A Little History
In his theories of how human civilization developed, Marshal McLuhan outlined the following:

Stage 1 - The Oral Village
Stage 2 - Writing
Stage 3 - Printing
Stage 4 - Electronic Media/Mass Trans

In the first stage, information was conveyed verbally, and was not fixed in any form. Stories, songs and dances were used to convey ideas. In such societies, the singers, dancers and storytellers were respected as having the information of the ages.

In the second stage, we see the development of record keeping by means of writing (papyrus, stone, clay, etc) and along with it the development of different groups of people. Some people can read and write, while others can not. Still others may serve as interpreters.

In the third stage, Johannes Gutenberg's printing and duplication become available, and this paved the road for a revolution in how ideas are spread. The printing press is the first form of mass production. Wealthy people have books, others do not. The ideals of democracy are further fueled by the ability for politicians to spread the word about their ideas. Benjamin Franklin suggests that all citizens are entitled to free access to books, saying that the community owes you access to books.

The forth stage incorporates the effects of mass transportation and the electronic revolution, which most people reading this can easily imagine.

The difference between going to the library and purchasing a book

A library book costs someone else money (though it can be argued that you bought it indirectly through taxes). You can't keep a library book, and thus can't refer to it unless you go to the library.

A book that is purchased costs the buyer money, and they are able to keep it and refer to it as needed.

So the fundamental difference is the ability to own and refer to something as needed without further intervention from a third part (like a library). Otherwise, the two scenarios are the same. Either way, you can read the book from cover to cover, form opinions about it, share those ideas with others, and hold memories of your experience until you succumb to feeble-mindedness - decades for most, weeks for some. In one case you have paid for the memory, in the other case, you haven't.

Just as the printing press and moveable type put the power of duplication in the hands of a certain segment of the population, so too has the computer given that power to an even larger group of people. In a global village where artists can interact with collegues and fans across the ocean, we may need to re-think our ideas of copyright ownership.

The physical paper, cardboard, and ink, is the real issue. True, there is some nominal manufacturing value to the paper, carboard and ink that make up a book. But without the actual content, everything else would be worthless.

While we may be able to come up with very convincing arguments for how a creator of a work owns the copyright to the work, there are some fuzzy lines between owning the work itself and owning the right to copy that work (copyright).

A person that purchases a CD doesn't actually own the music on the CD. Well, they do and they don't. They own the physical plastic disc that the music is encoded on, and they own the actual code that represents that music on that plastic disk, but aside from that, what do they own?

The song itself is an idea, created by the songwriter, that has no real physical form. Once a song is played, where does it go? Only into the memory really; if it's good, maybe the song will reside in the subconscious and spur action or further creativity. Repeated listening and enjoyment of the song aside, the song is nothing more than a memory, or idea transferred from one person to another via the code on the plastic disk.

Printed music gives practical instructions for how to reproduce the song, and thus has a value all its own. The same with printed words, which serve to document the text. But the ideas still remain unholdable.

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