Microsoft Support Phone numbershuttering its ebook store is hardly the end of the world. The Kindle customer base is, by
all accounts, predominant in this space. Not all product launches succeed — some fail. That’s business. And, to be fair in disclosing the “other
side,” Microsoft Support Phone numberis offering
coupons to make up some of the lost value their ebook customers are
experiencing.
But it gives one pause — and should give one pause. Combined with
the news that Apple is retiring the iTunes brand, these
developments could result in consumers who purchased content having it
completely wiped from their devices without notice.
Sherman, set the
WABAC machine for 1967
I’m one of those boomer kids who acquired the book-buying habit
young. I started buying a few books, either on the ‘cheap table’ at the
Woolworth’s (the original retail chain of “five and dime” stores) or from such
used books outlets I could find. Many of those cheap little texts, I still have.
But let’s back up further into history. Why are there used
bookstores in the first place? Essentially, there are used bookstores because
a) the codex form of the book (that is, the cardboard-and-paper binding of many
pages) is durable and can be passed from hand to hand, and b) an early Supreme
Court decision (Bobbs-Merrill
Co. v. Straus, 1908) held that the trade in used books is legitimate.
In other words, under the First Sale Doctrine of
copyright law, once you buy any medium containing a copyrighted work (whether
book or DVD or physical photograph), the medium is yours to keep, sell, or even
destroy (you monster!), even though, under First Sale, you are
not permitted to make additional copies of what is recorded on the medium.
That is, although books contain intangible intellectual property,
the copyright protected work of which the copy of the book is but a single
instance, the physical copy you hold in your hand of the book – the paper, the
ink and the binding — is treated as a trade good. It is a vendible item of
chattel like a candy bar or a hat. And, most important for purposes of our
discussion, it was made to be read at any time, without access to any server,
and, like an emancipated child, it bears no
further relation to the press where it was printed.
The point of this ancient history is to establish a context. In that
context, books are seen as cultural artifacts which we purchase, hold on to
and, yes, read (sometimes).
In our time, though, digital is indeed proving to be different.
Ebooks, as it turns out, aren’t treated the same, in either technology or law,
as paper books are. Functionally, legally, and (most importantly)
culturally, they aren’t treated equivalently to traditional hardbound books at
all. Maybe, even here in the 21st century, and as Nick Douglas suggests at
the blog Lifehacker, “You should own your favorite books in hard copy.”
Comments
Post a Comment