Blogging Ottinger (tim)Simple Pleasures
We all got our library cards on Saturday.
As a young rural boy, I had a card. We had a bookmobile that visited our neighborhood each week during the summer. It was to me like an ice-cream truck. I’ve lived in towns since, but I don’t recall being to the local library. Now I’m re-discovering the joy of borrowing books for free. I’m reading a number of theologically-based books, some silly action-adventure, and one on guitar playing. My children are reading Garfield comics and all the Left Behind books, and on it goes. My wife is reading the same action/adventure/mystery books, and a few others besides.
Of course, this is all viewed very negatively by elements of the IP legal community. I remember past rants against libraries, arguing that it is wrong to loan books and movies and music. I had seen the arguments, that every free use of a copyrighted item is theft via the loss-of-revenue doctrine. Not only are books being read by multiple people without remuneration, but they’re being read repeatedly by the same persons, each time for free. We’ve heard it all, and still we believe that there is value in making both fiction and nonfiction, video, written word, and music alike available to anyone with a will to appreciate them.
Being well-read and informed is a public good, moreso certainly than the use of private property for land development, and the good to the public is used to justify the high property taxes common in residential areas. It is a public good. It is worthwhile.
