Libraries and Harper Collin's- The Growing Debates over E-Books

Do you have a library card? If you live in the city of Pittsburgh, I'm willing to place a wager that you do. Even if you're not from the City of Champions, I'm sure you probably have a library card.   If you don't, well then, that's very sad.   Contact me IMMEDIATELY and I'll tell you how to get one.  Library cards open doorways to worlds unkown, provide free, useful services to the public and are just, plain, awesome. This isn't just my own opinion, so don't think I'm merely blowing smoke your way.

So why am I discussing libraries on a law blog?  Well it's because of an issue that has come up concerning digital books, specifically with the publisher Harper Collins.  Here's the issue itself, in general:

When a library buys a hard copy of the book that hard copy is theirs.  Period.  They can circulate it until it falls apart and no one from Harper Collins can come and say, "That book has circulated more than it's worth.  You need to give it back now."  Balderdash!  They'd be laughed out of the library for their stupidity.

Yet this is what they are doing, digitally.  Libraries, fully willing to cater to the public's needs, are now going digital!  E-books are now available through the Carnegie Library as well as many other libraries across the USA.  It works like this:  you buy one digital copy of a book, and like a hard copy it can only be borrowed by one person at one time.  When they are finished the ebook is put on the digital e-shelf and can be borrowed again by another patron.  It can be placed on hold, but is never returned late because it automatically expires once the lending time is up.

Harper Collins feels that a digital book is only allowed a certain amount of circulations, and after that number of circulations they take the ebook back.  Don't ask me how this happens in cyberspace, because I'm not entirely sure of the process, but the book is no longer the library's and they have to buy another copy.

On the one hand, this seems like a silly, artificial constraint. When you buy something, you own it, and the same rules should apply to e-books as they do with hard copies.  Yet Harper Collins is arguing that should be a distinction between digital and hard copy.

Regardless of which argument prevails, this definitely raises questions about new applications of copyright law.  Is there a difference between the digital world and the real world in terms of product?  If so, what is that difference?

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