LISNews: Librarian News

The literature and reading scholar tells us about the profound effect that the rise of electronic literature has had on authors, the publishing industry and the nature of the book.

Five Books Interview at The Browser

Supreme Court seeks a way around "perpetual copyright" on foreign goods
"If you were the lawyer for the Toyota distributor, [or] if you were the lawyer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or you are the lawyer for a university library," said Breyer. "Your client comes to you and says, 'My God, I just read the Supreme Court opinion. It says that we can't start selling these old books, or lending them, or putting them in our word processor, or reselling the Toyota, [or] displaying the Picasso without the permission of the copyright holder.' What, as their lawyer, do you tell them? Do you tell them, 'hey, no problem?' Or, do you tell them, 'you might become a law violator?' Or, do you tell them, 'I better litigate this?' What do you tell them?"

Notably, Olson didn't back away from the more extreme consequences of his client's win at the 2nd Circuit. If Wiley wins, he said, institutions like museums and libraries might need to get licenses from copyright owners for their activities.

"I wonder if the 20th century will actually be seen as the high point of the accessibility of books, with near universal literacy in wealthy countries, public libraries, and cheap books. Literacy doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but I can all too easily imagine a dystopian future history of book accessibility, written maybe only 50 years from now..."
A rather scary dystopian future history of (e)books.

Self-published books make up 43 percent of the print titles released in 2011 and helped to drive the first growth in print production since 2007, according to a new study from Bowker.

What happens to all these self-published books, one may wonder? Do they mostly end up in boxes in the authors' garages? Not necessarily.