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Steven Johnson (http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com), author of MIND WIDE OPEN: YOUR BRAIN AND THE NEUROSCIENCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE, writes about his experience of buying his own book in digital format in the May 2005 issue of Discover (http://www.discover.com).
He expresses his opinion about how the software protects the written word. Almost all e-books will not allow copying, editing, or any other manipulation of the words beyond printing the book out. Steven does not like this.
For people who use the e-books for reference in their own writing or who wish to store one small piece of an entire e-book in a file, I can see how this is a pain. On the other hand, I also like the added feature as a writer. I like my creation to be protected.
But even there my views are changing.
Steven comments in his article, "When publishers go out of their way to keep readers from interacting with digital text, they are literally stripping away its essence."
I don't feel that strongly about this as he does, but as I read his article it makes me think about what I want to offer my readers in e-books. (I do have plans of publishing in this format, beginning next year - as well as paper format.)
Right now the bulk of my writing is in Fantasy. For the most part, I expect my readers to download the e-book and read it, and not a whole lot more.
But when it comes to my future non-fiction plans, I think I'd like to offer more freedom to the user. My readers may only want to copy and use those pieces of my book that pertain to whatever need they have at that time. Whether this be for filing, providing references, helping someone else out, or multiple purposes, I feel giving the reader user-freedom is necessary.
Whenever, I need to use something, I've had to print out the e-book and tear out the parts I need, or manually retype the passages I wanted to use. I never gave it much thought, until now. I see that this only wasted valuable time that could have been saved had I been able to copy and paste directly from the electronic text.
I agree with Steven when he comments on ways to allow some text copying and still protect against piracy: "A better solution is to allow only a specific percentage of text in an e-book to be copied, the way the digital rights management of music limits the number of computers that can play a given song."
This would be good for those who want some protection measures in place against piracy kept intact while allowing the readers to use the text. For others, I see the various methods of open licensing as a viable avenue.
I've included some links on different copyrights as reference for those who wish to research further:
Cory Doctorow - I became interested in his methods of making his work available to the public last year, and Steven refers to him in his article. His website: http://craphound.com I really recommend reading his article on e-books here: http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt
Creative Commons' Licenses Weblog
http://creativecommons.org/weblog
http://www.info-commons.org/blog/
Open eBook Forum
http://www.openebook.org/
© 2005 Diana Cacy Hawkins/ C. D. Khemo
Johnson, Steven (2005, May). Reinventing the e-Book. Discover, p.22.
bravenet.com