You own your PDF files — unless, or until, they think otherwise. This may come as bad news since, if you are like many, you probably use PDF (Portable Document Format) for saving a variety of file types: text documents, pictures, and scan images, among others.
In fact, PDF has become so widespread that the ability to display (and even annotate) PDF files has become almost a standard requirement in smart phones and e-book readers, such as Amazon's and Sony's.
PDF, of course, does not think.
Yet the developers of the format (Adobe) have designed it in a way guaranteeing that each PDF file is used as its creator intended. When you create a PDF file, for example, you can specify how many times it can be printed out, and how many copies each time.
Of Possessing and Owning
So you may "possess" a PDF file when you have it on your hard disk, and thus be able to exclude others from using it. But you may still not "own" it if, say, you have used up your printing rights to that file. In other words, Adobe has embedded in it the laws that regulate how files created in this format are used.
Another, more controversial, example of "embedded law" is what Amazon did recently with a couple of George Orwell's novels. Last July, Amazon.com remotely deleted two of George Orwell's e-books
"owned" by Kindle users. This happened with neither notice nor an explanation — at least initially. The e-books were deleted from reading devices, and users were offered refunds.
As this spurred a backlash from the users who lost their Orwell electronic copies, Amazon said it did what it did because it turned out that the online retailer did not have rights to the two books it remotely deleted (Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm).
In an attempt to put an end to the debacle, Amazon's chief finally apologized earlier this month for the July mistake and offered a $30 cash voucher for the users whose Orwell copies were deleted.
Code Is Law
The Amazon controversy brought back to the fore the debate about copyrights versus consumers' rights. Parallel to this is the concern that "embedded laws" could be arbitrary and unfairly tilted in favor of the producers as opposed to the consumers.
Did Amazon have the right to delete the Orwell novels without the users' consent? A user likened what Amazon did to a regular bookstore sending someone to take back the book a user has sold and leave the refund on the shelf.
Scary enough an analogy to Amazon's public relations department! And by apologizing and offering a cash gift to the wronged users, Amazon admits that it did not have the right to do so.
But the fact remains that the code, (the software on Kindle that afforded Amazon to do what it did), is still there. In effect, therefore, Amazon has backpedalled on a decision, not on a philosophy. That philosophy is to incorporate software that regulates how one uses an application or a device.
So the larger question is whether Amazon, or any other company, has the right to embed in its device, application or website, tools that privilege the service provider and potentially disadvantage the user.
Some would answer in the negative. They would say that once you buy something, you can (within the limits of "fair use") do with it as you please.
On the other side, some would argue that intellectual property is a different kind of property. In other forms of property such as houses or a pair of shoes, using the property entails excluding others from it. In information-based property (almost anything than can be saved in the digital format of bits), however, you can use something and still allow an infinite number of others to use it as well.
You can get an e-book and read it and make it available on an e-group. Or you can download a song and share it by e-mail with everyone you knew since kindergarten.
Information is expensive to produce, but cheap (almost infinitely cheap) to reproduce. Thus, the argument goes, intellectual property (IP) providers need to impose limits on the extent an information-based product is reproducible. The result is the proliferation of what is called "digital rights management."
But then again, did deleting e-books, remotely and without users' consent, fall under the category of a
company legitimately ensuring that its products were used with fairness? The answer is no.
While Amazon "licenses" rather than "sells" e-books to Kindle users, it still crossed a line by stealthily
undoing a transaction without the owner's approval. Worthy of note also is that Amazon did not really need to do so (even if it deleted the e-books only when it found out that rights to the book were not in the public domain, as it said).
The trend of applications or websites inserting their own "laws" that over-regulate how they are used is not new. In 1999, Lawrence Lessig cautioned in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace that software code was increasingly playing the role of "law" — law that didn't necessarily match or consistently complement the law we have in the real world.
Lessig, a law professor, also pointed out that the trend would likely be one of more power to companies at the expense of users' rights. Amazon's summer debacle probably confirms Lessig's fears. Of course, firms have rights that need to be protected. But we, consumers of information, won't be terribly happy when we discover one morning that Amazon or any other company has broken into
our digital lives in the dark of night.
Lessig, a law professor, also pointed out that the trend would likely be one of more power to companies at the expense of users' rights. Amazon's summer debacle probably confirms Lessig's fears. Of course, firms have rights that need to be protected.
But we, consumers of information, won't be terribly happy when we discover one morning that Amazon or any other company has broken into our digital lives in the dark of night.
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