Re: International E-book Sales Restrictions Explained

joseph harris wrote:
> Copyright gives a right to the rights owner - which that owner may
> licence to a publisher or other person or business - which legally
> entitles the owner to determine all the rights to make copies
...
> And there is a false analogy with brick and mortar bookshops. Bookshops
> *store* print books, they do not copy them; it is the nature of the
> digital file that ebookstores do make copies to meet a sale.
...
> but these casual appeals to... well to I'm not sure
> what, except maybe 'I want it, and I want it now'.

In this particular case, there is a notable second sentence, though.

"I want it, and I want it now. My friend in New York bought the print
book, my friend in Chicago bought the e-book, and my friend in Salisbury
bought the print book -- so why can't I buy the ebook in Basingstoke?"

You clearly decided to sell it -- but you used your authorial discretion
to *deny* some people the chance to buy the same item that other people
are permitted to purchase. (You could have insisted on a single world-wide
launch day for all print and ebook versions to resolve this problem.)

However, the overall discussion suggests an alternative plan for ebooks,
which I don't think has been tried yet. Essentially have the publisher do
the copying and produce, say, 15,000 files - which we will mark with
serial numbers - and then from that point, every copy will move
individually. The final sale will not involve another copying step. The
ebook store will only store the ebooks. If they have 40 for sale, they
will have 40 individual items for sale, and when those are gone, there are
no more.

For those who think I may have gone off the deep end here, I suggest you
go read http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php -- "What
Colour Are Your Bits?", which discusses - roughly - how when differing
processes produce the same result, they may still be different results
that you can't tell apart. Or, perhaps more on topic, review the Supreme
Court of Canada summary for "Théberge v. Galerie d'Art du Petit Champlain
inc" at http://scc.lexum.org/en/2002/2002scc34/2002scc34.html and at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théberge_v._Galerie_d'Art_du_Petit_Champlain_Inc.

The court case is expressly important, because in that case, the
production of a copy destroyed the previous copy. In the words of that
summary there was "no increase in the total number of reproductions" - in
essence, no copy. The gallery moved the artists work from paper to canvas,
but because there was no increase in the number of reproductions, the
Supreme Court found that there was no copyright infringement.

So - with appropriate affadavits and notarization - I will build a "file
transfer process or machine" that guarantees that there will be no
increase in the total number of reproductions beyond that produced by the
publisher. Now the publisher can do the copying, and the ebook store
really can store files and transfer them first from the publisher and then
to the final purchaser.

I'm also quite sure that should this be attempted, it will end up in court
at some point. But if the process has the necessary guarantees, it might
very well be determined that the individually sold ebooks will now be
sufficiently like paper books that we can treat them that way.

: chris smith ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
: nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit - cicero :



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