Copyright Issues of E-Books Limited to Public Libraries

Abstract

The development of e-books leads to the arising of new copyright issues. Public libraries have noticed the advantages of e-books but nevertheless many of them avoid the danger of the new technology and the copyright problems. Public libraries in the United States of America (United States) were one of the first libraries which started to provide the service of e-books. However, the beginning of the usage was difficult and the first projects failed. Nowadays, the United States public libraries have different possibilities to offer e-books. On one hand the offer of e-books is granted by law and on the other hand the more common way is, however, to have a licensing agreement between the copyright holder and the library. Furthermore, the paper will demonstrate the situation in New Zealand where the offer of e-books just has started. In the whole discussion, this paper will consider the question whether libraries are still necessary in the future, where digital media become the usual way to receive information, and what libraries have to do if they want to persist in the market