OWNERSHIP OF DIGITAL CONTENT

With the creation of e-books, questions of ownership and the rights of an “owner” of an e-book started to come into question. There needs to be an understanding of what ownership means regarding e-books, and what rights owners of e-books have in comparison to owners of physical books.

Perzanowski and Schultz point out the language of restriction surrounding ownership with digital property. Most license agreements for digital products, including books, video games, movies, and music, state that these products are licensed not sold.

By allowing license terms to redefine transactions and strip consumers of ownership, courts are taking power away from the public lawmaking process and vesting it in the hands of private IP rights holders.(Perzanowski, Schultz 2016)

Digital Rights Management

Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of the legal aspects of distributing digital content and preventing piracy. DRM addresses the issues surrounding digital materials and their ability to be transfered from person to person easily. Issues of piracy of digital materials is still relatively common, but DRM is made to mitigate it as much as possible.

Because of the complexity of maintaining the integrity of copywright and intellectual property, E-books are more accurately liscensed to consumers, rather than sold.

Digital media is licensed not sold to buyers meaing that when purchasing a digital product you don’t receive the copyright, trademark or patent. Beyond that though, it also means that you are unable to transfer, copy or transfer the file. You do not own it.

Though this may not seem concerning, Perzanowski and Schultz argue that making copies is a natural part of using software. They state, “If you install code on your hard drive, you’ve made a copy. If you run the program, you’ve created a copy in your computer’s memory…Unlike an analog book, a copy of a software program is virtually worthless without the right to make copies (2016)

Though the licensing model has been standard for E-books for years, the language surrounding E-book's makes it confusing for consumers. The 'Buy Now' button on Amazon for Kindle books misleads people to believing that the materials they are purchasing are their own to share as they wish. There is little distinction made between the meaning of ownership with physical books and E-books despite them being entirely different mediums. The next page will focus on these consumer perceptions and how the language surrounding E-book ownership breeds confusion and dissatisfaction.