There has been an explosion of new technologies in the
association of E-Books. Several years ago, it was nifty or kind of fun
to have an E-Reader and buying digital copies of books. Now E-Books are
finally hitting their stride, strutting about like the cool new kid on
the block. E-Books have found themselves a cozy home in American
society. Despite their appeal there is a dark side to this new format
and that is Digital Rights Management, known as DRM, which is
challenging libraries in their pursuit of information for all.
A lot of people may be confused about DRM. Its premise
is simple: it is the technologies put into digital media formats to
control who, how, and when digital formats may be used according to
their distributors (Agnew 2009). The goal of DRM is to protect the
creative copyright of the author/artist and the companies who hold the
rights to that. The danger that lurks with DRM is when those companies
who hold the copyrights begin to censor what users and libraries are
able to obtain.
For libraries, copyright and DRM have slightly different
meanings. According the American Library Association, libraries are
more affected by the business models those companies who hold DRM chose
to use than DRM technologies themselves (2011). The government
supporting these business model practices such as 'pay-per-use' in the
information industry is crippling libraries and other public
institutions ability to provide information for all (2011).
Distributors of media such as Apple or Amazon are very
particular when it comes to users using their products. Instead of
buying a CD or a book, you are licensing out the song or E-Book from the
distributor. That means when you buy something you still do not own it,
you are simply licensed to have it (Doctorow 2009). This is exactly
what distributors and publishers have done with E-Books. They use a 'pay
per use' license where libraries pay for a title to be used only a set
number of times and then they have to buy the title license again. A
library can purchase the physical book Pride and Prejudice, a
must have in a public library, and it can be checked out thousands of
times, but a digital copy of the same title-the exact same book in a
different format is only licensed to be checked out a set number of
times. This begs the question,where is the sense in all that? This
probably explains the on going headaches librarians are experiencing
when trying negotiate with publishers and distributors for E-Books.
To counteract with this massive 'control freak' vendetta
libraries are using multi-publisher to make E-Books available to the
public. Platforms like MyLibrary, OverDrive, EBL (recently purchased by
ProQuest), ebrary, and Net-Library (Herther, 2011). These services give a
small taste of digital books to library users, but as digital
collections grow these platforms may not be able to service the users'
demands. With publishers and distributors heightening their DRM control,
growing E-Book collections may come to a slow petty pace.
There is a certain amount of control people are
generally willing to accept, but push too far and these distributors and
publishers will have severe backlash. Just ask Amazon two years ago
when they deleted George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm
from people's Kindles despite the fact that the users had purchased the
E-Book legitimately from Amazon (Davies 2009). This blew up in Amazon's
face. People not only noticed their E-Book was deleted, but the title
was very telling as well. Most were offered an apology and a thirty
dollar check, but Michigan teen, Justin Gawronski, found that was not
enough when not only his copy of 1984 was deleted without
warrant, but all of his notes and annotations were deleted with it. He
sued Amazon and received a $150,000 settlement (2009).
How was Amazon able to do delete E-Books that people had
already paid for? That is part of DRM technologies. Now Amazon has put
into policy that they will not delete a product from Kindles without the
user's consent. Despite their policy they still have the ability to
delete items in certain circumstance which is quite an eye opener for
libraries. The implications of having that much control over purchased
materials is disturbing to libraries to say the least. This is just
another reminded that users do not actually own digital material, they
are licensed to have it. This begs the question what would it take for a
publisher or distributor to remotely at random delete a book from a
library collection?
This backlash is an example of when a copyright holder
takes DRM too far. Libraries should not be afraid to dive into E-books,
because they are a part of our patrons and users' lives and are going to
be a part of their future. That does not mean that libraries should
just tow the line and follow along to whatever distributors and
publishers demand. Libraries and librarians are collectively massive and
can use that to their advantage. Making sure that publishers and
distributors remember that while piracy is a big issue, they only
hurting themselves by not working with users and libraries. By molding
new business models librarians and publishers can find a middle ground
to improve browseability, increase collections, and possibly get rid of
the 'pay per use' model.
DRM has its place and libraries respect that, but not at the cost and freedoms of our users and patrons.
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