porsdam in Bodo 2015
lions of scientific books, all digitized, all available at the click of the mouse for
everyone on the earth without any charge, library or university membership. As I was sitting in these
1
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
physical spaces where the past seemed to define the present, I was wondering where I should look to find
the library of the
they are invariably powerful harbingers of change. The emergence of black markets
whether they be of culture, of drugs or of arms is always a symptom, a warning sign of a friction between
2
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
supply and demand. Increased activity in the grey and black zones of legality marks the emergence of a
demand which legal su
s
as the music industry suffered a decade ago, the actions of book publishers, the policies they pursue have
impact beyond the market of books and directly affect the domain of libraries.
3
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
The fate of libraries is tied to the fate of book markets in more than one way. One connection is structural:
libraries emer
into the machine. No wonder that electronic libraries and digital text repositories
were among the first “mainstream” application of computers. Combing through large stacks of matrix-
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
printer printouts of sci-fi classics downloaded from gopher servers is a shared experience of anyone who
had access to compu
e issue of digital book
piracy, more and more communities around text collections started defy the legal constraints and to
operate and use more or less public piratical shadow libraries.
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
Aleph1
Aleph2 is a meta-library, and currently one of the biggest online piratical text collections on the internet.
The pro
Karaganis, on
the role of shadow libraries in the higher education systems of multiple countries.
2
Aleph is a pseudonym chosen to protect the identity of the shadow library in question.
6
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
Russia is not the only country with a significant informal media economy of books, but in most other
places it was the photo
ment that swept through the Russian internet in the late 1990’s, early 2000’s.
First, lib.ru provided the technological blueprint for any future digital library. But more importantly,
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
Moshkov’s way of handling the texts, his way of responding to the claims, requests, questions, complaints
of authors and p
ces rich gigapedia/library.nu, and with the subsequent shutdown of
gigapedia/library.nu Aleph became the center of the scientific shadow library ecosystem and community.
Aleph by numbers
8
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
By adding pre-existing text collections to its catalogue Aleph was able to grow at an astonishing rate.
Aleph added, on aver
based on the logs provided by one of the shadow library services which offers the books in
Aleph’s catalogue as well as other works also free and without any restraints or limitations.
9
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
scarcity in physical copies is overcome through distributed digitization; the artificial source of scarcity
created by copyr
ves and their institutions, as the book collections around which libraries were
organized slowly go the way the catalogue has gone: into the digital realm. It would be impossible to give
10
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
a faithful summary of all the discussions on the future of libraries is such a short contribution. There are,
however, a few
vi,
ResearchGate, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Khan Academy, specialized twitter and other
social media accounts are just a few of the available discovery services.
11
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
relevant by, for example, advocating more opening hours without staff and hosting more user-governed
activities.
In the rese
xing and similar purposes and allows for the display of digital copies on their
premises for research and personal study (Triaille et al., 2013). While in theory these rights provide for
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
the core library services in the digital domain, their practical usefulness is rather limited, as off-premises
e-lending of
ng its provisions. Lacking
any orphan works legislation and the Google Book Settlement still in limbo, the US is even farther from making
orphan works generally accessible to the public.
13
Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
licenses to e-book catalogues of various sizes, these arrangements also carry the danger of a commercial
lock-in of the acce
through libraries or through commercial retailers is simply not enough anymore.
Developing countries are a slightly different case. There, compared to developed countries, twice as many
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
of the downloads (17% compared to 8% in developed countries) are of titles that aren’t available in print
at all. Not havi
sources and of the peer produced library is the difference
between the actual costs associated with Aleph, and the investment that would be required to create
something remotely similar.
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
The decentralized, collaborative mass digitization and making available of current, thus most relevant
scientific works is o
collections, insiders and outsiders can all prevent the
peer production of the library, and through that, prevent the future that is the closest to what library users
think of as ideal.
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
References
Abramitzky, R., & Sin, I. (2014). Book Translations as Idea Flows: The Effects of the Collapse of
Communism
on
ket: Supply and Demand.
Acta Slavica Iaponica, 2, 177–192.
Giblin, R. (2011). Code Wars: 10 Years of P2P Software Litigation. Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton,
MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
Johns, A. (2010). Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. University Of
Chicago Press.
Judge, C. B.
d user rights in Case C-117/13 Ulmer: a couple of
observations. IPKat. Retrieved October 08, 2014, from http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/copyrightexceptions-and-user-rights-in.html
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Bodó B. (2015): Libraries in the post-scarcity era.
in: Porsdam (ed): Copyrighting Creativity: Creative values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property, Ashgate
Rosati, E. (2014b). Dutch court refers questions to CJEU on e-lending and digital exhaustion, and another
Dutch reference on
porsdam in Thylstrup 2019
t’s Future. I am very
grateful to all my colleagues in both these research projects: Kristin Veel,
Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Katrine Dirkinck-Holmfeldt, Pepita Hesselberth,
Kristoffer Ørum, Ekaterina Kalinina Anders Søgaard as well as Helle Porsdam,
Jeppe Eimose, Stina Teilmann, John Naughton, Jeffrey Schnapp, Matthew Battles,
and Fiona McMillan. I am further indebted to La Vaughn Belle, George Tyson,
Temi Odumosu, Mathias Danbolt, Mette Kia, Lene Asp, Marie Blønd, Mace Ojala,
Renee Ridgway, a
ailable at SSRN;
36. Bodó, Balazs. 2016. “Libraries in the Post-Scarcity Era.” In _Copyrighting Creativity: Creative Values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property_ , ed. Helle Porsdam. New York: Routledge.
37. Bogost, Ian, and Nick Montfort. 2009. “Platform Studies: Frequently Asked Questions.” _Proceeding of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference_.
38. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1978
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