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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Law - More on "Amazon's Kindle to Sell Law Books" and the implications

Updating this ILB entry from last Sunday, which ended with this quote:

Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.
Today Geoffrey A. Fowler of the WSJ has a story expanding on that point. It is titled: "Buyer's E-Morse: 'Owning' Digital Books: Purchasing Electronic Tomes Online Gives Readers Fewer Legal Rights to Share and Resell Than Hard-Copy Customers Enjoy."

Referring to the incident where "Amazon.com Inc. used its wireless technology to reach into customers' Kindle e-readers and deleted some e-books written by George Orwell," Fowler writes:

Regardless, the incident raises some difficult questions about what it means to "own" books in the digital age. The same legal conundrums came up with music. Consumers raised on sharing records and CDs suddenly found themselves challenged in court by music companies for violating intellectual-property rights when doing the same thing through computers. Books have a more entrenched culture of sharing -- libraries exist for lending dog-eared volumes -- raising potentially knottier legal issues. Some experts say that, barring a creative industry solution, these matters can only be remedied by passing new laws that clearly define digital ownership. * * *

In legal terms at least, buying an electronic book is nothing like buying an old-fashioned paper book. A copyright concept known as the "first sale" doctrine allows the owner of a traditional book to do pretty much anything with it, including reselling it or lending it to a friend.

Owning an e-book is more akin to licensing a piece of software: access comes with fine-print terms of service, and often digital rights management software to ensure that you abide by the rules. E-books bought from stores run by Amazon, Sony Corp. and Barnes & Noble Inc. often work only on those company's own designated devices.

Amazon's always-connected Kindle Whispernet and Google Inc.'s Web-based book search function both treat books like a service, which has its advantages. Readers using them can access a wide range of books anywhere, authors can update or correct their work, and an intelligent network can keep track of bookmarks and notes.

But that is different from analog-era ownership. Over time, "people are going to get uncomfortable with applying this software licensing model to all sorts of things in their lives that they used to just own," says Cindy Cohn, the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "A license is better for companies, but not necessarily for you." * * *

Real books can be shared with a friend or sold, but e-books with digital rights management software cannot. The number of devices that can play a single e-book license varies from one publisher to the next, and often confuses consumers.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 23, 2009 09:39 AM
Posted to General Law Related