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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."
Ahh yes, but then the book companies can complain about the used book market stealing money from their pockets. I wonder when the selling of used books will become illegal.
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# Modus Ponens
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Three or four comic book stores in the Orlando area went out of business quickly about 2 years ago. While scrounging for stuff, I got to speak with the owners and they ALL had the same story.
They made more money in one month selling their inventory on Ebay than they did in a year selling inthe "real" world. They pointed out all the really good stuff was gone, and I wasn't going to find what I was looking for.
All were quite happy with the situation and planned to continue selling at online auctions.
A side note is that in the last week I've sold 5 books on Amazon that I no longer wanted. I got decent money, too, not like the $1 or so at a garage sale. I *HATE* throwing books out -- they need to go to a good home.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
That we've reached the situation where there is a sufficient concentration of idiocy, arrogance and financial interest to push for the removal or truncation of first sale rights on items that contain content, including books?
I know it sounds insane, but bear with me. I'm thinking about the Elcomsoft judge, and his assertion that because you can transcribe an eBook by hand, that satisfies the right to copy it in part for fair use rights of quotation, and in whole for eventually putting it into the public domain. So a court has said that it's both possible and practical to copy an eBook, and so by a close extrapolation, that applies (even more so because of OCR) to a text book.
So... (thinks an unscrupulous IP lawyer concerned that kiddies are actually sharing copies of Harry Potter and the Amazonian Gift Certificate or another lucrative movie tie in) if it's even easier to copy a paper book than a highly protected eBook, then why shouldn't some of those juicy DMCA criminal penalties apply to paper books?
Bear in mind that some eBooks are already tied to individual devices (my colleage has just bought a new PDA, but simply can't transfer his Microsoft licensed eBooks from his old one to the new one). They are treated as information licensed to you; you have no rights of first sale. Now, transferral of an eBook is copying of information, not a physical transfer, but look also at how hard it is to sell software on eBay. Publisher can and do have you shut down in an instant, even if you explicitely state that you are selling a boxed non-OEM copy that you have removed from your hardware. The very idea that you can own an object that contains copyrighted content is being challenged by habit and usage, and that's often a precursor to a change in the law.
I'm not saying that this will happen this year or the next. I'm thinking five or ten years, but I'm thinking that it can and will happen, after all digital content is locked down tight with mandatory DRM. I'm not proposing that it's Constitutional, or even that it's in any way workable, but that's not necessarily a bar to having a law passed that will take years of fighting up to the Supremes to have struck or modified.
I'm also thinking that it might be the issue that finally wakes up Joe Consumer regarding fair use and the balance of power in copyright, but that by then it might be too late to recover any of the rights that we've already lost to the publishers and distributors.
What do you think? Am I delusional, or am I just following the money?
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