[blindlaw] Kindle E-Reader: A Trojan Horse for Free Thought

Tue Mar 31 17:05:16 UTC 2009

Dave,

     Heady thoughts indeed.  But isn't Ms. Walsh a little too alarmist?  How, after all, is a digitalized book on a Kindle Reader significantly different in this respect from a borrowed library book?  Thanks in any event for posting the essay.  Regards.

Craig
----- David B Andrews <David.B.Andrews at state.mn.us> wrote:
> With all the discussion about the Kindle, and what it permits, and 
> doesn't permit, I thought this might be of interest to some.
> 
> David Andrews
> 
> 
> Kindle E-Reader: A Trojan Horse for Free Thought
> 
> By Emily Walshe
> The Christian Science Monitor
> from the March 18, 2009 edition
> <<http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0318/p09s01>http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0318/p09s01-coop.html>
> 
> Brookville, N.Y. - All you really need to know about
> the dangers of digital commodification you learned in
> kindergarten.
> 
> Think back. Remember swapping your baloney sandwich for
> Jell-o pudding? Now, imagine handing over your sandwich
> and getting just a spoon.
> 
> That's one trade you'd never make again.
> 
> Yet that's just what millions of Americans are doing
> every day when they read "books" on Kindle, Amazon's e-
> reading device. In our rush to adopt new technologies,
> we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of
> its twisted sister, access.
> 
> Web 2.0 and its culture of collaboration supposedly
> unleashed a sharing society. But we can share only what
> we own. And as more and more content gets digitized,
> commercialized, and monopolized, our cultural integrity
> is threatened. The free and balanced flow of
> information that gives shape to democratic society is
> jeopardized.
> 
> For now, though, Kindle is on fire in the marketplace.
> Who could resist reading "what you want, when you want
> it?" Access to more than 240,000 books is just seconds
> away. And its "revolutionary electronic-paper display
> ... looks and reads like real paper."
> 
> But it comes with restrictions: You can't resell or
> share your books - because you don't own them. You can
> download only from Amazon's store, making it difficult
> to read anything that is not routed through Amazon
> first. You're not buying a book; you're buying access
> to a book. No, it's not like borrowing a book from a
> library, because there is no public investment. It's
> like taking an interest-only mortgage out on
> intellectual property.
> 
> If our flailing economy is to teach us anything, it
> might be that an on-demand world of universal access
> (with words like lease, licensure, and liquidity) gets
> us into trouble. Amazon and other e-media aggregators
> know that digital text is the irrational exuberance of
> the day, and so are seizing the opportunity to codify,
> commodify, and control access for tomorrow. But access
> doesn't "look and read" like printed paper at all -
> just ask any forlorn investor. Access is useless
> currency.
> 
> Why is this important? Because Kindle is the kind of
> technology that challenges media freedom and restricts
> media pluralism. It exacerbates what historian William
> Leach calls "the landscape of the temporary": a hyper
> mobile and rootless society that prefers access to
> ownership. Such a society is vulnerable to the dangers
> of selective censorship and control.
> 
> Digital rights management (DRM), which Kindle uses to
> lock in its library, raises critical questions about
> the nature of property and identity in digital culture.
> Culture plays a large role - in some ways, larger than
> government - in shaping who we are as individuals in a
> society. The First Amendment protects our right to
> participate in the production of that culture. The
> widespread commodification of access is shaping nearly
> every aspect of modern citizenship. There are benefits,
> to be sure, but this transformation also poses a big-
> time threat to free expression and assembly.
> 
> When Facebook, for example, proposed revisions to its
> terms of service last month - claiming ownership of
> user profiles and personal data - the successful
> backlash it spawned caused complex (even existential)
> ideas about property, identity, and capitulation to
> bubble up: Is my Facebook profile the essence of who I
> am? If so, who owns me?
> 
> The hallmark of a constitutionally governed society,
> after all, is the acknowledgment that we are the
> authors of our own experience. In an Internet age, this
> is manifest not only in published works, but also an
> ever-evolving host of user-generated content (Twitter,
> Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). If service providers
> lay claim to digital content now, how will it all end?
> 
> Print may be dying, but the idea of print would be the
> more critical demise: the idea that there needs to be a
> record - an artifact of permanence, residence, and
> posterity - that is independent of some well-appointed
> thingamajig in order to be seen, touched, understood,
> or wholly possessed.
> 
> "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture,"
> Ray Bradbury once said. "Just get people to stop
> reading them."
> 
> Access equals control. In this case, it is control over
> what is read and what is not; what is referenced and
> what is overlooked; what is retained and what is
> deleted; what is and what seems to be.
> 
> To kindle, we must remember, is to set fire to. The
> combustible power of this device (and others like it)
> lies in their quiet but constant claim to intangible,
> algorithmic capital. What the Kindle should be igniting
> is serious debate on the fundamental, inalienable right
> to property in a digital age - and clarifying what's
> yours, mine, and ours.
> 
> It should strike a match against the winner-take-all
> casino economies that this kind of technology
> engenders; revitalize American libraries and other
> social institutions in their quest to preserve the
> doctrines of fair use and first sale (which allow for
> free and lawful sharing); and finally, spark Americans
> to consider the extent to which they are handing over
> their baloney sandwich for a plastic spoon.
> 
> Like a lot of people, I'm a sucker for a good book. But
> not at the expense of freedom, or foreclosure of
> thought.
> 
> 
> Emily Walshe is a librarian and professor at Long
> Island University in New York.
> 
> 
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