REFLECTIONS

From The Sydney Morning Herald we learnt Rowling’s concern about “”Why is it so difficult to buy paper in the middle of town?” the author, a resident of Edinburgh, Scotland, lamented in a diary entry posted at the time on her website . . . What is a writer who likes to write longhand supposed to do when she hits her stride and then realizes, to her horror, that she has covered every bit of blank paper in her bag? Forty-five minutes it took me, this morning, to find somewhere that would sell me some normal, lined paper. And there’s a university here!” she wrote.”

    I can see the need for us to read from a book on the paper-format: there is that thrill to take the pen-knife and cut the unread book-page open and you know nobody has ever read that single page before yourself. Sorry, that was pre-baby-boomer age. The Pen-knifes are curiosity-artifacts now. Books on paper? I am sure there were those monks who didn’t like Gutenberg’s invention because it would put their manual manuscript-copying, life-long career into a downsizing mode. The printing press had increased readers while the hand-written manuscripts limited readership, the e-book shall also increase those who will read. (even the Pope, Benedict XVI, published his newest book also in the e-book format!) There will always be books but books will always change with the technology. From stories on cave walls to electronic digits, reading is the main civilizing skill of man. Liberty rest securely upon that skill. Without the ability or desire to read man can be subjected much easier to manipulation by wicked people. Should we avoid technology that will increase reading because of fear about the future of the present book-format?

    Now, this online piracy (commonly referred to as copyright violation) is a problem created by the Congress itself. In the latter part of the 20^th Century the copyright law was re-written constantly. Copyright was changed from securing for limited times exclusive right to respective writings and discoveries toward protecting exchangeable property rights to authors, inventors, and composers. What was fair usage among friends became a horrible offense equated with the terror of Black Beard. Exclusive right for limited time became never-ending time, and artists are left believing format-switching is stealing. J.K. Rowling avoids the old adage of “finding a need, and filling that need” thus she costs her publishers and her Queens’ tax collectors additional revenues — she leaves this need to the black market (so far there are not-for-profit distributions of Harry Potter’s books because the hackers just want to show it can be and it will be done). The myth we don’t want our books in the other formats than paper flys in the face of fictionwise and ereader. Within hours of the Harry Potter 7 release, there will be html, txt, pdf, doc versions harboring somewhere on the Internet.