ebooks - two trends to fight it out.

[Masters, Gary E]

Greetings:

In my opinion there are two trends that will run against each other.  The
first, which seems to be driving the publishers is software that limits
books to specific readers and strong encryption.   There are several other
technologies along with this, including several specific file formats that
limit what can be done with text and content.

The other trend is user to user computing and programs like Napster, Gnuella
and others on the way. That could make it easy to share everything with
everyone.  Now it is not just one 8 track tape and everyone is your friend.

Fair use is stood on its head.  What is fair?

The "joker" in the situation is that there is a very big open back door to
all copy protection schemes.  Almost all items can be scanned or key stroke
copied and people do have the time to do it.  There are other ways to
capture a video stream.  Protecting with encryption is not going to help
very much in most cases.  

I personally think that publishers will be tempted to go to much more
restrictive measures and miss the opportunity for a vast market.  I used to
copy videos, but see no reason to do so now.  Why not pay more for a good
original?  Digital to digital is as good as an original, but most would buy
what they need when the price is right and the payment method is easy
(Subscription, advertising, micro payment or what ever).


But it will be interesting to see what really happens.


Gary Masters







	-----Original Message-----
	From:	JQ Johnson [SMTP:jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu]
	Sent:	Tuesday, October 03, 2000 12:59 PM
	To:	Multiple recipients of list
	Subject:	[WEB4LIB] Re: Ebooks in libraries

	Bill Drew writes:

	>Paint me stupid if that is what I am, but hasn't access always been
	>controlled by technology?

	I think the issue here is that some of us see very rapid change in
the
	legal and technological landscape that undermine fundamental
assumptions
	libraries have made for a hundred years.  We also see many
librarians who
	don't realize that the change is occuring.  In general, our
perception is
	that the change is shifting the power balance in favor of publishers
and
	away from libraries, making it much harder to achieve a licensing
	agreement that is satisfactory to the library.

	Let's take a concrete example:  have you read UCITA, or at least the
	summary of it that is available various places on the web (e.g.
	http://www.4cite.org)?  In those states in which UCITA is enacted
into law
	we have a legal regime where it's easy for a publisher to make an
eBook
	available with a click-wrap license that radically limits the rights
of
	the reader.  It is very hard for a library used to purchasing books
to get
	into the mindset that books are now licensed rather than purchased;
we
	still tend to think in terms of outdated concepts like copyright and
first
	sale rights.  It's even harder to negotiate a satisfactory license,
since
	the license terms may not even be seen until the reader "opens" the
book;
	UCITA creates a de facto "take it or leave it" licensing environment
where
	the consumer's only option is to return the eBook for a refund if
the
	license terms aren't satisfactory.

	JQ Johnson                      Office: 115F Knight Library
	Academic Education Coordinator  mailto:jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
	1299 University of Oregon       phone: 1-541-346-1746; -3485 fax
	Eugene, OR  97403-1299          http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/