Will Libraries Be Locked Out by DRM?

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls are placed on most digital books. Librarians are concerned that such DRM may make it difficult, if forecasts in digital vs. hard copy publications come to pass, for libraries to continue to provides citizens the resources they do today.

A large part of the concern lies in British Library predictions published last year, in which it was estimated that 90% of new work will be published digitally by 2020.

Libraries are allowed to give access to, copy and distribute items through “fair dealing” and “library privilege” clauses in copyright law.

But as publishers attempt to stop the public illegally sharing books and articles, the DRM they employ may not cater for libraries’ legal uses. Source: BBC News

We Say: I think the 90% number may be high, but I do expect a high percentage to be published digitally by then. So what, as long as we have hard copy, right? That’s true for now, but it may not be forever. And anyone who’s seen how troublesome, difficult, impossible (?) it is to legally use DRM-protected items today (i.e., the DRM is buggy and doesn’t always work as it should), might wonder if 20-year old DRM-protected digital books would easily be readable? Or would we have books we cannot unlock that are then essentially useless?

My thoughts are that this is possibly an overreaction … but it is a good thing that it’s been brought up to make sure this issue does not slip through the cracks.