{"id":17,"date":"2007-11-08T13:39:30","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T17:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/2007\/11\/08\/the-future-of-books-in-the-dig"},"modified":"2007-11-08T13:39:30","modified_gmt":"2007-11-08T17:39:30","slug":"the-future-of-books-in-the-digital-age-conference-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/2007\/11\/08\/the-future-of-books-in-the-digital-age-conference-report\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of Books in the Digital Age: Conference Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I attended a small, but really interesting conference<\/a> chaired by my colleagues Professor Werner Wunderlich<\/a> und Prof. Beat Schmid<\/a> from the Institute for Media and Communication Management<\/a>, our<\/a> sister institute here at the Univ. of St. Gallen. The conference was on \u201cThe Future of the Gutenberg Galaxy\u201d and looked at trends and perspectives of the medium \u201cbook\u201d. I\u2019ve learned a big deal today about the current state of the book market and future scenarios from a terrific line-up of speakers<\/a>. It was a particular pleasure, for instance, to meet Prof. Wulf D. von Lucus, who\u2019s teaching at the Univ. of Hohenheim, but is also the Chairman of the Board of Carl Hanser Verlag<\/a>, which will be publishing the German version of our forthcoming book Born Digital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We covered a lot of terrain, ranging from definitional question (what is a book? Here<\/a> is a legal definition under Swiss VAT law, for starters) to open access issues. The focus of the conversation, though, was on the question how digitization shapes the book market and, ultimately, whether the Internet will change the concept \u201cbook\u201d as such. A broad consensus emerged among the participants (a) that digitization has a profound impact on the book industry, but that it\u2019s still too early to tell what it means in detail, and (b) that the traditional book is very unlikely to be substituted by electronic formats (partly referring to the superiority-of-design-argument<\/a> that Umberto Eco made some time ago).<\/p>\n

I was the last speaker at the forum and faced the challenge to talk about the future of books from a legal perspective. Based on the insights we gained in the context of our Digital Media Project<\/a> and the discussion at the forum, I came up with the following four observations and theses, respectively:<\/p>\n

Technological innovations – digitization in tandem with network computing \u2013 have changed the information ecosystem. From what we\u2019ve learned so far, it\u2019s safe to say that at least some of the changes are tectonic in nature. These structural shifts in the way in which we create, disseminate, access, and (re-)use information, knowledge, and entertainment have both direct and indirect effects on the medium \u201cbook\u201d and the corresponding subsystem. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Some examples and precursors in this context: collaborative and evolutionary production of books (see Lessig\u2019s Code 2.0); e-Books and online book stores (see ciando or Amazon.com); online access to books (see, e.g., libreka, Google Book Search, digital libraries); creative re-uses such as fan fiction, podcasts, and the like (see, e.g., LibriVox, Project Gutenberg, www.harrypotterfanfiction.com).<\/p>\n

Law is responding to the disruptive changes in the information environment. It not only reacts to innovations related to digitization and networks, but has also the power to actively shape the outcome of these transformative processes. However, law is not the only regulatory force, and to gain a deeper understanding of the interplay among these forces is crucial when considering the future of books.
\n<\/strong>
\nWhile fleshing out this second thesis, I argued that the reactions to innovations in the book sector may follow the pattern of ICT innovation described by Debora Spar in her book Ruling the Waves<\/a> (Innovation \u2013 Commercialization \u2013 Creative Anarchy \u2013 Rules and Regulations). I used the ongoing digitization of books and libraries by Google Book Search as a mini-case study to illustrate the phases. With regard to the different regulatory forces, I referred to Lessig\u2019s framework and used book-relevant examples such as DRM-protected eBooks (\u201ccode\u201d), the use of collaborative creativity (\u201cnorms\u201d), and book-price fixing (\u201cmarkets\u201d) to illustrate it. I also tried to emphasis that the law has the power to shape each of the forces mentioned above in one way or another (I used examples such as anti-circumvention legislation, the legal ban on book-price fixing, and mandatory copyright provisions that preempt certain contractual provisions.)<\/p>\n

The legal \u201chot-spots\u201d when it comes to the future of the book in the digital age are the questions of distribution, access, and \u2013 potentially \u2013 creative re-use. The areas of law that are particularly relevant in this context are contracts, copyright\/trademark law, and competition law. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Based on the discussion at the forum, I tried to map some of the past, current, and emerging conflicts among the different stakeholders of the ecosystem \u201cbook\u201d. In the area of contract law, I focused on the relationship between authors and increasingly powerful book publishers that are tempted to use their unequal bargaining power to impose standard contracts on authors and transfer as many rights as possible (e.g. \u201cbuy out\u201d contracts).<\/p>\n

With regard to copyright law, I touched upon a small, but representative selection of conflicts, e.g. the relation between right holders and increasingly active users (referring to the recent hp-lexicon print-version controversy); the tensions between right holders and (new) Internet intermediaries (e.g. liability of platforms for infringements of their users in case of early leakage of bestsellers; e.g. interpretation of copyright limitations and exemptions in case of full-text book searches without permission of right holders); the tension between publishers and libraries (e.g. positive externalities of \u201cremote access\u201d to digital libraries vs. lack of exemptions in national and international copyright legislation \u2013 a topic my colleague Silke Ernst<\/a> is working on); and the tension between right holders and educational institutions (with reference to this report<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As far as competition law is concerned, I sketched a scenario in which Google Book Search would reach a dominant market position with strong user lock-in due to network effects and would decline to digitize and index certain books or book programs, for instance due to operational reasons. Based on this scenario, I speculated about a possible response by competition law authorities (European authorities in mind) and raised the question whether Google Book Search could be regarded, at some point, as an essential facility. (In the subsequent panel discussion, Google\u2019s Jens Redmer and I had a friendly back-and-forth on this issue.)<\/p>\n

Not all of the recent legal conflicts involving the medium \u201cbook\u201d are related to the transition from an analog\/offline to a digital\/online environment. Law continues to address book-relevant issues that are not new, but rather variations on traditional doctrinal themes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I used the Michael Baigent et al. v. Random House Group<\/a> decision by the London\u2019s High Court of Justice as one example (has the author of Da Vinci Code infringed copyright by \u201cborrowing\u201d a theme from the earlier book Holy Blood, Holy Grail?), and the recent Esra-decision<\/a> by the German BVerfG as a second one (author\u2019s freedom of expression vs. privacy right of a person in a case where it was too obvious that the figure used in a novel was a real and identifiable person and where intimate details of the real person were disclosed in the book.)<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we didn\u2019t have much time to discuss several interesting other issues and topics that were brought up and related to the generation born digital and its use of books \u2013 and the consequences of kids\u2019 changed media usage in a changed media environment, e.g. with regard to information overload and the quality of information. Topics, to be sure, that John Palfrey<\/a> and I are addressing in our forthcoming book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In sum, an intense, but very inspiring conference day.<\/p>\n

– Urs G.<\/p>\n

This post is cross posted on Urs Gasser’s blog here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I attended a small, but really interesting conference chaired by my colleagues Professor Werner Wunderlich und Prof. Beat Schmid from the Institute for Media and Communication Management, our sister institute here at the Univ. of St. Gallen. The conference was on \u201cThe Future of the Gutenberg Galaxy\u201d and looked at trends and perspectives of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1633,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259,879],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation","category-learning"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1633"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/digitalnatives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}