CD-Writable question

[David Johnson]

This is a very thoughtful question!

We have several libraries at MIT where database abstractions, reports, and 
other detailed materials are more and more available to our patrons.

This is an interesting concept and I fully support any means to getting 
patrons to where they want to be, however, I am wondering if we would be 
flooded with folks doing music CD copies or software CD copies on our CD 
-RW burner.   Would we have to somehow write code to prevent that?   Would 
we be liable to Micro -$oft for ripped off software CD copies that show up 
in someone's office and is traceable somehow to our CD-RW burners?   I 
don't see the immediate probability of a "traceable" CD copy, but I wonder 
when it will come about.

So far, I know our Music Library has many CD's that are copy-able without 
any problem (many with little or no encryption to break) from original 
publisher's music CD's to a blank CD-R disk costing at most fifty cents. 
Multiply your musical interests by say 100 CD music albums and you have 
spent $50 to get a collection of 100 CD's, all as good as the 
original.  This technology practically invites students (or others) to buy 
a burner between them and copy any and all music they want to for a 
combined cost of under $60 each for a sizeable collection of CD's.    So 
why should the libraries make it even easier (and so much cheaper) for 
students or others to rip off the music publishing industry?  I think we 
will take a pass on this one, and let students do what they want for a 
while.

At this point, only a few staff have access to these within the libraries 
at MIT.  Students and Faculty will have to buy their own burners so we wont 
get sued.

We DO have a few ZIP drives for patrons, (100 MB of data copying is enough 
for now, I guess.)

I don't know any really good answers.

Can anyone else add to the discussion?


David Johnson
Library Technology Consultant
MIT Libraries

At 08:47 AM 04/11/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>I was just asked a very interesting question by managment and I wanted
>to get your input on this.
>
>Management sees the public doing quite a bit of downloading to floppy
>disk (our hard-drives are blocked by System Policy Editor) and they see
>the public doing more downloads in the future with video and audio
>files.  Should the library be investing in CD-RW drives so the public
>can save files to CD instead of floppy?
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Tom Edelblute
>Public Access Systems Coordinator
>Anaheim Public Library   phone: (714) 765-1759
>500 West Broadway        fax:   (714) 765-1730
>Anaheim CA 92805         e-mail: thomas at anaheim.lib.ca.us