[Web4lib] loading ebooks locally / archive?

[Jonathan Gorman]

>
>-JamesK
>
>-- full disclosure: I work as a field engr for one of these companies, and
>am, amidst much conjecture by marketing and product managers, trying to get
>my head around just how exactly our constituency might use an electronic
>copy of a reference book, besides protecting the finish of ones desk from
>coffee stains ;o)

I'll give my own disclosure.  I'm not speaking out of any great experience or knowledge of ebooks.  I'm certainly not speaking on behalf of my own employer.  But in this situation I would imagine many people would be quite cautious about making these things available.  At least as how you stated your question, backup copies are precisely that - backup copies.  Given the standing of current copyright law, the DMCA, and most licensing agreements I imagine there would be great liability risks with making these copies publicly available or even using them for purposes other than backups.

In an ideal world, I could see plenty of uses.  Creating our own indexes for people searching, harvesting the reference materials to improve controlled vocabularies and make connections between other materials, performing textual analysis to see how this book compares to others and I'm sure I could come up with more with just a little bit of thinking.  There's a whole wealth of things that could be done with ebooks in proper formats.   These are all technically feasible now but are a legal landmine.

Could I conjecture that what you're really asking about is what we would do with ebook content sold or given to us under an extremely permissive license?  


Jon Gorman   

>_______________________________________________
>Web4lib mailing list
>Web4lib at webjunction.org
>http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/