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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