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Used Books: An Actual Internet Success Story
theodp writes: "An Actual Internet Success Story explains how, in just a few years, the Internet has transformed the world into a huge marketplace for used books, utterly transforming a business that had gone pretty much unobserved for centuries. The Net has changed how we buy and think about books - someone in Illinois can easily buy a cheap used hardback over the Net from a New York dealer, read it and then resell it to someone in California, having spent, in effect, only a few dollars. According to the story, the increase in the number of used books sold is staggering, maybe 100 times what it was in 1995, and now accounts for more than 15 percent of Amazon's sales. Tales are told of used book dealers lining up nine hours before a library sale to get 'free money,' cutting deals with thrift-store managers and library-sale organizers to avoid 'feeding frenzy' fights, volunteering at the Salvation Army to get first dibs on donations, and offering review copies for half price on the Net weeks before a book is even published."
I've been haunting used book stores for years. It's usually a hit-or-miss proposition. The mass market books are usually pretty easy to find in the local shops, but the more obscure or esoteric books are nearly impossible to find.
Amazon.com and B&N (and their associated sellers) have greatly changed that. I can find almost anything now and usually at a reasonable price. I looked for years to find copies of out-of-print and obscure books before and now it's pretty easy.
I expect it'll be a few years before we're able to get the majority of used-book stores on-line though. Most stores have far too much stock and too few resources to make that happen.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Well, Richard Stallman has a good idea that eBooks are going to "solve" that problem for publishers. He was interviewed on Off The Hook, a weekly radio show in New York, a few months ago about the topic. You can find the MP3 archive of the show here.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
Tim O'Reilly actually commented on this same issue in his weblog. It's intresting to note that as a publisher he knows that the business of trying to stop book use like the RIAA is trying to stop MP3 use won't work. Take a look at O'Reilly and the network of information they setup. I'm sure no one is hurting over their and consumers still have the ability to buy, sell, loan, etc. books in their library.
Restricting used books has been tried. The example which first comes to mind is the publisher a long time ago who put a license in books which prohibited resale. Courts rejected it.
For the impatient here's an automatic registration link to the article.
Working at an Academic library I must say that this is very true. About half of the items that I see (being the cataloguer I see all of them) come in are from B&N, amazon, and other books sellers online. And if the item is more than a few years old or an esoteric (sp?) most of these are used. It has made the acquisitions department very happy these sites. And the directors too. Much more bang for thier ever shrinking buck.
"If a quarter is two bits, then a dollar's a byte." -R Deric Miller
But once books are not in print they vanish -- the publishers used to keep warehouses full of books that were 20-30 years old. But tax laws and courts changed the rules, so they could no longer could use their old inventory to reduce their taxes. Now publishers get rid of books in a short time.
If this was used movies and used CD's, the various **AA's would be all over it. Can someone explain the difference between the latest book, the latest movie and the latest music CD as it pertains to property?
NO. They wouldn't be. Such things exist without harassment from the **AAs. And we aren't talking about new media anyway; we're talking about used books.
Although your post is clearly a troll, you're a little bit right. No one is contesting the sale of used stuff right now, not even the **AA...just give 'em some time. However, book publishers have attacked libraries as piracy facilitators in the past, without much luck. One thing they've found: It's a hell of a lot harder to demonize a library, paid for by the public and heralded as an educational treasure, than it is to demonize college students and the Internet.
Which makes me wonder: What if a library put together something to "check out" books, music, and videos on the Internet? Yeah, we've got a few things like it, but they're in their infancy and, to my knowledge, not a public project; they're done by one company or another. With a public library behind sharing of books/music/videos, doing what they're already doing in real life, the **AAs might have little choice but to back down.
My library (Multnomah County Library, in Portland, OR) already loans music and videos along with books. It has hookups to the Internet for anyone coming in, and people volunteer for work at the library. It's just a matter of adding these ingredients together, and we could have public filesharing...how sweet is that? I'm getting carried away...but it's nice to think about.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
You own the disc. The publisher can not take that away from you. Just as with a book where you own the paper. You don't own the music on the disc or the words on the paper. The author/publisher owns them. By selling you a CD or a book, the author has given you the right to use the music or words that are contained on the medium.
In your example, you are taking a copy of the music off of the medium and distributing it sans the disc. Unless the owner give you permission to do so, you are not allowed to do that.
Data is not a tangable object; you can't pick up an idea. You can do anything with the medium that you would please you. However, unless the owner gives you permission to do so, you can not take the data and distribute it independantly of the medium.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty sure the rules of "first sale" do not include the right to photo-copy the book and sell the copies or even give them away for free
No you are correct - if you wish to follow the law when copying you must renumerate the author. This is why the last photocopied textbook I had cost $75.00 for a 200 page book. Most of the illustrations are illegible, as is much of the text - and the graphs are completely unusable. In short it was a waste. But required! Damn the Optics Mafia!
You're right about first sale--in fact, the doctrine of first sale has been largely ignored (see Lawrence Lessig, interview with Slashdot).
However, it is, in fact, illegal to do precisely the things you describein your second and third paragraphs, if the publisher has put in any kind of digital copy protection. Getting around those, even for perfectly benign purposes (like ripping a DVD to your hard drive so you can watch it while you're dvd player's being fixed/whatever) is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (I think section 1201a, but I'm not sure about that).
If normal, non-copyright-violating activities weren't being attacked here, I think a lot fewer people would be upset...
obviously you've never been in search of a book that is out of print. my partner has thousands of books, most of them are editions that have been out of print for 50-100 years or more.
publishers will never bring these books back into print. it's quite sad. in the meantime, old and crumbling is the only condition you can find them in.
I may be wrong, but I believe that you do indeed own the music on the cd, or the words on the paper.
I might not have been clear when I said "own". What I meant by "own" is that that words in the book or the music on the CD are that of the author. You can't claim that they are yours, even if you bought the book or the CD. It is hard to use ideas of ownership for ideas. As I said, you can't pick up and hold words or music. They aren't tangible things.
The author of a work does own the rights to the work, for a limited time as defined by copyright laws. Once the copyright expires, the work becomes part of the public domain. Yet, you still don't "own" the work. I am again using "own" as definded above. The words are still those of the author, you can't claim that they are yours. Your use of the work is no longer restricted but you still don't own the work. The public as a whole does.
So, when you buy a book or CD or other work, you own the physical stuff that the work is distributed on. But you don't own what is contained on the physical stuff.