CNET has a very scary preview of the upcoming fight between publishers and libraries. Scientific journals such as Nature are already angering librarians with the way they want to handle electronic versions of journals and other publishers are certain to want even more control (and money) than Nature
I have to confess I’m probably the publisher’s worst nightmare when it comes to libraries and copyrights. The university library here subscribes to thousands of publications, and ever month or so I spend an afternoon in there photocopying articles for research I’m doing. I also have a habit of simply photocopying entire books that are out-of-print (but whose copyright has not expired) rather than trying to locate them through used bookstores. I also tend to be a heavy user of the electronic resources provided by the library system. The university provides employees and staff members with free Lexis-Nexis access which to me is a lot like being handed the keys to the candy store.
Even though almost everything I do is covered by fair use provisions, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act empowers publishers to circumvent most fair uses of copyrighted material through copy protection schemes combined with licensing provisions. Today if I want to copy a 10 page article from a journal it costs me a minute or two of time and about 50 cents off my copy card. With the DMCA publishers are clearly moving to a future where I will have to pay not only the 50 cent fee for the physical copying but a $1-2 (or more) per article licensing fee in order to be able to print off the article in the first place.
Not that I have any grand solution in mind as to how you balance protecting the rights of content creators in a world where an electronic book can be zapped instantaneously around the world, but as more and more books and other content become available electronically (and especially available only in electronic form), the DMCA is going to result in a disaster and fundamentally transform for the worse the way people conduct research.
The DMCA needs to be scrapped and replaced with a system that more equitably balances the interests of copyright holders with those of consumers.