As if that was some kind of tradition…
- Today on BoingBoing via Gizmodo, I read an article about Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and the reasons why the purchases you make for an eBook reader are not your own.
In it, the author lists some problems with owning digital media: first that there’s no physical item to exchange for money, and second the first purchase (if you will) may actually only be a licensing transaction, not an ownership transaction. From the quoted legal brief:
[Under the Copyright Act] the first sale doctrine only applies to the “owner” of a copy of a work, so end users who acquire content by license do not enjoy the right to resell their copies. Whether a transaction is a license or a sale is a factual question determined by courts—even if a publisher calls it a license, if the transaction actually looks more like a sale, users will retain their right to resell the copy. However, as more commercial transactions involve the transfer of digital content—particularly commercial software—courts have struggled to consistently make the distinction between license and sale. Software is increasingly transferred with highly restrictive licensing terms, but federal case law has not clearly determined whether these types of transfers are licenses or true sales.
Finally, on the subject of transferring copies (something both technologies restrict):
Another possible complication stems from the inherent difference between transferring an e-book and transferring a hard-copy book. The transfer of a hard-copy book is just that; the physical transfer of one copy. The transfer of an e-book, however, requires the digital recreation or copying of that e-book. Because the first sale doctrine allows transfers of only your particular copy, and not reproductions or recreations, a digital transfer of an e-book is probably impermissible. Thus, users of Kindle and the Sony Reader can only legally transmit works by selling the physical media on which they are stored—be that the e-book readers themselves or the users’ hard drives.
In the end, the argument seems to be that these restrictive licenses are merely the byproduct of technological advancements, and that it will be up to society to decide if this approach is acceptable.
Another item on the reading list is Cory Doctorow’s “Intellectual Property is a Silly Euphemism”
Trying to shoehorn knowledge into the “property” metaphor leaves us without the flexibility and nuance that a true knowledge rights regime would have.
And finally, Lawrence Lessig speaks at TED: