A large number of projects are currently underway to digitize huge volumes of books. Everyone from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to the United States Library of Congress, as well as many smaller entities, are working on book digitization. Scanned copies of books that have been previously published are being uploaded to the internet. Along with the enthusiasm about how this could change books as we know them, there are many concerns over the legal issues raised. Concerns about copyright and intellectual property laws in relation to digitized books are valid.

 

According to United States copyright laws, any work that was produced before 1923, and many that were created before 1978, is in the public domain. A “work” is something reproducible that has been created, such as a book or writing, image, piece of art, etc. When it is in the public domain, the original creator no longer has full rights protecting the reproduction of his or her work.

 

What all of this means is that older books no longer have a copyright attached to them and can be copied freely. No financial gains are due to the author. Therefore, anyone is free to scan a copy of a book that was published in 1900 and upload it to the internet for all to read in its entirety. This is exactly what Project Gutenberg has been doing for a few decades.

 

However, newer books do fall under copyright laws. The author of a book published more recently still has rights to control what happens to his or her writings and is entitled to financial compensation. This creates legal issues for those who want to digitize libraries of books and make them more accessible to the public. Legally, only a short excerpt of a book under copyright can be published freely.

 

Some of the book digitization projects, primarily Google, seek to make entire books searchable, but only show an excerpt of the book in the search results. They are doing this without permission from the publishers or authors of the books. Publishers are claiming that this is a blatant violation of copyright and intellectual property laws because entire copies of books are being published online. While the books are not being sold, revenue will be generated from them in the form of advertising.

 

There is a lot of controversy over the legal issues surrounding this aspect of book digitization. It is not clear yet which side will win the battle, but it could have a big affect on the future of book digitization, copyright laws, and intellectual property on the internet in general. Some people speculate that the internet is creating a long road to the eventual demise of copyright laws altogether. This is because sharing information is the nature of the internet. Information can be published so freely online that it makes it much more difficult to control intellectual property than it was a few decades ago.

 

 

Cliquez ici pour la version française