Re: copyright under stress

On Thu, Jun 22, 2000, Rod McCarvel <rod[_at_]seanet.com> wrote:
>
> On 21 Jun 00, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 20, 2000, Robert Cumbow <rcumbow[_at_]grahamdunn.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > > As I recall, the LaMacchia case was about the "sharing" of
> > > unauthorized copies of computer software, not books.
> >
> > True enough. Now, tell me how you can tell the difference between an
> > electronic book and electronic software or digital music or art?
>
> I think that the point that Bob was making (if I may presume to
> speak for him) was to distinguish between "sharing" in the sense
> of passing around a single copy, whether physical or digital, and
> "sharing" in the sense of distributing additional copies....

Yes, that makes sense, I guess. But isn't it the case that when the work assume digital form, that the presumption is that any "sharing" is really facilitating "copying"? Or can you think of some way that one can share a digital book without copying it? I guess I could buy a Rocket eBook appliance and download a book to it, and hand you the viewer appliance so you could read it that way. But it would be illegal to "share" an electronic book on a personal computer unless there were some way to prevent more than one viewer at a time, and even then it would have to be done by copying, I believe, and I don't believe the publishers would agree that this was "legal" sharing.

However, my point was that on the face of it, a digital work is just a stream of bits, whether it is called a "book" or "mp3" or "software". Sooner or later it is going to be impossible to tell them apart; books will have no special status.

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf