As I drove to the bank the other day, an episode of All Things Considered on NPR caught my attention. They were discussing DRM (digital rights management), or copyrights, for audio books, as Amazon's Kindle has already implemented. This harkened me back to our first blog post, which was over the very subject of copyrighting! So, I thought I would share the story I heard on NPR with you guys.
This again has me considering the intellectual property question. So many musicians have reaped success from file sharing. This is a way they can gain exposure, and fast. However, the strong argument against piracy is that money is being taken away from the creator(s), and rightful owners of the work. Now that we are starting to see a trend of people reading e-books or listening to them through sites like audible.com, the same questions and arguments are being raised in the publishing industry. NPR interviews several people, including an author with books on Kindle, to gain perspective on the situation.
In my opinion, regardless if you are speaking to any art form- music, literature, etc.- we should embrace the spirit of a collective intellectual property. At risk of repeating my self from my previous blog post, we as a community benefit from the sharing of art. We learn, we broaden our horizons, and we may find the inspiration needed for our own works.
Not everything in American society need be so individualistic.
Image from NPR.org
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