The Open Library Is Opening Room for Debate | Peer to Peer Review
By Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN Jul 1, 2010Pondering the moral of the story
The Wall Street Journal reports that Open Library has developed a means of digitizing and loaning ebooks for a limited time, as many vendors of ebook collections already do. The difference is that Open Library is a not a vendor. It's a not-for-profit project of the Internet Archive. No money will change hands, and the books will be digitized by libraries, not by publishers. And some of the books are not yet in the public domain.
Shots fired across the bow; prepare to be boarded by lawyers.
A library of curiosities
This is a bold experiment, and it will be intriguing to see how it develops. In addition to thousands of public domain books now made available by the Open Library to individuals who download Adobe Digital Editions or to libraries that use OverDrive to distribute downloadable content to their patrons, the handful of books under copyright so far digitized by the three libraries involved—Boston Public, Biblioteca Ludwig von Mises in Guatemala, and the Marine Biological Library at Woods Hole—are a motley bunch. The libraries picked books that have no currently-exploited commercial value. Like most books, they are out of print but possibly still under copyright. (Some are definitely under copyright.)
You can download oddities like The Power of Positive Living, a self-help book published in 1950, and Libraries of the Future from 1965. There are lots of outdated technical manuals of the kind that are embarrassing to find still lingering on your library shelves: Managing Your Business with MULTIPLAN and Microsoft Word 97 Step by Step. Among Spanish-language works and genealogy books, there are also geeky classics such as Michael Gurrie's Voice/Data Communications Systems (1986) and Stewart Brand's The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T. (1988).
Brand apparently thinks libraries should have a crack at inventing the future, too, and has the last word in the Wall Street Journal article. He reports he was happy to let his book be included, because digitization projects like this make knowledge more widely available. "I figure libraries are one of the major pillars of civilization," he said, "and in almost every case what librarians want is what they should get."
I want that on a T-shirt.
Who said you could do that?
If only all authors and publishers felt that way. Asked to comment, the director of the Authors Guild said, predictably, there's no legal basis for distributing these books electronically because they're still under copyright. It doesn't matter if the author isn't seeking anything from the work; nobody should have access to a copy of it unless they've paid. The book is already available for free at libraries (darn it), but a digital version is a copy, and copies are not allowed.
The article is a bit confusing. It states that only one person can have the book checked out at a time, and the physical book won't circulate if the digital copy is in use, but the Open Library doesn't have physical books. I suspect this will be the practice of the participating libraries, not Open Library.
Thomas Blake, who manages digital projects for Boston Public Library, was quoted in the article, arguing "if you own a physical copy of something, you should be able to loan it out. We don't think we're going to be disturbing the market value of these items." It seems to be a way of making books that are of limited value to a library's community available to people beyond their geographic boundaries by sharing them through Open Library.
An accompanying video demonstrates the challenge libraries face when making a case for ebooks. The moderators were unaware that most libraries already loan ebooks, ones that they get through the usual commercial channels.
"Isn't this a slippery slope, if anyone can get their hands on books they don't pay for?" was the immediate concern, as if digital files are prone to risky and promiscuous behavior, reproducing themselves, forming lawless gangs, and running riot across the Internet. In fact, these Open Library books are downloaded through and they automatically "return" themselves to the Open Library after two weeks, disappearing from your computer or reading device just as more popular titles do.
Staking a moral claim
There seem to be two issues of concern for publishers and authors (well, at least those who are bothered by this—not all of them are): first, the slippery slope conundrum. "If we let people get away with sharing digital copies of books we aren't selling and that you couldn't even give away to a second-hand store, they might be emboldened to start digitizing books that have value in the marketplace. We should nip this behavior in the bud." I can understand that argument, even if I wouldn't make it.
But there's another, more common argument made on moral grounds, a visceral and absolutist position: "My copyrighted works are my property. It may be that I'm not using that property, but it's mine nevertheless, and if you use it without my consent, even if it does no harm to me, you have stolen my property, and stealing is morally wrong."
In response, you could try a utilitarian argument: "I'm stealing something you aren't using, so you won't even miss it. What's the big deal?" Or an appeal to logic: "No matter how many digital copies I make, you still have your copy." Those will be trumped by the absolutist argument because they are practical concerns, not moral arguments. This is rather like trying to discuss immigration issues with someone who believes that undocumented aliens entered the country illegally, so every issue related to their situation is moot. They're illegal: end of story.
The only way around the black and white moral argument is to keep reminding people that this particular type of property is limited in ways other property is not. Ownership of intellectual property is temporary and contingent on its benefits to the progress of science and the arts. These property rights have term limits.
No doubt the fact that authors never face those limits—copyright now extends well beyond their lifetimes—has made it harder to remember there's a clock ticking. Ownership is not intrinsically part of the relationship creators have with their works, at least if they are being shared with the world. (If I broke into your house and made a copy of your private diary, I would be prosecuted for breaking and entering, not for copyright violation.) The kneejerk "it's mine!" argument is conditioned by "it's only yours for now; in time, it will belong to everyone."
Practical benefits
This, of course, will not be of any use in the courtroom if publishers and authors sue Open Library for its audacity. But it's good to remind ourselves that a moral claim to intellectual property extends only so far.
There's a curious side-benefit to Open Library's new initiative. A lot of people are learning for the first time that libraries already loan ebooks, and they come with one especially tempting enhancement. As Mark Byrne at Mediabistro writes, "much as we love brick-and-mortar libraries, we can't help but imagine how much money we'll save on late fees when our eBooks automatically return themselves."
Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her latest mystery, Through the Cracks (see review), has just been published by Minotaur Books.
