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]