IT and society: Digital books and user’s rights

The “Electronic Frontier Foundation” has issued an official document Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers.

The document’s introduction says:

After several years of false starts, the universe of digital books seems at last poised to expand dramatically. Readers should view this expansion with both excitement and wariness. Excitement because digital books could revolutionize reading, making more books more findable and more accessible to more people in more ways than ever before. Wariness because the various entities that will help make this digital book revolution possible may not always respect the rights and expectations that readers, authors, booksellers and librarians have built up, and defended, over generations of experience with physical books.

As new digital book tools and services roll out, we need to be able to evaluate not only the cool features they offer, but also whether they extend (or hamper) our rights and expectations.

The over-arching question: are digital books as good or better than physical books at protecting you and your rights as a reader?

The document “Digital books and your rights: A checklist for readers” represents a list of key questions that readers should ask of each new digital book product or service to evaluate whether it adequately protects their interests.

Here are some questions:

- Does your e-book reader protect your privacy?

- What happens to additions you make to books you buy, like annotations, highlights, commentary?

-Do you own the book or just rent or license it?