There’s an interesting intellectual property debate going on over at Technology Review. Lawrence Lessig hones in on the basic problem:
It is the nature of digital technologies that every use produces a copy. Thus, it is the nature of a copyright regime like the United States’, designed to regulate copies, that every use in the digital world produces a copyright question: Has this use been licensed? Is it permitted? And if not permitted, is it “fair”? Thus, reading a book in analog space may be an unregulated act. But reading an e-book is a licensed act, because reading an e-book produces a copy. Lending a book in analog space is an unregulated act. But lending an e-book is presumptively regulated. Selling a book in analog space is an unregulated act. Selling an e-book is not. In all these cases, and many more, ordinary uses that were once beyond the reach of the law now plainly fall within the scope of copyright regulation. The default in the analog world was freedom; the default in the digital world is regulation.
I’m going on a brief hiatus, so that’ll be my last link for a little while. But keep checking back – Bob, Kim and Dan will be keeping the home fires burning.
For the copying and distribution of conceptual works, the book presentation format is immune from regulation, but the screen presentation format is not. Why is this?
Books, in their long history, have passed through stages of content pirating, illicit copy production and content mutation in distribution environments much wilder than the Web. Perhaps screen presentations will just have to pass through such an era as well. It will not be a speedy process since regulation based on digital technologies can be more invasively and pervasively applied. (Harley-Davidson is contesting with Honda over infringement of the sound of a motorcycle.)
So regulation of distribution books vs. ebooks could converge across time, but it will take a long time to transpire. And the two presentation formats are just as likely to go their separate ways.
The book format has passed beyond public domain into a determinant of human culture itself while the screen format is only a mimic of that status. In essense, the screen format is infringing the copyright of the book format. If that is the underlying suit, and the book publishing model is certainly being applied, then the screen format will need to distinguish itself from the book format and it can easily do that. But not by mimicking books.