Fergus Cassidy

Brought to book

'The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information, by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed.'

WHEN Edgar Allan Poe wrote the above in 1845, he must have considered his own work as being among 'useful matter'. Otherwise he would have taken the decision not to add to the 'piles of lumber' by continuing to write his own books.

But Poe's rant on the 'acquisition of correct information' did reflect the concerns of those times. The growing availability of books was considered by some to be a grave threat to society. Those fears tended to belong to two camps: fear that knowledge might disrupt the current course of society or the fear of the consequences of incorrect information, as articulated by Poe.

For many centuries now, books have always been more than print on pages. Books have taken on a symbolic and totemistic role as a cornerstone of learning and knowledge. One look at film footage of the mountains of books burning on the fires of Nazi rule in the late 1930s, is sufficent to capture how books are very deeply ingrained in society.

Books have always symbolised freedom of speech and freedom of information, which is why the their banning has always been so difficult, if not impossible, to defend. It was for those same reasons that Carnegie devoted much of his life and income to opening libraries which lent books out at no charge. Implicit in Carnegie's motives was public access to information and knowledge, regardless of income or status.

But, probably unforeseen by Carnegie, libraries over the last century have become much more than providers of books and publications at no charge. The invention by Melvil Dewey of a system of book classification, laid the ground for libraries to develop archives and become important keepers of recorded history. Most publications these days are required by law to submit published work to a designated library or records institute or cataloguing and archiving.

Now considering that the ideas of Carnegie and Dewey belong to two centuries ago, much has changed. The rise and rise of free enterprise has turned books into valuable commodities. Not just the information in them but also the business of selling them. And the rights to plays, scripts, films and a host of offshoots like merchandising.

Market economics means that only books which have a sale value to the publisher will be printed and sold. Not even owning a copyright on a piece of work is a guarantee that the book will be published. This means that there are an awful lot of books, even copyrighted ones, that will never see the light of day again. Estimates in the US, according to Larry Lessig, indicate that 98% of all books in copyright are terminally out of print.

It's for this reason that Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University, was the lead attorney in last week's opening of the copyright extension challenge before the US Supreme Court. In Eldred v Ashcroft, the plaintiff wants the court to rule that continually extending copyright is unconstitutional because publications will never enter the public domain. That is what Article 1 Section 8 seeks to maintain, in its reference and aspiration to "progress in the useful arts and sciences".

Lessig has been driven by this case and the issues around it for many years now but he has a wider vision than this one case: "Let's not get our hopes too high. This is a crazy case, we've got a slim chance of winning. I put everything I can into this case, I've tried my best, but we've got to understand that this movement we've created is far more important than what five smelly old guys in Washington think".

The movement Lessig refers is an organic entity and very hard to categorise or pin down. But there is a gathering body of opinion that understands the far reaching consequences of books and publications never reaching the public domain.

The court case is an important one in that it will define, in a way that hasn't been done since the 1800s, what are the limits and boundaries to copyright. Any wonder then why Alan Greenspan and Jack Valenti (head of Motion Picture Association of America) were seated prominently in the Supreme Court gallery.

And while the case goes on, Poe's diatribe about 'the multiplication of books' is getting a new and very modern twist.

Brewster Kahle can't print books fast enough. He has equipped a 1992 Ford Aerostar with a satellite dish, duplexing colour printer, desktop binding machine and a paper cutter and has called it the Bookmobile. While it looks like a mobile library, it doesn't contain any books.

Kahle avails of the fruits of Project Gutenberg, whose global volunteers type in the full contents of public domain books word for word. On that subject he has said that "people have a hard time understanding the public domain. It's an abstract concept; it's hard to grasp. The Bookmobile changes that. The public domain means giving books to children. You want to extend copyright? You want to steal books from children? No one wants to steal books from children".

The latter-day Carnegie expanded on the project recently to Salon.com: "We want to have a million books for everyone to use. We can't build a library to hold a million books, so we use the internet. We download a book from the net. We print it out, put a binding around it, you get to pick the book you want. Today we have Alice in Wonderland and Huckleberry Finn. And there's a really awesome book, my favourite - The Wizard of Oz. We got it from a used bookstore and scanned it".

And it may turn out to be awesome, considering that the Supreme Court is going to decide on just how long and how valuable the Yellow Brick Road really is.

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LINKS

PROJECT GUTENBERG exists to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search. LINK HERE

BREWSTER KAHLE'S BOOKMOBILE is a mobile digital library capable of downloading public domain books from the Internet via satellite and printing them anytime, anywhere, for anyone. LINK HERE