More on Copyright (or wrong) 

On the Contrary: Copywrongs by Wendy Kaminer

If I drop dead tomorrow, all the work I've produced since 1978 will enjoy copyright protection for the next 70 years, until 2072, some 120 years after my birth. If I live another 30 years or so all the work I've produced since 1978 will be protected into the beginning of the twenty-second century. Much as I value my copyrights, which allow me to control and profit from my work, and much as I disdain plagiarism and pirating, I don't expect to derive any benefit from copyrights that survive me by decades. But, then again, the Copyright Extension Act of 1998, which added an additional 20 years to almost all existing copyrights, wasn't intended to benefit me or other individual writers and artists. It was primarily intended to benefit corporations that expect to live forever, with congressional assistance: Disney may prove virtually immortal, if it never loses the rights to Mickey Mouse.

Disney lobbied hard for the 1998 law, partly because Mickey's copyright was due to expire in 2003. Now it will last an additional 20 years, until 2023, or the expiration of the next copyright extension -- whichever comes second. Can Congress repeatedly extend copyrights for decades, impoverishing the public domain, to benefit corporations and the distant descendants of individual creators? That question is now before the Supreme Court: In Eldred v. Ashcroft, it agreed to review the constitutionality of the 1998 copyright-extension law. [read more]

The Future of the Book 

The Future of the Book? Gutenberg to Gates

The Future of the Book by Umberto Eco

Since my arrival at the symposium on the future of the book I have been expecting somebody to quote "Ceci tuera cela." Both Duguid and Nunberg have obliged me. The quotation is not irrelevant to our topic.

As you no doubt remember, in Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo, comparing a book with his old cathedral, says: "Ceci tuera cela" (The book will kill the cathedral, the alphabet will kill images). McLuhan, comparing a Manhattan discotheque to the Gutenberg Galaxy, said "Ceci tuera cela." One of the main concerns of this symposium has certainly been that ceci (the computer) tuera cela (the book).

We know enough about cela (the book), but it is uncertain what is meant by ceci (computer). An instrument by which a lot of communication will be provided more and more by icons? An instrument on which you can write and read without needing a paperlike support? A medium through which it will be possible to have unheard-of hypertextual experiences? [read more]

What is the Future of the Book in the Digital Era?

We experience a world of ever-expanding websites, CD-ROMs and other digital electronic media led by the developed industrial nations today. What will become of the paper-printed media of books in relation to the rapid evolution of this new media?

Much has been discussed about digital media in the context of multimedia and its interactive features, but not in relationship to carrying printed words and characters. If they were discussed at all, a negative outlook has been very pervasive. Is there any way we can expect a positive effect of the new media on books?

Can books only exist in the paper-printed media? Can the text be separated from paper to be reused as a book through digital media? Is such a discussion relevant to the subject of books?

What is the future of the book? This round table discussion invites participants from countries of different histories and cultures -- Japan, France, China, Thailand and America -- each facing different issues on books (such as shortage of paper, distribution, penetration of audiovisual media, literacy, etc.) to discuss the new form this durable medium may take. [read more]

The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World by Clifford Lynch

Commercial publishing interests are presenting the future of the book in the digital world through the promotion of e-book reading appliances and software. Implicit in this is a very complex and problematic agenda that re-establishes the book as a digital cultural artifact within a context of intellectual property rights management enforced by hardware and software systems. With the convergence of different types of content into a common digital bit-stream, developments in industries such as music are establishing precedents that may define our view of digital books. At the same time we find scholars exploring the ways in which the digital medium can enhance the traditional communication functions of the printed work, moving far beyond literal translations of the pages of printed books into the digital world. This paper examines competing visions for the future of the book in the digital environment, with particular attention to questions about the social implications of controls over intellectual property, such as continuity of cultural memory. [read more]

Electronic publishing and the future of the book by Tom Wilson

It is a brave person who can claim to talk with assurance about the future of anything, since the future is fundamentally unknowable, and to talk about the information future in any of its aspects, given the speed of change and the novelty of successive technological developments, is even more foolhardy. Nor does the history of forecasting in the world of books give any cause to be optimistic that we can be any more certain today than in the past: the "death of the book" has been forecast on numerous occasions, from the time of mass radio broadcasting, through the introduction of television, to the rise of the computer and the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Nor can we reliably forecast in any statistical fashion: the typical forecasting model uses the linear projection of current trends into the future. That is, the basic assumption is that things will be as they are, only more so - that is, there will be growth or decline. In talking about electronic publishing and its impact on the book, however, we are talking not about a process of continuous change, but about discontinuous change - the relatively sudden emergence of a new technology that enables us to publish in a completely different way from the way we have published before. The question is no longer about the growth of book publishing and buying and the growth of Internet use and electronic publishing, but about they way the latter is likely to affect the former. Trend lines can tell us little about this at the moment because electronic publishing is too new in the situation and the data will not exist in forms that enable us to make statements about the probable causes of whatever consequences occur.

Given this, we must take the debate to a more abstract level, if we are to discuss how one form of publication is likely to affect the nature of, and growth of (or decline of) another form of publication. We must look at the functions and effects of both methods of publishing and then try to hazard some guesses about the way one form is likely to affect the other. [read more]

Bookbinding Kits 

Order a Bookbinding Kit and support the University of Iowa Center for the Book

In the public domain 

Lessig on the Future of the Public Domain interview by Richard Koman

Shall we have a public domain, or not? Will creative works remain forever in the possession of their creators (or the companies who pay the creators), or will cultural icons and works that have captured the public imagination eventually be allowed to be commented on, referred to, and satirized? Would such a policy represent lethal blows to a company's brand identity (think Mickey Mouse)? We may know the answer soon, as the Supreme Court has agreed to consider the case of Eric Eldred.

Eldred, a publisher of public domain works in HTML form, sued the federal government over Congress' passing of a law that extended existing copyrights for another 20 years (the 11th time in the past 40 years this has happened). The Constitution plainly allows Congress to grant authors an exclusive right "for limited times." If Congress is allowed to continually extend the time period, Eldred argued, the Framers' intent of "limited" protection is slowly being transformed to "unlimited." [read more]

More on Lawrence Lessig here.

Where do you buy your books? 

Fighting the Big Book Chains by Dennis Loy Johnson

To most people, it must seem like a no-brainer: Which is better, an independent bookstore or a chain bookstore? Whichever one has the book you want at the lowest price, natch. And let's face facts -- lately, the winner of that contest has been the chains.

However a surprising recent survey says that regardless of price, people actually feel they're more apt to be satisfied shopping at an independent. Meanwhile, the rabble-rousing plaintiff in an incendiary court case claims the chains' low prices are illusionary, achieved by illegal strong-arm tactics, and may actually be insuring higher prices down the line. [read more]

Preservation initiative 

An Open Letter to the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners and Hennepin County Library Board

March 28, 2002

We, the undersigned library workers and users, wish to express our anger, sorrow and dismay at the recent announcement that HCL intends to demolish its present bibliographic database and authority file. It plans on ultimately replacing them with completely "standard" OCLC catalog records and Library of Congress name and subject forms. The database and authority list, painstakingly and creatively constructed over nearly three decades under the leadership of former Technical Services Director Mitch Freedman and head Cataloger Sanford Berman, are national treasures. Rather than destroy them, HCL should be promoting them as OCLC promised to do in spring 1999. The reasons for undoing this globally applauded work seem specious, narrow-minded, and unconvincing.

If the decision cannot be overturned and the HCL catalog restored to its previous status of preeminence within librarianship, at least the two files should be preserved "as is" for current and future use by the library community. We expect details on how and when this will be done.

Steve Fesenmaier

Preservation Challenge 

The Wayback Machine: The Web's Archive

Now that the Internet is established in the public information space, it has become a new publishing medium. The Web in particular has proved an incredible repository of all kinds of information content. But it has also proven to be a very changeable medium, noticeably lacking in permanence. Particularly during the past couple of years, as the number of new dot com failures has risen, previously existing Web sites have ceased operations and their information content has vanished into the Web's past.

With print publications, the libraries and archives of the world have made a major effort to collect and preserve print items. But the advent of the Web was so sudden and created an entirely new set of problems for cataloging, storage, and retrieval, that few libraries actively collected copies of Web pages. While the library profession worked diligently on finding solutions to the access side of the problems, Web pages were created, changed, and died, with no record of those pages being retained.

Fortunately, Brewster Kahle's Alexa Internet and its sister company, the Internet Archive, have done a huge amount of the collection work. Starting in 1996, the Internet Archive has been storing Web pages, including graphics files, from publicly accessible Web sites that Alexa has crawled. With the October 2001 launch of the Wayback Machine, this huge archive is now freely available to the Web public. [read more]

Bestsellers 

Bestseller Lists 1900-1995

The gag reflex 

Most Far-Reaching Gag Order In 1st Amend. History? by Nat Hentoff

John Ashcroft's war on terrorism includes the most far-reaching gag order in First Amendment history -- preventing the press from reporting on the FBI's seizure of the lists of books bought or borrowed in bookstores and libraries by noncitizens and citizens suspected of terrorist activities. Under the omnibus USA Patriot Act, the FBI has the authority to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- a secret body composed of rotating federal judges -- to seek "any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the American Library Association (ALA) have particularly alerted their members to part of the law that prevents booksellers and librarians -- once the FBI has come calling -- to reveal that a search has been made. The law states: "No person shall disclose to any other person ... that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained" these records.

This means that the press and, therefore, the public cannot find out how often and where these searches have taken pace -- and what books, as well as readers, are under suspicion. Customarily, when a court imposes a gag rule on pretrial or trial participants, including the press, it is fought in open court by the press and often overturned.

Now, however, this chilling incursion on the First Amendment right to read remains as hidden as some of the security operations of the People's Republic of China. [read more]

Future Bibliography 

Libraries of the Future Bibliography by Carol R. Gurstelle

"Are we there yet?" Like restless children in the back seat of the car, librarians and information professionals keep searching for the "library of the future." There's no agreement what such an institution is. Is it an actual place or a virtual site? Is it just the latest technology? What's the human component? Each new building brings a newspaper headline announcing that the library of the future is now part of the community. A quick search for the phrase on popular search engines yields tens of thousands of hits, but the irony is that those headlines, books and articles become part of the past the instant they are printed.

These are the challenges in compiling a list of resources to help in learning about and planning for the library of the future. It's not that existing materials have no value. We need the foundations and the history, but we also need to create a dynamic resource that changes as new ideas and new technologies emerge. For that reason, we have included the Web sites of core publications and professional organizations, allowing you to connect to their most current information. We encourage you to add your contributions and make this resource as dynamic and evolutionary as institutions we seek to create. [read more]

Copy Protection 

Another Punch for Copy Protection

A political brawl over mandatory copy protection is about to spread to the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Democratic legislator from the home of the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios is drafting a bill to reduce online piracy by implanting strict copy controls in digital devices.

On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, California, circulated a letter on Capitol Hill seeking co-sponsors for his legislation, which he said would follow the same approach as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) in the Senate.

"I plan to introduce legislation that would safeguard digital content by spurring the rapid development of copyright protection technology," Schiff's "Dear Colleague" letter said. "Similar legislation, S. 2048, has been introduced in the Senate.” I believe this is a necessary step and I encourage you to join me in this effort.

By introducing this measure in the House, Schiff hopes to accelerate the passage of digital rights management legislation: The House can move forward on it without waiting for the Senate to act first. [read more]

CIPA opinion 

Why the Feds CAN'T protect kids from Internet porn by David Coursey

The ongoing battle over the Children's Internet Protection Act isn't about right vs. wrong as much as it's about deciding which side is more right. It's one of those cases that makes you glad you're not a judge.

Signed into law two years ago, CIPA requires schools and libraries that receive federal funding to install technology (usually software) that would prevent children from accessing objectionable content--porn, bomb recipes, hate speech, and the like. Libraries that choose not to implement such filters would lose their federal dollars. [read more]