Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Who owns the content in the digital
environment?
Wilma Mossink and Lorraine Estelle
Introduction
Libraries have two roles essential to the IP balance: archiving the
national memory and allowing the public and research community access
to it.
1
Any book dealing with the future of digital information would be
incomplete without considering the issues of intellectual property (IP).
Although the internet casts a new light on these issues, the principal
problems are not new. In the 19th century the American publishing
industry was quick to recognize that in sharing a language with the
UK, it was easy to share its literature too. English texts were open to
piracy, and it was easier and more profitable to appropriate an English
text than to pay an American author. This had a depressing effect on
the US publishing industry, and for decades American authors
expressed their frustration at being underpaid because of the availability
of cheap pirated copies of UK publications. Equally, renowned British
authors such as Charles Dickens were paid nothing for the many
thousands of copies of their books sold in the USA. Indeed, Dickens,
while on a reading tour of the USA, made many pleas for international
copyright laws. His fans, enjoying access to cheap copies of his books,
were not impressed; for example, they paid the equivalent of 6 cents per
copy for a book such as
A Christmas Carol
, which cost $2.50 in the UK
(Vaidhyanathan, 2001). It was not until the 1890s that international
