A Look to the Future of Publishing
It’s obvious that we’re not where we need to be. As Wikert notes, we’re really only in the year “2 B.i. (Before iPod)” when it comes to e-books, and the future is still unlimited if you consider the means we have of shaping and reshaping rules and standards.
As it stands, the DMCA and copyright laws seem to be one of the largest blockades to modern publishing innovation. The true tragedy of this is that copyright is intended to protect innovation and creativity, to foster growth in the arts and in the means by which the arts are made accessible to the world at large. We can continue fumbling with devices and screens and backlights and download speed all we want, but the true limit of electronic publishing should never be the devices we have availiable: it should be the experimental gumption of authors, editors, publishers, and now programmers in their quest to improving and revitalizing electronic literature. Current statutes too strictly limit both Fair Use and the public domain, infringing on our rights to develop something yet unimaginable. We need to seriously encourage our government representatives to revise these laws to incorporate an allowance for the future, to bring copyright back from its current place as a protector of investment to its traditional home of protector of the arts.
If publishers, authors, and consumers can continue pushing DRM and electronic rights negotiations into adequately meeting the needs of our ever-changing technological landscape and if U.S. law is rewritten to support the creativity of our most innovative minds, publishing stands a chance. Without the right foundation, without the right business models and laws supporting those business models, we won’t be able to reinvigorate the love of reading that has driven so many people away from books and toward short-form media. Whether publishing slowly releases long-form works as a main source of income or whether it finds a way to deliver long-form content in a way that meets the needs of a modern lifestyle doesn’t matter, so long as the passion our global culture shares for language and literature doesn’t lie fallow for too much longer.
We are so very capable of solving this problem, if only we can begin using our tools for change in the ways they were designed.
