The news clip above that talks about eBooks in libraries hadn’t struck me yet and brings up a whole set of copyright questions. Before this video I hadn’t though of the impact that eBooks could have on a mass scale such as libraries. The video describes the many benefits of this but didn’t mention a few that I was thinking of. This way members of the library wouldn’t have to physically go to the library to check out and return books they could simply get them online. Also books would never be late because they are deleted from the device automatically. There are many benefits to this and the statistic that says 75 percent of libraries now do this means it’s catching on. I personally didn’t know that libraries did this and will now look for it at my own public library.
This also creates copyright problems though. As the video mentioned certain publishers don’t allow for their works to be used in library eBooks. I am not sure if they don’t allow their works to be published on eBooks at all or just for libraries but i can see why. Maybe it’s because I don’t have enough knowledge of it but I don’t see why on an iPad while borrowing a book from a library the person borrowing could simply take pictures of all the pages and keep them from good. Another copyright problem is there are no laws for this type of thing yet. It is unexplored legal territory and I am curious to see what happens.
It seems that the issue of authors not wanting their work on ebooks has to do with the concerns of digitally copying material. It is virtually effortless for one to copy mp3 files, pictures, mp4 videos, and other media forms existing in digital format. I am not familiar with digital books, but I would imagine that copying them would be fairly easy to do as well. As for the development of laws involving ebooks, I predict that they will develop into being very similar to those involving physical books.