For those playing at home, here is the link from which thou post is draweth by
Summary of Article
The author, Richard Stallman, uses a highly opinionated voice while explaining to his readers, what he thinks, is a lack of response to e-book related activities. The first, is the inability of the US constitution to mend the copyright laws from back in the day, to fit the modern day "utopia" of information on the world wide web.
Stallman explains how copyright laws were put into place to encourage the legal production of many publications. It was a system to start the networking between publishers when professional writing began picking up steam. An example,... Benjamin Franklin would need to call (or write) to Thomas Jefferson and request to use his copyrighted Declaration of Independence.
Stallman also speaks about the tool the computer and internet has become. He speaks a little bit about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, which gives companies power over their digital publications.
Stallman wants to know how far this copyright over digital publications will go. Financially, a little bit of a monopoly looks to be brewing, due to some companies owning specific software to view specific e-books. Stallman more or less says, if a company owns all the software and all the ebooks...well, then you don't pass go, and you don't college $200 dollars.
MY Personal Opinion
I agree somewhat with what Stallman says, ...but not really at the same time. Yes, there is a strong threat regarding e-books becoming owned by one or two major companies, and disbursed when and for how much they prefer.
If history repeats itself though, which it has been known to do every once in a while, I see e-books becomming so popular, that those one or two companies cannot contain the rate of spreading information.
The reason.... Look at Napster. The music industry begain attempts to sell music online through very exclusive and technology specific software / hardware. What did people do? They created an underground resource for downloading unlimited amounts of music and software. Yes, the government retaliated and charged thousands of people, but in the spectrum of things, this was the tip of the iceberg.
Right now, through torrents mostly, this sort of process is beginning. EBooks are available for (illegal) download on sites such as thepiratebay.org, and mininova.org. Go ahead, check em' out.... but don't download. I don't need to be an accessory to first degree pirating.
What are the Implications?
We are beginning to see a very useful tool (ebooks...let's focus now) become an entity up for bid between legal and illegal sources. Information, is now being price tagged, and battled for between Congress and the public. I already blogged about ebooks having the power to shut down libraries and small bookstores, but expand that to the internet.... what happens to amazon? Will they have to spend more for sole propriety of ebooks in order to sell them legally? Will there be a bidding war for the rights to "Catcher in the Rye" so that only Yahoo can sell it as a digital form?
I don't know, but I'm eager to find out.
Until another day -
Mark
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