Along the same lines as the last post about fair use of something that one physically owns is the issue of licensing…
While (slowly) studing for prelims, I’ve been reading about The Future of the Book. Many of the issues considered here revolve around the question “what will we need physical books for, now that we have electronic media.” For one thing, books fit into this model of “you bought it, it’s yours,” where one owns a physical book and can reasonably do whatever they choose with it: from reading, to annotating, to ripping it up. However, electronic media are almost never bought, instead they are licensed–meaning you never really own what you paid for. For example, it’s conceivable that a publisher could include a licensing clause which prevented an owner from reselling their work, essentially circumventing the “first-sale doctrine” discussed earlier. Mark that one on the side against electronic media.
I would again argue that to create a resonable, or perhaps more accurately, logical copyright landscape, users need something they can conceivably own. This is the least that the law can do, if we are all expected to follow other restrictive digital copyright rules.