Amateur Megalomania

On the topic of library research.

I’ve been involved in an ongoing debate here at work about copyrights and my thinking that lending copyrighted material might be immoral, in that the content creator is deprived of sales through such loans. I’m sure most of you remember my position that libraries, in practice, might be immoral since they acquire copyrighted material and freely distribute it to the general public without adequate compensation to the author. If I can go read the entire collection of an author for free, how does he get compensated for his work?

Well, I decided to poke around and I found some interesting things. For one, I felt that libraries would be okay provided every content creator had the legal option to deny permission for their work to appear in the library. This way, by not acting to deny permission, the creator would then waive his rights to compensation. That would be ethical.

It turns out the content creator does NOT have such a right under current law. Under Section 109 of Copyright Law, the holder of a copyrighted item has the right to distribute or dispose of the item without permission of the copyright holder. Therefore, the library is free to buy one copy and distribute in any way they like without regards to the copyright holder. There are specific exemptions to this law in regards to computer programs and other digital media. It seems books are free to pass around, but it is illegal to loan programs, even by private individuals. Maybe Steve can answer to that since he is a librarian by trade.

So while this legalizes the concept of a library, which has never really been in doubt, I still find the whole practice immoral. Essentially, it seems we have codified in law the permitted theft from a content creator ‘in the name of the greater public good’, which is almost always a prelude to the erosion of individual rights. How is the public good served by depriving writers of just compensation for their work.

I took a look at the Salt book I’m reading, and I found this statement inside the cover:
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

So this book, outside the US, can be lent or re-sold in original form, but not reproduced in another form and then distributed for any reason. It’s interesting that they have to make such a statement, implying that copyright law in other nations permits such unauthorized reproduction. I imagine the laws overseas aren’t as clear.

So despite libraries being ‘legal’, I don’t think this is an ethical law. There should be a mechanism by which a creator can opt out of the system. Video rentals have to negotiate license deals, why shouldn’t libraries?

Filed under: Copyright