Digital Books and e-book Readers: A New Digital Divide?

I just got a Kindle 2 for Christmas (thanks, Cathy). And it has been amazing experience, as I posted in my BibliotecasVirtuales.com blog:

I am inspired, I am motivated, I am excited. Finally, books, content, knowledge are not trapped in the dungeon-like shelves of bookstores or temple-like halls and walls of libraries. Content is free (well, almost) to go anywhere, to be taken anywhere, to be shared, accessed and used by anyone. Anyone with a Kindle that is...

It took me a while, but I was able to discover plenty of sources for digital books both in text and audio format available in the public domain and/or under Creative Commons licenses (listed in my other post). These books are not only available to the Kindle or any particular e-book reader, but can be read (or heard in the case of Audiobooks) on any computer, smart mobile phone or even MP3/MP4 player. So one might be tempted to think there is finally no digital divide when it comes to open and public access to culture when it comes to books and digital texts. The truth is quite the opposite. As matter of fact, there might be even greater digital divide in this field than in any other field of knowledge and culture.

The Language Issue

A quick search for digital text and audio books in the public domain and/or under Creative Commons licenses returns mostly books in English, with other languages being represented very little and taking timid part in most initiatives when compared to the English language.

There are plenty of isolated initiatives from Argentina to China, to Germany, to Russia, but most are isolated initiatives with little funding and one or none sponsor. Well meant projects with profound inspiration and immense aspirations, but with uncertain sustainability and capacity to keep up with changes in technology and audiences.

The Availability Issue

Projects like Google Books and the Internet Archive might play an important role in overcoming the above issue, but some fear the nature or final goal of some of this projects. Such is the case of the Open Content Alliance's criticism of Google Books. The Open Content Alliance was created by Yahoo and the Internet Archive with support from Microsoft and others after the Google Books initiative was announced and it is openly a sworn enemy and critic of Google's initiative.

It is understandable that the Internet Archive, a non-profit initiative which has been scanning books and working with libraries and literary stakeholders longer than Google, resents Google's interest in making money off public domain and orphan books and content by making them publicly available and eventually allowing you to get it in print form for a fee. I will leave the Open Content Alliance, the Internet Archive and Brewster Khale's (most of the time it's hard to tell any of them appart) and their criticism of Google Books for a separate post, though.

On the other side of the coin, we find fears of potential bias, influence, interests and priority by those managing the initiatives. An example of this is the fear of potential censorship by Egypt over the content available at the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, recipient of a huge digital text and media collection donated by the Internet Archive (including an entire copy of the archive itself).

The Staleness of Open Content available for e-book Readers
and the Price of New Content

Beyond the language, relevance and topic issue, there is one major hurdle to overcome if we dream of achieving universal access to content and culture. And that is the fact that new content, recent books, new knowledge is still made available only through commercial channels in most cases under the current regime of restrictive intelectual property according to the laws - but not the wishes - of most societies today.

So, if you want to read a novel by Saramago, Eco, Vargas Llosa or Vonnegut, you are expected to pay for it and might be able to get it only from a particular source tied to the editorial company holding the rights or responsible for the text's distribution.

Which takes us to the paradox that ebook readers make universal access to culture available to those who already have it or can afford it.

We Need More

The fact is that we need more local content, content in native languages and translation of content to multiple languages, digitized, made available in digital format and we need to make sure that it is made available to the public freely -- which might involve a fee or not, depending on the case, but freely as in openly and accessible to every one.

Once content is digital it can and should be free from the restriction of its original form and available in any distribution media. This can accelerate the rate at which it is not only accessed, distributed, used, but also reviewed, revised, improved, translated and the impact it has on new authors to create new content.