http://creativeindustriesktn.org/blog The UK's Knowledge Network for the Creative Industries Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:51:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://creativeindustriesktn.org/blog/2009/07/who-owns-the-books-on-your-shelf/ http://creativeindustriesktn.org/blog/2009/07/who-owns-the-books-on-your-shelf/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:36:19 +0000 Tony Henderson http://citin.net/blog/?p=15 When you go into a bookshop, make a purchase and take the product home who owns it? Does the bookshop or the publisher have the right to come to you a few weeks later, take the book back and force you to take a refund? Of course not is the obvious answer. However, recently in the USA Amazon “deleted” copies of two George Orwell novels, 1984 and Animal Farm from it’s customer’s Kindle e-book reader – who say’s American’s don’t do irony. Reports, they are all over the Internet, say the readers were given no prior warning but simply found the book missing and the cost reimbursed to their accounts. So what was going on? It appears Amazon did not have the rights to distribute the books in this form in the US and when the publishers raised the point with them they immediately took action. The added twist appears to be that when you “purchase” a book from Amazon in this format you simply licence it, rather than own it. This raises the question of how far can a company that distributes digital material go to retrieve an illegal version of something. It also shows that we have a long way to go in getting a clear understanding of some important issues around ownership, copyright law, DRM and IP.

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