On Owning Books and Music
Bekah
Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
Fri Jan 23 18:07:49 CST 2009
On Jan 23, 2009, at 9:02 AM, Robert Mahnke wrote:
> Maybe it's just me, but I don't see a profound insight here. If
> you "own" a copy of a Pynchon book, you certainly have the right to
> do all sorts of things with that paper, but those rights are
> limited. E.g., you can't sell someone the rights to make a film
> from the copy of your book. Because digital media work differently
> as a matter of technology, you don't have to have to "own" a copy
> of a book now to read it, but that was equally true a decade ago,
> when you could go to the public library and borrow a copy. If
> people are really happy reading a text on a screen, the increased
> availability of books in digital form means they don't have to buy
> a bound copy of a new novel or even go to the library, but it's not
> clear to me that this changes everything. I spend a lot of time in
> front of a computer reading all sorts of interesting things, but I
> don't want to read novels on a computer screen. If other people
> do, that's great, but it's cheap enough to bind books that I suspe!
> ct there will continue to be a robust market for them.
****************************
From the articles:
> As creations become digital they tend to become shared, ownerless
> goods. We can turn this around and say that in this realm of bits,
> property itself becomes a more social endeavor. Property may be
> less about title and more about usage and control. An idea can't be
> owned in the way gold can; in fact an idea has little value unless
> it is shared or used to some extent. Its value paradoxically can
> increase the less it is owned privately. But if no one owns it, who
> gains the benefit of that increase in value? In the new regime
> users will often assume many of the chores that owners once had to
> do. And so in a way, usage becomes ownership.
I'm having a hard time with the idea at all because I think the
author has it wrong. Just because it's digital doesn't mean it's
free - quite the contrary. I have quite a few audio books,
downloaded from Audible.com. I can't sell them at my next garage
sale and I can't give them to my friends like I can do with hard copy
books and tapes/cds and videos. (I can make a copy and "loan" it to
a friend.) The copyright laws are very strict about this stuff. I
expect the same is true for digital music and downloadable printed
books - ebooks, Kindle editions, film, etc. Look at the big to-do
over the old free music downloads. It's been very difficult to
convince artists and publishers that their creativity is safe on the
net.
Bekah
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