Library ebook rights

Sadly, I doubt even this baby step could ever happen in the US, but there is an interesting case working through the EU courts right now involving a copyright case in Germany. It is far from resolved, but the issue is whether or not libraries in Europe can digitize books and offer them electronically.

Here is an article summarizing what's happening.

Basically, the argument is that because of the way EU copyright law is written, libraries can digitize a book in their collection and then make it available to the public on "designated" terminals in the library. The result is that if a patron makes a copy to a flash drive or emails it to themselves or otherwise creates a copy, then responsibility is on the patron, not the library for any copyright violation.

That is a big legal issue, but not much of a convenience, usability, or "freeing of information" issue for people or libraries. The solution to this problem is a payment model that allows sharing of copyrighted information while providing compensation to the intellectual property creators and owners. That is a pipe dream at this point in the process, but it could happen some day - in fact something MUST happen. The person who figures it out will be the equivalent of the creator of the printing press, in my opinion.