
Leslie
Johnston reflects on a talk given where these topics were recently addressed ...
On October 17, I had the extreme pleasure of hearing Cory
Doctorow at the Library for talk entitled “A Digital Shift: Libraries, Ebooks
and Beyond.” Not surprisingly, the room was packed with attentive
listeners.
The talk covered a
wide range of topics–his love of books as physical objects and his background
working in libraries and as a bookseller; his opinion on Fair Use under U.S.
But the focus of his passion was the prevalent publishing
and ownership model for ebooks.
When you buy a
physical book, said Doctorow, you own that book. You can lend it to
friends, give it away, or even sell it. But when you buy an ebook, you
license it. Depending upon the source you purchased an ebook from, you
may only have the right/ability to read it on a single device or type of
device. It often comes with Digital Rights Management attached, he noted,
so you cannot make any changes that will allow you to read your ebook on other
devices or loan it or transfer it to someone else. You can’t even save it and
open it independently of its original intended environment.
“If you can’t open it, you don’t own it,” he declared.
A
related opinion piece by Gary Richmond “Die
Hard--But Make Sure You Can Bequeath Your Digital Assets”
also explores these topics.
Have you purchased a print book
instead of an e-book just because of issues like these? Or what about a CD vs some mp3s or a DVD
versus a purchase via Amazon Prime? Are
there times where you consciously made a genealogy-related purchase decision to
ensure that you could bequeath or share “it?” If so, please let us know
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I frequently buy a new book that is issued in hard cover for my Kindle, because it is cheaper than the hard cover copy. However, if I like the book, I buy the paperback version when it comes out, precisely so that I have a copy I can lend or leave to someone else.
ReplyDeleteThere are multiple reasons I don't buy electronic publications, and this is one of them (I don't download music, either, for the same reason). Once I pay someone for something, with some exceptions it should be entirely my decision how I use it.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do understand the issues with people distributing multiple copies. Too many users don't understand the difference between lending and copying (if I lend you a book, it's not available to me at the same time; if I copy a file, we can both use it and then the publisher truly is being hurt). I hope that someone in a position to do so will work on finding a good compromise.