TMRC

Unshelved comic for 9/9/2009 www.unshelved.com

One of the rallying cries of people who want copyright reform and pirates alike is "Information wants to be free!". One of the wonderful things about libraries is that information is (mostly) free - although there is still an impressive amount of copyright violation going on in public libraries.

First, it's important to note that the main idea of librarianship is legal. The American Library Association (ALA) states that under the "first sale" doctorine, the lending out copyrighted materials is protected by law. Any materials that are no longer protected by copyright (such as Hamlet, but not a Translation of The Inferno, because the translation is still copywrited) or published under a Creative Commons license doens't have those concerns.


However, books aren't the main pirated material in the library. Unsuprisingly, that would be music. As an employee of the Fargo Public Library, I have seen people come in, rip our CDs without checking them out, and then put them back on the shelves.

This is definately not a strictly a Fargo phenomenon. In a blog entry from The Library Journal, which references a since-removed Chicago Tribune article and poll, finds that this is widespread among the patrons from Chicago's public Library system.  The article points out that although it is copyright violation, most of the people who responded to the poll believed it fell under fair use. Borrowing a CD and ripping it, or taping a song of the radio are similarly illegal, but all of these methods are looked over, since it isn't the major music lables don't see that as a major threat to sales.


Another form of copyright infringement that happens frequently is the use of photocopiers in the library.  Most libraries (both public and academic) provide photocopiers to their patrons, and for 10 cents, any item may be copied . Most often, at least at the Fargo Public Library, it's specific articles from newspapers being copied. This is generally looked over by the copyright holders (The Fargo Forum, in this case) because it is such a small scale copyright infringement.

All of these copyright violations aren't attacted, possibly because the Internet is not involved. Any attempt at internet copyright infringement - downloading or viewing anything illegal on a library computer or wireless network- is strictly forbidden by the libraries policies, and doing that would get you banned from using the computers. 

It's interesting to see how libraries can be seen as a haven of copyright infringement, and how libraries can and do avoid that label, and continue to provide free information for their patrons.

The Economic Impact

Libraries provide a number of important services for free. This infographic demonstrates how helpful libraries are to the public, and how often their services are used.

However, libraries are not cheap to run. Due to the current economic conditions, there has been talk of closing libraries to help cities. Fortunatley, there have been few library closings.

One of the most notable was the Philadelphia Free Library system, which was very close to closing, but fortunately, the Pennsylvania state legislature voted to keep the library open. Although it's quite possible that the politicians in the Pennsylvania state legislature where convinced they could keep the libraries open, the article says that they received over 2,000 letters in support of the library. I don't know if being prominantly featured on Boing Boing helped produce some of those letters, but I doubt that the national attention hurt the cause of the library.

One of the reasons that I bring up the importance, and reality, of library closing is that The Camden, NJ library closed today. It's interesting to see the similarities between the articles about the Philadelphia free library system, and what's happened in Camden.

According to the article, Camden had a similar political situation, where the city closed the library's branches, and focused on running only one library. However, the city found it completely infeasible, based on the article, to continue the library service

The (admittedly brief)  article also states that Camden is "one of the nation's most impovershed cities. Most of it's families don't own computers." The statement about computer ownership being a basic part of wealth is interesting, and reminds me of a NPR story about Broadband adoption and Latinos. The Story Begins with a crowded public library, which has every computer in use. The story focuses on the comparatively low adoption of high-speed internet by Latinos, but the beginning shows how important libraries are to providing the service.

It's a paradox - the city arguably needs the library for the resources it contains, because of the poverty that is arguably characteristic of the city. Yet, the city cannot support a library that provides those resources to the people, and help those people in the long run. It is also worth noting that Camden's school system is controlled by the state of New Jersey, and that the city has severe problems with corruption, crime, and low graduation rates, on top of the poverty.