Common Sense from the AAP

An excerpt from Publisher's Lunch

Michael Cader, Publishers Lunch

Copyright 2000 Publisher's Lunch.
This article first appeared in Publisher's Lunch. Reprinted with permission.

July 23, 2001

Last week the AAP issued a statement supporting the arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov. Pat Schroeder said in the release: "It's only common sense to expect that, if the public wants desirable books to be available online and through other digital media like the Adobe Reader, the authors and publishers who have the legal rights to commercially exploit such works in the global digital marketplace must have reasonable assurances that the market value of their works can be protected from the extraordinary risks of illegal reproduction and distribution that are made possible by the capabilities of digital media. Congress understood this when it enacted the DMCA to help promote the online availability of copyrighted works."

"Distribution of the means to strip ebooks of their access and copyright protections is not a public service, any more than it would be a public service to distribute the keys that unlock a bookstore or public library," Mrs. Schroeder said. "It merely facilitates theft, and makes it less likely that ebooks will soon become a popular reading format."

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