In July 1971, Michael Hart, who was a student at the University of Illinois, placed the Declaration of Independence, which was the basis of the US Constitution, on the university's Xerox mainframe Sigma V. Enter it and make it available for anyone to share for free. In the pre-internet era, six out of about 100 users downloaded it. It is the beginning of the world's first digital library "Project Gutenberg" that digitizes books whose copyright has expired and makes it possible for as many people as possible to read books, and Mr. Hart's Declaration of Independence is said to be "the beginning of e-books". ing.
If so, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of e-books.
E-books have grown significantly since the anniversary. According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), U.S. e-book sales were $2.12 billion in 2020, up 11.7% from the previous year. Since 2014, the sales of e-books have been on a downward trend, but bookstores have closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people who have never experienced digital books before have been forced to stay at home due to refraining from going out. I have e-books and audiobooks.
In a blog post titled "May The Source Be With You," Hart wrote, "I value the words in the book more than the material form of the book."
Compared to when Mr. Hart started "Project Gutenberg", you can get e-books anytime and anywhere through the Internet, and you can easily read e-books on your smartphone or tablet. In recent years, the types of electronic book reader devices have also increased. For books whose copyrights have expired or which can be read for free, an environment has been created in which more people can easily read them, overcoming the limitations of paper books. It can be said that a milestone has been reached 50 years after the Declaration of Independence by Mr. However, there are fewer opportunities to read copyrighted books than paper books.
According to the 2020 Public Library Technology Survey, more than 93% of public libraries in the United States lend e-books. According to Overdrive, which develops an e-book platform for libraries globally, mainly in the United States, in 2020, 430 million e-books will be borrowed from public and school libraries through the company's system, an increase of 33% from the previous year. rice field. By 2020, the number is expected to exceed 500 million. An environment where it is easy to read the e-book version borrowed from the library has been established, and the number of users is increasing. However, behind the spread of such popularization, libraries are beginning to scream at e-books, which place a heavier burden on libraries than paper books.
You can easily borrow e-books from public libraries using your user number on websites or apps. Since the user card is basically issued only to the local residents, it will be a system to lend it only to the residents. Also, just because it is a digital book, the number of copies is not infinite. Users can search for books on a website or app, borrow books that are not on loan, or register for a waiting list for books that are on loan. Rental periods vary from 2 weeks to 1 month.
Paper books wear out over the years and eventually become unreadable. Just like paper books are finite, e-books purchased by libraries also have a limit on how many times they can be borrowed, and once the limit is exceeded, the library must purchase them again.
From a library perspective, e-books don't last as long as they are handled with care, unlike paper books. And there is a difference between paper books and e-books in the presence or absence of a "first-sale doctrine." Intellectual property rights are exhausted from legally purchased items, and they can be sold or rented without the permission of the copyright owner. An exception to copyright law that limits the right holder's right to control lending and resale, the first-sale doctrine allows libraries to freely lend purchased books without charge. It does not apply to e-books.
This is not limited to e-books, it is the same with music, but even if you buy a digital version from an online store, the data does not belong to the purchaser. What the purchaser purchases is the right to use. There is an opinion that ``it is strange that you cannot own it even if you have purchased it.'' However, due to the nature that identical copies of digital content can be made, DRM (Digital Rights Management) should be used to protect the content, and the sale and rental of copies should not be restricted by regulations. and intellectual property rights cannot be adequately protected.
By not applying the First Sale Doctrine, print books lose the freedom that libraries have, and e-books are more controlled by publishers. Under the current deal, libraries cannot afford to buy enough e-books within their limited budgets, and the more e-books they need to meet the demands of their users, the more pressure they have on their finances. In addition, there have been reports of problems such as the library not being able to purchase topical works for a while after their release, and even if they become available, the number of sales is severely limited.
So, Maryland passed a bill in June that would require libraries to license them on "reasonable terms," and will go into effect in January 2022. Similar bills have been proposed in New York, and are spreading to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In response to such a move, the American Publishers Association pointed out that ``a bill that violates federal copyright protection creates a ``shadow copyright law''. Filed lawsuit to overturn Maryland law.
For a long period of time, perhaps 10 years, there will be a fierce battle between publishers, e-book services, libraries, and Amazon over distribution and pricing. However, it is believed that this problem will be difficult to solve by adjusting the price and the number of rental times.
Current e-book lending is facing various distortions in trying to reproduce the mechanism of paper books in e-books and the Internet. However, reproduction cannot bring out the advantages of digital and online. For example, in the early days of e-book apps, designs that recreated books and bookshelves were adopted so that users could understand what they were at a glance. It was easy to understand, but the UX of physical things was not easy to use with mobile apps, and it changed to a design that was easy to operate on mobile devices and easy to operate content. Consumption of music, movies and dramas has also shifted from purchasing to streaming with the proliferation of mobile broadband that can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
By shifting to a system that is in line with the consumption of digital content, without being bound by the age of physical media, it will lead to a great spread. It has been pointed out that it is necessary for public libraries to explore the ideal form of digital libraries without being dragged down by the structure of paper books.
The meaning of Mr. Hart's words, "I value the words written in the book more than the material form of the book," is questioned again.