in re books, wrap-up

My thoughts are with the folks struggling with power outages and Sandy’s destruction. I left NYC on Sunday morning after attending the In Re Books conference given by New York Law School. I was on the Libraries panel. I learned a great deal about the current state of digital content and the legal structure supporting and/or inhibiting it and got to listen to a lot of very bright people speak. I was honored to be on a panel with author Caleb Crain, Doron Weber from the Sloan Foundation, and Jonathan Band who does technology law and policy work, all well-moderated by June Besek. I did what I always dread other people would do: prepared too much information for a twelve-minute slot. Fortunately I went last and managed to make it work okay but decided to put the full essay here. Here is my short piece which was intended as a cautionary side note to the idea of a digital public library, an idea I am generally in favor of. Title, swiped from a Cory Doctorow article on boingboing.

You are a mere tenant farmer of your books
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